Nine’s Mike Sneesby and Newscorp’s Michael Miller sat down at the Cannes couch to hash it out about the future of media.
Interestingly, the big dogs of Nine and Newscorp agreed on quite a bit.
Both Sneesby and Miller strongly agreed that defamation laws are doing a disservice to our journalists.
“We have some of the most restrictive media laws in the world. Our press index is sliding very quickly,” Miller lamented.
Sneesby agreed: “If there’s one law we can change today, it is the laws around defamation and protecting journalists doing their job.”
In terms of supporting and championing creativity, both Sneesby and Miller were again in agreement.
Miller said: “Go back to basics, celebrate, encourage, reward.”
Sneesby took the question in a slightly different direction, focusing on the importance of creating local content that allows for creativity to be at the forefront. He said: “Investing in local production and local content and in the television and radio space means that in any part of the business we operate there are exciting creative projects.”
However, when it came to the topic of data, it became clear that while Sneesby and Miller might both have great minds, they don’t always think alike.
Newscorp is focusing on its own database, Miller explained: “Decoded is our data and digital news front. Over the past few years, we’ve been working hard at building a sizeable data insights piece, we look at two billion data insight points every month.”
Sneesby shared that Nine was on a, “signifying journey shifting the way we deliver content. I think there’s been a lot of talk about scale and the number of people in databases. We are almost all at saturation and in particular the way you can deliver a product across all your platforms. All of the data across Nine’s eco-system is a single database.”
Unsurprisingly, when both were asked how inflation, the election and how the general cost of living will impact Newscorp and Nine, they both had very thought-provoking answers.
Miller had a practical response, “If you look at the last global recession which Australia just dodged, main media spending decreased 20 per cent. There was a downturn in jobs and headcount, property and ultimately discretionary spending and media marketing is in that category. I think as an industry we are going to have some hard times ahead.”
Sneesby had a more positive response: “The environment we are in, it’s absolutely once in a generation in terms of the impacts we’ve had through the pandemic.
“What’s surprising me when I’m speaking to my advertising partners is the positivity. Despite the inflation rising, we’ve got really high-level positivity which comes from strong business bank balance sheets.”
While maybe the CEOs can’t agree on everything, they certainly agree on this: the future of media is burning bright.
