Ready for Breakfast - From left: Roze, Henry, Rochford and Robinson

Ten has confirmed it will be launching its new TV show Breakfast in a fortnight’s time.

The network’s head of news and current affairs has also accused rivals of “taking cheap shots” over the launch. Ten announced:

“The wait is over – at 6am on Monday 27 February, Network Ten will make its highly anticipated entrance into the early morning news space.

“A program that throws out the rule book, Breakfast will be spontaneous, fresh, provocative and fun. It will spark conversation and debate, giving viewers the news and information they need for the day ahead.

“Paul Henry, Andrew Rochford, Kathryn Robinson and Magdalena Roze might be the newest kids on the block, but they have been chosen for their unmatched dynamic, wealthand breadth of expertise, journalistic experience and wit; they are excited to bring their conversation to your mornings.

“Some would say Paul Henry got a little too excited when he leaked the start date to the market a few months ago.

“Paul Henry says: “Apparently it’s a big deal in Australia to keep program start dates under wraps. I won’t blow the launch date for Breakfast again, promise.”

“Network Ten’s Head of News and Current Affairs, Anthony Flannery says: “Breakfast is a tough, competitive environment and we can’t wait to get into the game. Already, the opposition is taking cheap pot shots – I couldn’t be happier that they’re taking us so seriously, so soon.”

““We plan to make Breakfast a must-watch part of Australia’s day. From fact to fun, it’s going to be a fresh start to the morning TV schedule.”

“Breakfast’s mix of hosts and format will be a welcome surprise for viewers when they tune in, on Monday 27 February from 6am.”

The announcement comes on the same day Lachlan Murdoch was confirmed as Ten’s new chairman

In the short film series, located on NineMSN, Air NZ took people who had never wanted to go to New Zealand, to New Zealand, in the hope of changing their minds about the country.

The campaign, which was built on a media deal with Nine secured by PHD,  is the biggest marketing offensive Air NZ has launched in 10 years.

The four films feature four differents sorts of Australians.

The Bali girl:

The hipster:

The ‘Aussie Aussie’:

The Europhile:

Kelly Millier, marketing manager for Air New Zealand Australia said: “At Air New Zealand we know NZ is one of the best places on earth, but for one reason or another, there are many Aussies who don’t see the same fresh and progressive side of New Zealand, that we do. We figured if we could change the minds of those most sceptical, we should be able to convince those who are sitting on the fence.”

Credits:

Client: Air New Zealand Australia
Agency: Host
Creative: The Jamboree
Director: The Jamboree
Production: Candid Films
Media: PHD

Lee left The Herald to join the National Times, where he was deputy editor, in April 2011.

He will cover consumer media issues.

Lee will work with Kirsty Simpson, media editor of BusinessDay, and Bianca Hall, who is reporting on media in the Canberra bureau.

He starts on February 27.

Lee joined the Herald in January 2004 as marketing reporter before moving up to become marketing editor in 2008.

Before moving to Australia he worked at News International’s The Times in London, where he was features and news writer for the TimesOnline website, marketing columnist and desk editor of its weekend pages.

It was beaten in the 8.30pm time slot by Grey’s Anatomy on Seven, which rated with 845,000, and RBT on Nine, with 570,000.

Seven’s cookery show My Kitchen Rules won the night again, pulling in just south of 1.6m and peaking at almost 1.9m – a strong result for Thursday night viewing.

Ten’s most-watched show was The Biggest Loser, which won an audience of 679,000.

The data includes the most detailed information to date about its audience on tablet apps. The number of readers using the apps on a daily basis are currently a small fraction of those buying the newspaper or reading the mastheads online, although the growth is 300% up on last year.

Australia’s audit bodies do not yet include app audiences, so the figures are self declared. According to Fairfax, The Sydney Morning Herald is averaging 3,576 daily users of its app, while The Age is averaging 2,924.

However, more consumers are using tablets to view the sites each day – 26,684 for the SMH and 22,780 for the Age.

The newspapers digital editions – effectively PDFs of the print edition – are running at just over 3,000 a day for The SMH and nearly 4,000 for The Age.

2011 numbers (SMH in blue, The Age in grey):

The numbers will be released by Fairfax four times a year as a quarterly report, along with monthly updates.

The transparency will inevitably put pressure from the market on News Limited to relaase more details over how The Australian’s app and potentially its paywall is faring. Thus far, the company has revealed little about its numbers,

Fairfax Metro Media’s CEO Jack matthews said of the new reporting drive: “This is a very significant development in the way we present information about Fairfax Metro audiences to the market.

“As the logical next step following our restructure, this move is to give our stakeholders, including media agencies, advertisers, shareholders and analysts, a fuller understanding of how audiences are engaging with our major Metro Media brands.

“We are successfully creating a truly multi-platform experience for our audiences, so if we don’t report on how each brand is engaging with them on every platform, we are painting an incomplete picture.”

He added: “We will no longer gauge our success or measure ourselves on a single-dimension or metric, but to look at how audiences are engaging with our brands across all platforms and time-frames.”

Full version of the Fairfax Metro report (click to enlarge):

Click to enlarge

• Her novel Strictly Confidential – is the PR world really that shallow?
• Getting into PR
• Does she undercut rival agencies?
• Ros Reines – love-hate
• What became of Seven’s Sweaty Betty reality TV show?
• Ending up in the papers herself

Catch future interviews from Mumbrella House by subscribing to Mumbrella’s YouTube channel.

Set:

• Bob Goodge on Starcom (0:57)
• The Straits struggles on screen, flourishes on Twitter (13:10)
• Jumptank – can media agencies be innovative? (16:52)
• The best ads of the Super Bowl (22:07)
• John Butler vs John Stamos and yoghurt (29:06)
• Excess Baggage bumped (31:47)
• The ABCs of magazines and newspapers(40:37)

You can also subscribe to The Mumbrellacast on iTunes and other podcatchers.

Direct link to Mumbrella’s iTunes store listing for the podcast

Sponsored by Southern Cross Austereo:

Studio facilities:

The shortlist for January’s ads is based on self nominations, Mumbrella’s own selections and reader submissions. The winners are decided by Mumbrella readers who vote by taking part in the survey at the bottom of this item. The deadline for voting is Thursday 16 February.

Campaigns are eligible whichever screen format they first ran on including TV, cinema and the web.

The shortlist for January’s ad of the month:

1. Cottees Cordial – GPY&R Melbourne

2.  Greenpeace  – Publicis Mojo Auckland

3. Kia – Innocean

4. Meat and Livestock Australia – BMF

5. Smiths – Clemenger BBDO Sydney

6. Subaru – Disciple

7. Toyota  – Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney

With the support of:

Murdoch was Ten’s interim CEO until Warburton started work last month. He replaces Brian Long in the chairmanship.

The announcement appears to contradict Monday’s prediction that Murdoch would return to News Limited as chairman.

Long said in a message to the ASX: “The Board is pleased that Lachlan has agreed to accept the role of Non-Executive Chairman. His extensive media experience will provide Ten with invaluable strategic leadership. As Interim CEO he reset Ten’s strategic vision and cost base and was instrumental in recruiting Ten’s new Chief Executive Officer, James Warburton.

“The Board believes that the combined media capability of James Warburton as Ten’s Chief Executive Officer and Lachlan Murdoch as Non-Executive Chairman provides the best opportunity for value creation for all shareholders.”

Murdoch said: “I look forward to working with the Board and our new CEO to re-shape Ten and to improve its performance for the benefit of all shareholders.”

Long will stay on the board as deputy chairman.

Zoo had the biggest fall – down by 27% in the final quarter of 2011 compared to a year before.

People fell by 26% and Picture dropped by 24%.

Six of the seven biggest falls in the weekly category were for  ACP titles. However, ACP’s OK! was the only title to achieve an increase above a single percentage point, rising by 4.6%. And Grazia, which had gone through a series of significant drops, has stabilised just above 50,000.

The biggest weekly title is still ACP’s Woman’s Day with a circulation of 372,146.

Pacific Magazines’ weeklies had a relatively stable set of figures, with That’s Life dropping 6% and New idea falling nearly 4%.

PacMags boss Nick Chan told Mumbrella: “Under the circumstances, with circulations under pressure from an avalanche of bad retail conditions, weeklies have held up well.”

“The women’s weekly sector is the biggest and most important sector – and that’s been pretty solid, down 1% period on period. The home maker sector performed well and the tween market, which has been under siege for some time, has shown some resilience,” he said.

In another difficult period that saw newspaper circulations atrophy by 4% overall, the Fairfax title’s circulation fell from 209,644 to 184,613 between December 2010 and December 2011.

By contrast, The Herald’s main rival The Daily Telegraph fared ok, down by 1.84% to 347,722 between Monday and Friday.

Paul Whittaker, editor of The Daily Telegraph attacked the performance of his rival: “These results prove that there is plenty of life left yet in print even though our main competitor has effectively abandoned the field for their print products.”

Australia’s largest circulating newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, was among a handful of winners. The title added over a thousand readers, nudging up its circulation by 0.18% to 618,950.

Its main competitor, the Sun-Herald fell by more than 8% to 406,470.

Neil Breen editor of The Sunday Telegraph said: “Never before has The Sunday Telegraph been so dominant over our competitor. To lead by more than 212,000 copies every week and have in excess of 60% market share are numbers we have aspired to over many years of effort.’’

In a survey that made for gloomy reading for Fairfax, the Saturday edition of the Sydney Morning Herald was also among the biggest casualties, falling by 7.73% to 314,683.

The Age on Saturday, The weekday edition of The Age, The Sunday Herald Sun and The Courier Mail on Saturday also saw their circulations fall by around 6%.

The Australian Financial Review provided some reason for cheer for Fairfax, its weekend edition growing circulation by 3.7%. However, the publisher admitted this was mostly due to “the phasing of bumper editions”, and said it expected a decline in the next audit period.

News Limited will be well pleased with the performance of its mastheads, with the Monday-to-Friday edition of The Australian up 1.42% to 131,000 and the Weekend Australian up 1.28%.

Overall, Sunday newspapers suffered the most, down 4.61%. Metro, weekday and weekend were also down around 4%. However, Australia’s national newspapers showed signs of a slight rebound, gaining 0.25%.

The Newspaper Works CEO Tony Hale said the results were “within expectations” and reflected the poor retail environment.

In a press release, he said:

The easing in printed newspaper sales in the latest quarter shows the decline has stabilised, as we anticipated it would, and is in line overall with the previous two quarters.

Put simply, the ABC printed newspaper figures do not paint a complete picture of newspaper consumption among Australians, who are turning to digital platforms in ever growing numbers.

National and metropolitan newspapers are now attracting monthly online audiences of over five million readers demonstrating how effective mastheads have been at engaging more readers than ever before.

Newspaper publishers have moved to fundamentally restructure our industry by meeting the needs of Australian consumers to source their news from multiple delivery platforms – an approach that is clearly working.

Footnote: The percentage change figure for weekday issue of The Sydney Morning Herald should read: -11.94%; the % change figure for the Sunshine Coast Daily should read: -10.22%

The ACP magazine lost half of its circulation in the final six months of last year compared to the same period a year before. Its circulation dropped from 50,154 to just 26,026 according to new figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

In its analysis around the latest set of figures, ACP did not mention FHM at all. A spokesman told Mumbrella there were no changes planned for FHM closing “for the foreseeable future”. The drop for as significant a brand as FHM is virtually unprecedented.

In a statement, Matthew Stanton, the newly appointed CEO of ACP Magazines after the sudden departure of Phil Scott, claimed: “While all publishers are bearing the brunt of subdued consumer spending, many ACP mastheads have gained circulation and/or category share in the latest audit.”

In a further blow to ACP, its new title UFC Australia debuted with a circulation of just 25,021 – just half of what it had promised to the market.

Stanton’s statement added: “ACP is progressively offering new ways for readers to engage with our magazine brands.  We currently offer 36 digital editions of ACP magazines, and the growing number of people interacting with our mastheads on those applications and platforms is not yet reflected in circulation figures.

“Our digital distribution strategy will allow our readers to access our content when and where it suits them, enhancing their engagement and enjoyment of our magazines, attracting new readers and strengthening the brands themselves.”

After FHM, the next biggest fall was for Masterchef Magazine which dropped by a third although the NewsLifeMedia title’s fortunes are dependent on the period when the Ten TV show is on air.

However an indication that the food sector may be under pressure came from fellow News Life Media title Superfood Ideas which dropped 21%.

Other big brands suffering dramatic falls included Readers Digest, down 20%.

Pacific Magazines’ healthy living title Prevention was down by nearly 17%, as was ACP’s Cosmopolitan.

Biggest monthly falls:

There were a handful of winners among the monthly magazine circulations. The relatively low profile Game Informer, from Citrus Media, had the biggest growth. Morrison Media’s Frankie also continued to grow, up 14%.

NewsLifeMedia’s Donna Hay was up 13% to 103,000, while the best performer in the ACP stable was Good Health & medicine, up 10%. Australian Home Beautiful, up 5% was PacMags’ best performer.

The five fastest growing magazines were all owned by independent publishers.

Monthly titles that grew:

Salmat Digital-backed location based mobile service Roamz tops the lot. In 7th was ImageBrief, which is taking on Getty Images and Corbis in the image procurement space.

The Roamz and ImageBrief entries read as follows:

 1. Roamz

Notable achievement: Winning support of a major listed company in a hotly contested market.

Apps are everywhere. The smart phone has proven to be one of the most influential developments of recent decades and there is no shortage of entrepreneurs trying to capitalise on the business opportunities it creates. Standing out in a crowded field of app developers is Jonathon Barouch. He is the founder and chief executive of Roamz, an app which draws together social media content to allow people to find local events and opportunities that interest them.

Since its launch in October last year, Roamz has had more than 50,000 downloads. Barouch began planning Roamz in 2010 after selling another business, fastflowers.com.au. He says running a florist made him realise how difficult it was to market products to people who are both nearby and fit a specific demographic profile. “It’s the holy grail of marketing,” he says.

7. ImageBrief

Notable achievement: Provide a legitimate rival to an established duopoly.

Simon Moss had been running a niche stock library with his wife Meg for five years. Photos had to be comprehensively tagged with keywords so clients could search through the archive. The problem is a photo taken in 1950 would need to be tagged as 1950, 50s, 50’s and so on, Moss says. “It’s impossible to capture all of the different things people might be searching for.”

Moss came across web-based crowdsourcing businesses like 99designs, where users can post graphic design briefs and freelancers pitch for the work. “We thought, ‘My God! This is insanely amazing. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do this with photography’,” he remembers. The two industry leaders for stock image libraries are Getty and Corbis. “We saw a lot of photographers with a tonne of content that couldn’t be found and a lot of buyers that were struggling to search and navigate,” he says.

Using ImageBrief, customers, which so far include publishers and advertising agencies, post a brief for the type of image they need and their deadline and budget. If photographers have images that fit the brief, they upload them to the website. “If a buyer finds an image they love, they can download it and pay by PayPal or credit card,” Moss says.

Over four thousand photographers have signed up to the website. ImageBrief raised $600,000 from a syndicate of unnamed angel investors, who have strong links to the media industry, after pitching at an Innovation Bay dinner in 2011. With the capital, Moss will open offices in New York and London within the next three months.

These companies have already attracted senior talent from media and advertising companies. WeAreSocial founder Heather Ann Snodgrass joined Roamz in September, and Lowe Australia boss Stephen Pearson joined ImageBrief in November.

Using a QR code or URL, people can ‘like’ the NRMA Insurance Facebook page and pick a track to play live in the bus shelter – the track then plays instantly through the speakers in the bus shelter.

The bus shelter, which was devised by Whybin\Tequila\TBWA Sydney and MediaCom, and built by JC Decaux, is positioned outside Wynyard Station in Sydney.

Gavin Larkin

A celebration of the life of Gavin Larkin will take place at The Standard in Sydney on March 23.

Larkin was a former boss of the Brand Shop and the co-founder of anti-suicide initiative R U OK? Day. Shortly before his death in September he featured in ABC1′s Australian Story.

He was posthumously honoured in the Australia Day Awards and also named GQ magazine’s man of inspiration.

Further details will follow on the celebration, which will also be a fundraiser for the medical treatment of his son Gus.