Mumbrellacast

Hosted by Mumbrella

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400

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Nov 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

November 13, 202639 min

' Kamikaze mission': The NZ music startup leveraging nostalgia for the album era

]Album-based music service Lume Music has launched in Australia, and co-founder Duncan Greive sat down with Mumbrella's Hal Crawford to discuss the startup's mission. Greive, who founded NZ pop culture site the Spinoff in 2014 and built it into a successful independent publishing business, told Crawford why he took a "sharp right turn" away from publishing and into music. "For a lot of people, and not just people our age but also younger people, the attention economy, the way your caveman synapses are hijacked to keep you on a platform is not a pleasant experience." Lume is an app-based platform that allows musicians to sell albums along with supplementary content like art, liner notes, and voice notes. The artist retains 80% of net revenue, and there are no playlists, algorithms or subscriptions. A user buys an album for a flat fee and keeps it forever. "If you can build a different kind of environment with different incentives, a lot of other different behaviors and almost sensations flow out of that," Greive said. "To answer the core of your question about whether this is just a nostalgia trip from someone trying to recreate the vibe of their youth, honestly, maybe." However, Greive said the format had been embraced by people who did not experience the album-owning era the first time around. "The most gratifying thing that we've had out of the launch of Lume has been the extent to which really young artists, we're talking late teens, early 20s, on their first EP or first album, have just grabbed the format. They probably make up the biggest proportion of our slate to date." Lume Music was co-founded by Greive, Tim Harper (also co-founder of creative agency Glorious), fandom expert Sacha Judd, and former head of strategy at Universal Music NZ Justin Warren. It has the backing of some NZ digital royalty including Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie, Letterboxd co-founder Karl von Randow and Tracksuit co-founder James Hurman. Lorde (Ella Yelich-O’Connor) is also an investor. The service launches in Australia with albums from Ecca Vandal, Ocean Alley, DZ Deathrays, and the Rubens among others. John Butler Trio, Sycco and others have been on Lume from its NZ launch in May.

November 12, 202628 min

The world according to ARN, Domino's slices into its marketing budget

ARN ended the 2027 upfront season by presenting its annus horribilis through the largest panel of rose-coloured glass we've seen. But were the advertisers sold on take two of the new era of ARN? Another concern for advertisers is exactly how many people are exposed to their adverts. While ARN is offering a new analytics dashboard, former SCA content boss Craig Bruce was questioning the veracity of the radio ratings at the Compass Adelaide road show. "The metrics just don't stack up any more", he told the audience. And finally, we look at Domino's Australia's alarming move, taking money from its marketing budget to prop up struggling franchisees, who have taken a big hit since Domino's changed its entire business strategy.. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

November 11, 202641 min

'Our upfront is the start of a new era': ARN boss Michael Stephenson puts 2026 to bed early

As ARN's CEO Michael Stephenson says early in the latest Mumbrellacast, "a lot happens in media in 12 months." Stephenson also cops to being "optimistic by design" which is why he is sounding cheerful after a challenging year as the new boss of an evolving media company trying to stay afloat as the industry remains in flux. According to Stephenson, 2027 is looking bright. "The business is alive, there's an excitement in the place, and a belief that everything is possible." Stephenson and host Tim Burrowes unpack ARN's upfront announcements, and look back at a hard 2026, while Stepho denies he ever dubbed the MFWitches the company's "brand safety consultants". Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

November 5, 202630 min

Seven is Stoked; the perils of government funding for media

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, although we left the studio hours ago, so you'll have to help yourself to tap water and snacks. This week: Seven Media Group is born again at the AGM; we hear from marketers and media in the field as the Compass roadshow hits Sydney and Brisbane; and the government has just doled out $31m dollars to news organisations in the name of News Innovation – who got the money? Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

October 29, 202642 min

Mia Freedman's call to arms: 'I wanna say the quiet part out loud'

Welcome to the Mumbrellacast, which opens today with a rousing speech given by Mamamia co-founder Mia Freedman at the company's upfront yesterday morning. Mia implored advertisers to stop pumping three-quarters of their ad buying budgets into the social media networks, which are playing havoc with our mental health, damaging our children, and destroying our local media industry to boot. It's quite the call to arms. Elsewhere on the podcast, we discuss Paramount Australia's upfront, run a ruler over the annual reports issued by ABC and SBS, and interview Margaret Simons, author of 'Going Digital: The Transformation of the ABC'. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

October 28, 202634 min

'I'm an optimist, and I like to look forward': Paramount's Beverley McGarvey celebrates 20 years at Network 10

Beverley McGarvey, the president of Network 10 and head of streaming at Paramount ANZ speaks to Tim Burrowes ahead of the company's upfront presentation in Melbourne. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

October 23, 202644 min

Seven's Rohan Lund and Nat Harvey on TV networks fighting with the platforms instead of each other

Fresh from a well-received Upfront presentation, Seven Media Group CEO Rohan Lund and chief revenue officer Natalie Harvey talked to Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes for a wide ranging conversation about their plans for 2027, the new brand and resetting the company culture with no tolerance for bad behaviour. They also addressed the question of further industry consolidation, whether the TV companies could come together to jointly own a single premium content exchange, and how the media ownership laws may need to change again. The interview explores why Lund has returned to the brand Seven Media Group, how Harvey recognises that Seven and the wider TV industry need to become easier to buy advertising from, and an Upfronts season where none of the media companies have taken big swings.

October 22, 202625 min

ABC, it's easy as one, two, Seven

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, where Seven and ABC announce the latest intellectual property for Meta to steal. In this episode, we discuss Meta's insane terms and conditions that were seemingly written by Dr. Evil; ABC invites the media to the old Q&A studio to announce how much drama they have commissioned this year (still no Recovery reboot); and Seven decides on a new/old name for the company and leans into some classic/fresh formats. You know we belong together. Happy listening. Get the latest episodes here.  Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

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. 