Not even Hamish Blake in a silly costume and multiple puff pieces in the Murdoch press could save Foxtel’s streaming TV set-top box Hubbl.
Despite the millions Foxtel spent on marketing, including a $1m launch party on Sydney harbour, the company conceded Hubbl was “in maintenance mode”.
Just 18 months ago Hubbl promised to make watching live, free and streaming TV simpler and easier, although most people already had smart TVs and devices such as Apple TV and Google Chromecast, which did the same job.
This week Foxtel chief executive, Patrick Delany, told industry news site Mumbrella that intense competition made for a “difficult market” in which to sell the $99 device and Hubbl would no longer be marketed.
Delany stayed on as chief executive when News Corp sold Foxtel to sports streaming service DAZN for $3.4bn in December.
The failure of Hubbl is all the more spectacular when you consider the tens of millions Foxtel spent on marketing (reportedly $70m) and the unpaid marketing support of the Murdoch outlets.
Take the headlines on dailytelegraph.com.au after the launch last year: “Foxtel launches revolutionary platform ‘Hubbl’ for TV and streaming”; “Forget Hamish and Andy: Duo takes on name change”; “Stars step out for Aussie streaming launch”; “Incredible new streaming service launches”; “Hubbl ‘revolution’ off to a flying start”; “Huge change coming to streaming”; “Hubbl to ‘reshape’ TV, with key apps under one roof”; “Foxtel reveals exciting new TV technology”; “Hubbl to simplify streaming experience”.
A Foxtel Group spokesperson said: “Hubbl has built a strong, engaged customer base that appreciates its simplicity. In fact, over the past month, we have seen record viewing across Hubbl devices We continue to support our Hubbl customers to ensure ongoing service and a great viewing experience. Hubbl continues to be available for purchase.”
Normal internal processes?
When the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun delayed publishing a pro-Palestinian advertisement booked by the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, News Corp insisted it was due to “normal internal processes”.
On Thursday, when the Daily Telegraph did publish the quarter-page ad, we understood what those processes were. The ad declaring “There is a genocide in Gaza. Jews say sanction Israel now”, was accompanied by what the Jewish Council referred to as a “hit job”.
The ad was placed on page 17 of the Tele, but before readers reached it they were told (on page 12) that the group behind the message was a “‘tiny group of … attention seekers’ with links to a pro-Palestinian group”.
“The advertisement plans have enraged the broader Jewish community,” the Tele reported after seeking comment from opposing Jewish groups.
“This is a tiny group of very sad attention seekers,” NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBD) president, David Ossip, told the paper.
“Despite their … deceptive name, their … views are shared by less than one per cent of the Australian Jewish community.”
Jewish Council of Australia executive officer Sarah Schwartz told Weekly Beast the ad was booked and paid for on Tuesday when it was pulled for “review” by the editors of the Tele and the Herald Sun.
The next day News Corp told her an amended version of the ad could run on Thursday with the inclusion of the word “advertisement” in the image, Schwartz said.
In the meantime, Schwartz says she was approached by a Tele reporter asking her for a response to the claim she ran a “tiny group of very sad attention seekers” which was “deceptive” and had extremist views.
A spokesperson for News Corp said the ad ran “without any problem”. “Any suggestion otherwise is entirely false”.
The Herald Sun ran the ad on page 12 and did not publish the critical story.
Caught out
Five months after we reported Channel Seven had broadcast highly offensive remarks involving domestic violence on a fishing show, an investigation by the broadcasting regulator has found the network breached classification rules.
Weekly Beast reported in April that, on episode two of Step Outside with Paul Burt, the following remarks were made by a guest: “Beat the egg like you beat the missus … that’s what I do. Tie her to a tree and beat her with fencing wire.”
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) investigation found Seven breached classification rules for PG content, which require themes of domestic conflict to be handled with care.
Authority member Carolyn Lidgerwood said they were disturbing comments. “They may have been intended as a crude attempt at humour, but they were totally unacceptable,” Lidgerwood said.
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“Viewers were not warned at the outset that the program contained such themes and Channel Seven should have taken greater care in handling this sensitive and serious issue.”
Acma will announce at a later what appropriate enforcement action to take.
ABC critics leap on Lyons
There were many responses to John Lyons’ clash with Donald Trump. Most of them echoed the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, who said the ABC’s Americas editor was “just doing his job”.
Then there was Adam Creighton, a former Washington correspondent for the Australian and now columnist who has joined the IPA as senior fellow and chief economist.
“John Lyons is an excellent journalist but this was a silly, embarrassing question that betrays an inveterate hatred for the US president,” Creighton said on X. “Trump’s finances are obviously a domestic issue and there were so many other questions to ask.”
Senator Sarah Henderson, who objects to everything the ABC does, said the national broadcaster needed to explain itself.
“At a time when trade, defence and national security are such crucial issues in our relationship with our closest ally, it would be helpful if the ABC could explain this line of questioning,” she said on X.
Farewell to nation-building journalist
Late last year former war correspondents John Martinkus and Mark Davis were given the highest civilian award by the Timor-Leste president, José Ramos-Horta, for documenting the violence before the UN ballot in 1999 that resulted in an overwhelming result for independence from Indonesia.
“It was a very formal and somewhat lavish affair with traditional Timor guards and speeches,” Martinkus told Weekly Beast upon his return. “Horta himself put the gold medals around our necks and spoke of the contribution we had both made in the years before the ballot to alerting the world to the Indonesian military.”
It’s the first and only time Australian journalists have received the honour, and Martinkus said he was “honoured and humbled”.
A print and television journalist who reported from other conflict zones including Iraq, Afghanistan and West Papua, Martinkus died on Sunday in Melbourne aged 56.
Ramos-Horta paid tribute to him as “one of the bravest journalists ever”.
In recent years Martinkus was a freelance writer, filing for the Saturday Paper and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Davis, who now practises as a lawyer, told ABC Radio National his friend was “a big deal in East Timor”.
“You don’t get many wins in journalism, it can be a pretty bleak profession really,” Davis said. “Not too many guys can say ‘I helped create a nation’ and John certainly did.”