Today in Media Files, US reporters take their lives in their hands reporting on Hurricane Irma, and the ABC launches a podcast fund.

Reporting live from Hurricane Irma. No one does deadly storm coverage quite like US television reporters. And, as Hurricane Irma reached Florida yesterday, they didn’t disappoint, braving the conditions they were warning viewers of.


More than 7 million people were ordered to evacuate their homes in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, and the storm has devastated several Caribbean islands. CNN has sent 22 correspondents to cover the storm across the affected region.

ABC’s $1m podcast fund. The ABC has announced a $1 million podcasting fund over one year, which will be used for up-and-coming podcasters and established, small community podcasts. ABC Radio director Michael Mason said the fund would preference pitches that fill gaps in the ABC’s current offerings. The ABC will call for submissions over the next few months, for podcasts to be available early next year.

Strictly spoiler the product of ‘good journalism’. The Sun has refused to apologise to the BBC in the UK after breaking an embargo on the partnering of stars for the new season of Strictly Come Dancing. The tabloid ran a page-3 story revealing which dancer would be paired with soap star Davood Ghadami, prompting a statement from the BBC saying how disappointed it was that the reveal had been spoiled, in response, the Press Gazette reports, a Sun spokesman said:

“Our journalist found out the pairing in today’s story from an independent source earlier this week, and put the information in today’s story to the BBC Press Office before the embargoed release of the dance pairings and at a time when our journalist was not aware there was ever any plan to embargo the details. We’re content that this story is the product of good journalism.”

Glenn Dyer’s TV ratings. Strong ratings for the AFL on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights won the week for Seven last week. But last night Nine blew Seven away with the highest figures for The Block for three years — 2.41 million national, and more than 1.7 million in the metros.

Little Big Shots lost more viewers last night for Seven, but still managed to grab 1.93 million (as opposed to 2.07 million last week). It is now more a solid hit than a breakout. Ten got past the ABC into third for the first time in weeks — that reflected a weak ABC line-up and a boring Sherlock Holmes movie. In mornings, Insiders again underlined its dominance of morning TV with 517,000 national viewers, also underlining the irrelevance of the post 7pm Sky News yellers.

In the regions The Block dominated with 713,000 viewers, followed by Little Big Shots with 707,000, then Nine News with 628,000, Nine/NBN News 6.30 with 605,000 and Seven News was fifth with 510,000. — Read the rest on the Crikey website