Mumbrellacast

Hosted by Mumbrella

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400

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Oct 2026

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About the show

Every week the team at Mumbrella cover the latest news in the Australian media, marketing and advertising industries along with interviews with key people in the industry. Featuring a rotating panel of hosts from the Mumbrella team, this podcast is essential listening for anyone working under Australia's media and marketing umbrella.

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60 recent

October 15, 202627 min

The execution will be televised

Welcome to the latest Mumbrellacast, live streamed from the Pentagon to your pocket. The Mumbrella team has been on a bit of a conference crawl this week, our necks weighed down with lanyards, clothing covered in ID badges, coffee cups disposed of thoughtfully. Eleanor Dickinson reports back from the WPP Media Futures Event and the HumAIn conference, where she was schooled on how agentic AI is changing marketing as we know it. Meanwhile, Tim Burrowes went to the Samsung Ads Newfront event, where he was confronted with a future that involves a 24/7 Mamamia FAST channel. The Marketing Association of Australia asked Deloitte to examine whether marketers are actually getting access to the company board, and this week they were kind enough to share the results exclusively with Mumbrella. It turns out most chief marketing officers don't feel as if they are considered among the upper echelon of executives in/by the businesses they work in/for. "Many remain one step removed from the executive team and the board," the report states. "This is ultimately an influence problem." We unpack the results, and what this means for the future of marketing -- or if it's actually been that way since at least the late 80s, as one Mumbrella reader commented under our story. This week also gifted us the disturbing news that the US is bringing back the firing squad for the execution of a military psychiatrist who murdered a number of soldiers at an army base. It's the first time they've used a firing squad since WWII, and we haven't even gotten to the (most) disturbing part yet. There are plans to live stream the content online, which gives Australian media organisations the unenviable task of deciding if they will, in turn, be streaming or broadcasting the execution. Zac Nikolovski asked the local media companies if they will be broadcasting the shooting, then spoke to Sacha Molitorisz, who teaches ethics, law, and media at UTS (and spent 20 years at the Herald) about where to draw the line. And then Hal Crawford joins the show for this week's heated debate, to argue for the affirmative. The question? When the execution takes place, is it a legitimate act of journalism to air it live? Easy debates are for cowards. Happy listening. Get the latest episodes here.  Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

October 13, 202634 min

The Unmakers: Can an AI tool replace your PR agency? Barney Chunn makes the case

In today's episode of The Unmakers, Tim Burrowes speaks to Barney Chunn, the co-founder of a new PR tech start-up, Drumbeat, which uses AI to better target and pitch stories to journalists. "Drumbeat is a PR and comms platform for high-growth businesses," Chunn explains. It helps organisations "find and define your stories, connect them with the most appropriate, journalists and media partners, and then help you with your outreach in a way that maximises the chance of getting consistent coverage." He stresses that Drumbeat is not a volume content play, but about being "incredibly discerning". Is Drumbeat hoping to replace public relations agencies? According to Chunn, he is helping to fill a middle ground between a full-service PR agency that charges around $10,000 a month to cover one region, and those who attempt to do it themselves and trip at the first hurdle. "We think that there are some incredible PR pros out there ... not everyone can afford their human talent at the rate that those people charge out at. "There's absolutely room for tools and people to cohabitate cohesively in this." Enjoy the conversation. Get the latest episodes here.  Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

October 8, 202633 min

Recruitment scams, boy bands, and radio fans

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, now sent to you from a dodgy Gmail address. This week's hot topic is scam job recruiters, who are reaching out to members of the marketing and media world with employment opportunities too good to be true. The scammers do this through AI-assisted emails that scrape your biographical details and work history and pepper these throughout a personally addressed introduction letter. Or maybe they'll get you via a plethora of fake job ads posted on Linkedin and Meta, designed to trick and trap vulnerable job seekers who might not give every potential employment lead the scrutiny they perhaps would otherwise. If you work in this industry, you've probably been approached. We discuss the nefarious practice, and what the end game might be. But before that, we look at the radio ratings which dropped mere hours before recording. Tapt Radio (formerly Nine's suite of talkback stations) saw its two biggest players, Sydney's 2GB and Melbourne 3AW, lose listeners across most timeslots. That's nothing compared to ABC Radio National breakfast, which reached its second-lowest average audience on record. Was there any good news in radioland? Well, the amount of loyal Kiis listeners that Kyle Sandilands Live has managed to pull away might be slowing to a stop. Certainly KSL doesn't have the marketing budget Sandilands is used to, especially if this is a sign of the scale of the operation. Later in the show we hear from Four Pillars cofounder Matt Jones, who will be creative director of next year's Mumbrella 360 extravaganza. He explains why he took on the role after Tim floated it by him, and Tim in turn explains why he was convinced Matt was up for the task. And to round out the show, we discuss the new campaigns from KFC, Vodafone, and One Nation. They are hyperlinked in the name of each, in case you want to play along at home. Who said podcasts weren't interactive? Happy trails! Get the latest episodes here.  Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

October 1, 202632 min

One Nation vs the media, AI rip-offs, and privacy pop-up hell

This week, the Heated Debate returns with a question for the newshounds: should Australian media stand with the ABC and other banned outlets by boycotting One Nation press events? Reporter Zac Nikolovski and good friend of the Mumbrellacast Lauren Joyce enter a two-party contest of their own. Zac argues the affirmative, warning that allowing politicians to exclude journalists over critical coverage creates a dangerous incentive by making access conditional on favourable reporting. Lauren takes an audience-first view, arguing that a boycott would leave fewer journalists in the room to question and contextualise One Nation’s claims, ultimately giving the party greater control over its message and audiences less information on which to form their own views. As usual, things get pretty heated. Also this week: the team digs into the case of Australian niche publisher Digital Drummer, whose founder Allan Leibowitz discovered an Israeli AI news startup was allegedly republishing his journalism on an industrial scale. Is there a silver lining to publishing’s AI reckoning? Maybe. Ask ChatGPT again later. The team also unpacks proposed changes to Australia’s privacy laws that have marketers bracing for a new era of consent pop-up hell, before picking apart OpenAI’s apology to us, the Australian people, to decide whether the tech giant's sorry letter is actually worthy of our nation's forgiveness.

September 30, 202614 min

BREAKING NEWS: Melbourne breakfast has a new player

More than six months after KIIS lost its Melbourne breakfast show with the Kyle and Jackie O implosion, ARN has announced the full-time replacement:  Ash London, Isaac Smith and Elliot Garnaut. Tim Burrowes and Irene Hulme ponder whether the trio have what it takes to get out of the hole Kyle and Jackie O left behind.

September 24, 202637 min

Nine minus two, Meta's muse, and Dan Ilic gets up

Welcome to the Mumbrellacast, the only podcast to win the Pulitzer, the Nobel Peace Prize, and a bronze Logie. This week, Nine has lost two of its biggest decision-makers in the space of 12-or-so hours. On Thursday morning, Nine's TV boss Amanda Laing, who headed up Nine's recently integrated television, streaming television, and streaming subscription television division (TV boss, in other words) was made redundant, with CEO Matt Stanton choosing not to fill the role and instead moonlight as the division's kinda-maybe-boss-for-now-yeah?, helping out and maintaining "business as usual" at Nine, to quote his official statement on the matter. This news dropped the morning after AFR's editor-in-chief James Chessell quit to join his former charge Joe Aston's Rampart publication, seemingly without invoking a non-compete, a notice period, or the ghost of Graham Kennedy. What's going on at Nine? We ask and attempt to answer this question. Also, we hear from comedian and rabble-rouser Dan Illic, who was this week appointed CEO of activist group Get Up. If the name of that organisation sounds a faint bell in the recesses of your memory, it may be because they were recently responsible for a fun stunt, where they unfurled a banner (via remote control) behind Pauline Hanson that said “I opposed a pay rise for workers”. With Illic at the helm, can we expect more shenanigans from the Get Up organisation? During a keynote at the Meta Connect conference hosted in San Francisco (just hours before the podcast recording, 'cos we keep things fresh) Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the Meta Muse Charm, a new gadget that looks like a Tamagotchi but stings like an AI agent. It's basically a way to use Meta's smart-glasses without having to wear what have widely been dubbed "pervert glasses" (or other, more offensive variations on the theme). We also attended the Media Federation of Australia's conference in Sydney -- also a few hours before the podcast record -- which saw industry leaders warn media agencies that they will need to think carefully about which AI tools they use, as the technology increasingly becomes out of financial reach. There is also the problem of agencies pitching with unrealistic budgets in order to win clients. As Aimee Buchanan, CEO of WPP Media ANZ, warned: "I think when we undercut each other, we're eroding not only our own individual contribution, but we're eroding the industry, and there's way too much of that happening.” Happy listening! Get the latest episodes here. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. For more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, ⁠click here⁠.

September 22, 202629 min

A dollar for Stuff: Sinead Boucher's media journey

Sinead Boucher is the owner of Stuff, one of New Zealand's biggest media companies, and in this interview with Mumbrella editorial director Hal Crawford she recounts her journey from the newsdesk to the boardroom. Revelations in the discussion include details of the 2020 phone call from then-Nine CEO Hugh Marks that informed Boucher he was going to shut down her company. At that time, Nine owned Stuff as a kind of hangover from its merger with Fairfax in Australia, and Boucher was the CEO. "I just couldn't believe this decision to wind us up, which I think was really in preparation for something worse that was coming and trying to regroup resources back to Australia," she said. "I was shocked and stunned. I can't actually remember much of what I said in that phone call, but I know that I got off the phone and I just felt this sense of just huge rage, frustration, anger at this whole thing." The interview was recorded live at Mumbrella's Publish conference, at the NSW State Library in Sydney. For more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.

September 21, 20266 min

BREAKING NEWS: Ive Group set to buy Motio

This morning, Ive Group has made an offer to buy publicly-listed out-of-home company Motio. The deal values Motio at around $20 million — 15% over their closing market cap — and finds Ive Group expanding from the world of printing and marketing into the ever-growing out-of-home market.In a release to the ASX, Ive Group said the acquisition would allow it to build out its retail marketing and media offering.Irene and Tim discuss what the deal means for Australian media and marketing.

September 18, 202636 min

The big copyright fight, AI in Abe's backyard and upfronts galore

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, recorded one syllable at a time and then painstakingly stitched together. Australian publishers and creators may have to actively block AI companies from scraping, stealing, and modifying their content, under two rather ill-conceived government proposals regarding AI and copyright. Do we really value data centres over copyright protection? With these ideas currently up for debate, we will find out public and political sentiment around this soon enough. The Albanese government is also mulling up selling off some of the broadcast spectrum currently used in free-to-air TV, with an eye on raising billions from the telcos, who'd quite like some of those airwaves for their future 6G mobile networks. Karl Stefanovic is planning to buy out his podcast business partner Keshnee Kemp, after close to six weeks of radio silence. A third-party has been appointed by the court to evaluate how much Kemp's 45% is worth. The problem is, how does one put a dollar figure on a company that is more about potential than actual results? We speculate wildly. And finally, we went to four upfronts in three days, and discuss the various pros and cons of Nine, Youtube, Amazon, and Snap's presentations to the market. Enjoy! Get the latest episodes here. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. And for more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.

September 16, 202658 min

Burrowes/Simons

Today's Mumbrellacast has a slightly different format to usual. It features a conversation between Tim Burrowes and Josh Simons, the CEO of Vinyl Group. It's fair to say the two have had differences of opinion and have both written about them publicly. Simons suggested the pair try to find some common ground and this discussion unfolded in Mumbrella's office on Wednesday. This conversation was uploaded simultaneously to the podcast feeds for both Vinyl Group's Media Week and the Mumbrellacast. As you'll hear, a lot of ground is covered. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. For more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.