Best of the Week: Agency CEOs playing musical chairs; The ‘family reasons’ conundrum; TV’s imagination deficit; Can 2Day FM win back audiences?

[View web version]( BEST OF THE WEEK And another thing... Welcome to Best of the Week, which this time around is brought to you from my balcony in Bondi overlooking the ever-traffic-jammed Penkivil Street and the still, blue waters of Tamarama. The soundtrack this week is the constant horn-tooting from people who simply can’t understand why everyone is using the same cut through between Old South Head Road and Bondi Road as they are (and why the damn lights take SO long to change), the local kookaburras who are delighting in some in-joke I am very much not a part of, and One Direction’s Little Things on repeat, mixed with the occasional sad song from Sam Smith. No, Tim Burrowes, the eight-million-dollar man (according to sources in The Australian), has not used his new-found fortune to move to a share flat in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and suddenly supplemented his love of Bruce Springsteen with the sweet, sultry sounds of the now defunct British boy band. Tim is, as you also may have read in The Australian this week, currently doing the Maria Island Walk in Tasmania, so it’s fallen on me, Mumbrella’s editor Vivienne Kelly, to summarise the week that was in the world of media and marketing. And what a week it was. Musical chairs: The CEO edition I’m not one for conspiracy theories - they stress me out, and if I don’t understand something, I tend not to be able to let it go. So it’s best for everyone if I stay away from them. The closest I’ve come is arguing with a man I was dating late last year about the flat Earth theory. My incredibly basic argument was “I just can’t see the motivation for this one. Who benefits? I get it with the moon landing. There was the space race. There was Russia. There’s the whole flag flapping in the wind in the footage thing. "I get it with 9/11. It was a key event which changed the western world and led to a set of outcomes which directly benefited certain nations, political players and international agendas. "I get it with the government/ social media giants monitoring us all through our many and varied devices. We’ve all seen Black Mirror, mate. We’ve all had those ‘WTF moments’ when we talk about something and suddenly it’s in our Facebook feed and following us around on the internet. But who benefits from telling me the Earth is spinning if it’s actually just a flat rectangle with a start and end point? “Also, the Earth is round. Shut up.” (I feel compelled at this point to flag that I wasn’t dating a flat-Earther. It was his friend, and I’m pretty sure he only brought it up because he knew it would wind me up). Instead of full-blown conspiracy theories, I prefer to selectively notice patterns and coincidences, and joke about how there’s been a glitch in The Matrix - growing up in the 1990s makes it hard to shake the idea that either The Matrix or The Truman Show was some kind of thinly-veiled warning to me. And, patterns there have certainly been lately. CEOs are moving around agency land left, right and centre. If your attitude to CEO movements is like my approach to the Earth’s shape debate, you’ll likely think “People move on. Nothing to see here. Shut up.” But it’s hard not to notice the recent volume of movements and look for a pattern. This week it was again WPP in the spotlight with [Y&R CEO Phil McDonald departing](. There are always movements within adland, but this one was of particular interest to Mumbrella and caused a certain amount of discussion in the industry for three reasons. First was the inevitable reaction from the industry and the questions which arise when any senior figure’s departure is announced with the suffix “effective immediately”. It doesn’t matter what words are included in a press release, or how many assurances are given by the departing party and those who they are leaving behind that this conscious uncoupling is all above board and everybody is leaving the union with a mutual respect and well wishes, people love to speculate. Why so quickly? What happened? What’s their next movement? Who’s going to be catapulted in to replace them? What’s really going on at WPP? Who’s going to next lose their seat when the music stops? The industry didn’t have to speculate for long, which brings me to point two of interest. [Pete Bosilkovski, former boss of Leo Burnett Sydney, was announced as McDonald’s replacement within a day](. Bosilkovski had been at Leos for nine years, but left in February, saying he’d be able to announce his next career move soon. The announcement also stayed on my radar for slightly longer than usual because of the accidental panic Mumbrella’s daily email caused over at WPP HQ. We omitted what they would argue is a key word from our email subject line (in this case ‘agency’) and sent out the newsletter with the potentially alarming, arguably click-baity (depending on which side of the fence you reside) ‘WPP CEO walks’. Hands in the air, at some earlier stage of production, it was supposed to say ‘WPP agency CEO walks’, but too many people in a Google spreadsheet, the pressure of daily deadlines and that inescapable human error factor, meant you inevitably received ‘WPP CEO walks’ on Wednesday. None of our readers called it out, and instead flooded the comment thread with a mix of well wishes for McDonald or questions about the bigger picture, as flagged above. Indeed a favourite of Mumbrella commenters of late has been numerous iterations and variations of the phrase ‘Deck Chairs. Titanic’. (Some have even taken to simply using it as their alias. It’s been used on stories about WPP, Bauer, Foxtel, the wider television industry, Ensemble, Fairfax and basically any other legacy media company you can still poke a stick at in recent months.) I understand I may have inadvertently caused some momentary panic though. When some people saw the email headline I can imagine there were some increased heart rates as they questioned ‘Martin Sorrell has gone?’ - which leaves me in somewhat of a pickle about what to title the daily email when Sorrell, or indeed WPP AUNZ CEO Mike Connaghan inevitably leave one day. Watch this space. The McDonald departure does however fit into a bigger pattern of CEO and senior movements of late. WPP’s WhiteGrey lost joint-CEO Paul Worboys in February. At the time, it was said Miles Joyce would continue to lead the agency as now-solo CEO. Less than two weeks later though, Joyce too was out. Last week, the replacement was announced in the form of M&C Saatchi’s former managing partner, Lee Simpson. Adland and media in Australia is small, this I already knew, particularly as I now have two ex-colleagues at B&T and one each at AdNews and the Sydney Morning Herald media section, so people, both high up the food chain and lower down, are bound to pop up somewhere we recognise, but conspiracy theories will always flourish if given the chance. Leos Sydney is still seeking a CEO as I understand it. As is McCann, following the departure of Ben Lilley last month, despite speculation Bosilkovski would fill that gap. If you have any theories (conspiracy or otherwise) on who will fill those positions, or indeed who’s going to pop up as Antony Catalano’s replacement at Domain, what’s next for former IPG Mediabrands’ global CEO Henry Tajer (who Mumbrella understands is on gardening leave for some months yet), or where News Corp’s former golden child Nicole Sheffield will land, I’d love to hear it. Pop your tin-foil hat on and get in touch. The family reasons conundrum Speaking of people leaving, I genuinely feel for anyone in adland who departs a gig for family reasons. In the post-Weinstein era, and after decades of some less-than-savoury characters using the “it’s time to focus on my family” excuse, only for it to be revealed they were a perennial sleazebag or were quietly marched to protect a company and its staff, it’s rare not to get an eye roll when people wheel out the family line. I had a panicked call a few weeks ago from a media company who foresaw this issue. The caller was tipping me off that someone was about to leave, but they “truly, really, 100%, definitely, genuinely” had a serious family issue. I already knew this from other sources, and I believed it. But I wasn’t sure the line would work on my audience. I do feel for those who actually have to leave to focus on something that matters more than work. As I write this, my younger brother is going through the final stages of a practical exam to move up from being a graduate paramedic to a fully-fledged solo one. Nothing can bring you back down to (the round) Earth from the outer-space media bubble quite like reading a particularly gory and graphic story online about an awful crime in Victoria, only to realise your 21-year-old brother was on the scene attempting to minimise the damage and bring someone back to life. So I do understand that some things (read: many things) matter more than what I do for a living. Which is why it annoys me when undeserving people use alleged family trauma as an easy out. It’s weak. I won’t offer up my insights and speculation on who has used this reason legitimately over the past six months, and who has leant on it as a convenient excuse - largely for legal reasons and because we have an uncanny habit of getting legal letters when Tim takes a rare and deserved holiday. I particularly sympathised with one of Rosie Baker’s departing pieces over at AdNews this week. [She was lamenting her inability, largely for political and legal reasons, to name and shame the local adland version/s of Weinstein](. Give it a read if you haven’t already. It’s infinitely better and far more thought-provoking than her farewell piece which went out today. I felt her genuine frustration at being unable to break open the story and improve the industry as a result, and can only imagine the types of meetings she’s been in, phone calls she’s had to take and emails she’s received. I can only thank her for trying and getting us one step closer. It’s not always a conspiracy of silence which keeps perpetrators’ names out of the press. Sometimes, it’s just fucking hard. Particularly when the people you’re talking about wield significantly more power than you do, and are backed by much larger bank accounts. I’ve toyed with the idea of outing people, and indeed been encouraged by some in the industry to do so, particularly after someone forced me against the bar at an industry event so I couldn’t move, grabbed my chest and whispered in my ear “What do I have to do to you to prove I’m not gay?” Or the time someone else attempted to force themselves on me in a taxi, only to be physically restrained by a (heroic) friend a (heroic) driver. Then there’s the under-the-table incident I don’t even have the emotional energy to go into when The Rag & Famish in North Sydney is beckoning on a Friday afternoon. I’m not in a race with new AdNews editor Pippa Chambers to break this story. I don’t see it as a competition. Indeed, I’m not even sure if our competitors have heard the same names as we have, or if they’re dealing with an entirely separate list. Let’s just hope the pace of change increases, and adland becomes a less traumatic place for women to exist in. And that the only people to use family reasons from here on out actually have an issue to attend to outside of adland which isn’t just “I need to get out of here before the shit hits the fan”. Television’s imagination deficit It’s no secret to anyone that I am desperately excited for Bachelor in Paradise to hit screens on Ten on 25 March. I’ll be up at Clareville on Pittwater for my annual family ‘Goodbye Daylight Savings’ Party, but I’ll be watching it on the box as soon as I get home. Despite my ridiculous levels of anticipation, I can’t help but wonder where Australian television’s imagination has gotten to. Bachelor in Paradise is a four-year-old American series, spun out of a 16-year-old franchise, The Bachelor, which has already produced 22 seasons. The Bachelor also spawned The Bachelorette in 2003 in the US, now heading into its 14th season. There’s also Bachelor Pad, Bachelor in Paradise: After Paradise and The Bachelor Winter Games. Locally, this week [Ten announced former Wallabies player Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins as its sixth Bachelor](. The decision to cast a high-profile personality into the role comes after Sophie Monk gave Ten some rare ratings wins last year. Can we go back to “regular Aussies” now that Monk set the bar so high? At last year’s Mumbrella Awards (which, by the way have [their final deadline this Friday]() after party a somewhat-high-profile industry identity was (presumably) joking they could help make me the next Bachelorette. I shut it down, one because I’d have to hire a fake family as mine would never agree to participate, and two, because who on Earth would want to follow Monk and deal with the very-real-possibility of bringing in significantly lower ratings? Last year CEO of Ten Paul Anderson flagged this would happen when I spoke to him at the Screen Forever conference. He said the standardised head-boy types might not work any more. (Well, Paul, I missed out on head prefect (robbed), but I will need a fake family!) Ten isn’t alone in recycling international formats though. Seven has recently announced two ‘new’ formats. [All Together Now is a singing competition which has received mixed reviews since debuting in the UK and will come to Seven later this year](. We’re told to “forget what you think you know about talent shows”, but I’m going to bet even if I do suffer from reality-television-amnesia, All Together Now will rapidly remind me of what I already knew about talent shows. Then there’s Take Me Out, which [Seven this week announced will be fronted by comedian Joel Creasey](. Take Me Out debuted in the UK in 2010, but was apparently based on the Australian format Taken Out, which ran on Ten back in 2008. Who said creativity was dead? I am a fiend for trashy television (although I won’t be sad to see Married At First Sight go - that show feels like it’s been on air since 1985. How many episodes does it need?) But even I would like to see more creativity and innovation on primetime commercial FTA television. Speaking of the death of creativity and innovation, if I see what I think is the worst ad of the year one more time, I may have to stop watching FTA television altogether. You know the one I mean. The [Westfield one which said in its press release that it steers clear of stereotypes, but features women putting on lipstick, playing with children, cooking, watching kids play sport and having wine at a dinner party.]( How innovative. Many British friends have commented to me over the years how much Australian advertising, in particular that which pushes cleaning products and household goods, relies on problematic stereotypes. I’ve had many Brits laugh as they recount their favourite terrible stereotypical ad featuring a white woman cleaning her home, and how formulaic and problematic it is. The Westfield one was the worst I’d seen in a while though. Radio wars This week saw the release of the first radio ratings survey of the year. You can read what happened in the various cities here: - [Brisbane]( - [Melbourne]( - [Adelaide]( - [Sydney]( - [Perth]( Two things you may have missed were [Nova’s Kate, Tim & Marty capturing the highest drive-time audience share across the country in Perth, with 16.0%](, and the mixed results for Australian Radio Network’s various line-up changes. [ARN’s content boss Duncan Campbell admitted to my media reporter Zoe Samios in her fantastic radio wrap up]( (which you should definitely take the time to read) that the Kiis results in Melbourne “hurt” and he took the falls personally. The network also suffered declines in Sydney, where, despite remaining on top of the FM breakfast game, Kyle and Jackie O suffered a 2.1 point decline. I was personally somewhat relieved the Em, Grant and Ed show on 2Day FM breakfast in Sydney achieved a (nominal) increase of 0.6 share points to command an audience of 3.4% though. It’s arguably still a miniscule portion of the radio market, but after going through a significant share of Australia’s potential commercial breakfast radio hosts over the last few years since the departure of Kyle and Jackie O - including Jules Lund, Merrick Watts, Sophie Monk, Spice Girl Mel B, Dan Debuf, Maz Compton, Rove McManus, Sam Frost and Harley Breen - the network needs some stability. Em Rusciano certainly isn’t for everyone, as internet commentators and rival radio operators will delight in telling you, but I think she’s a real talent and would be sad to see her join the list of talent SCA has cast aside as it tries to scramble back up the ladder. I will admit I’m not enjoying the more slick and polished version of her show with consummate professional Ed Kavalee and television’s Grant Denyer, as much as I enjoyed the lose fun she had with Harley Breen - but I seem to be somewhat alone in that camp. Some are saying Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) management needs to fall on its sword after its poor performance in Sydney (a 4.1% audience share, up from 3.9% at the end of last year), and many are questioning if the station can ever recover. The station hasn’t been sitting still though. This week, [the network’s head of content Gemma Fordham told Zoe why it had overhauled its music format](. It’s well worth the read, and will be interesting to see if it pays off for the struggling SCA. Although, I can’t help but largely agree with ‘Damien’ who commented on the piece: “So Mix morphed into Hit and Hit has morphed into the old Mix format.” If my mid-90s memory serves me correctly (it very may well not), 2Day FM felt like the dominant station in inner-western Sydney playgrounds and in car trips to after-school activities. Let’s see if it can get back there! That’s it for this week. If this simply wasn’t enough for you, I’d encourage you to read [Abigail Dawson’s chat with Russel Howcroft one year on from him jumping ship to the consultancy space](. His role as chief creative officer at PwC has confused some, and here he seeks to clarify what he does, outlines his achievements one year on and breaks down the relationship between creatives and consultancies. Thank you to those of you who took the time to say hello and offer feedback on our SAGE (Secrets of Agency Excellence) conference on Thursday. If you’re around at CommsCon or the CommsCon Awards this coming week, please do say hello, even if my eyes are darting around the room with the anxious look of someone who is questioning the shape of the Earth. In the meantime, my colleague Abby is running the newsdesk over the weekend. If you have any stories, tips or ideas for her, please shoot them through to: abigail@mumbrella.com.au. If you have any conspiracy theories, stories, or feedback you’d like to share with me - or if you’d simply like to pester me as to when Tim returns, so you can hear from someone with more sophisticated music choices and more adult problems - please get in touch: vivienne@mumbrella.com.au I can’t bring myself to say toodlepip, so instead, I’ll say: Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night! Vivienne Kelly Editor - Mumbrella Mumbrella | 46-48 Balfour Street Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia [Unsubscribe](| [Manage Subscriptions]( [Facebook]( [LinkedIn]( [Twitter](