Mediaweek

There’s something reassuring about talking to someone who’s spent years on television and still sounds like good company over a very long lunch.

Samantha Armytage is one of those people. She’s curious, quick with a laugh, and you get the feeling you’d want your story straight before trying to slip anything past her.

She grew up in a noisy country family, where getting a word in was apparently excellent preparation for a career in media. Her mum signed her up for a communications degree. Sam took it from there.

Now, after years in news, breakfast television and the occasionally bewildering business of televised romance, she’s starting something of her own: an independent interview project called Act Two.

On this episode of Mediaweek’s Newsmakers, we talk about how she got here, what the job has taught her, and the nerve it takes to start again.

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When Brian Gallagher first walked into the offices of what’s now Tapt Media, it was a Tuesday and the sales floor was empty. His verdict? “Culturally bereft.”

A lot’s changed since the Laundy family bought the business. Tapt Media is building a bigger digital audience; its YouTube channels are pulling in more than five million views a month, and Brian’s making a fresh pitch to advertisers.

But you won’t find him putting on a flashy Upfront. 

Instead, he reckons a conversation, perhaps even a round of golf, will do more. 

So what’s the plan for Tapt Media? Well, who better to explain the future than the very man himself?

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Mediaweek and Mumbrella have spent years covering Australia’s media industry while becoming one of its juiciest stories.

The latest argy-bargy centres on Vinyl Media's plans to use AI to dramatically scale its publishing output. The debate has since come down to AI publishing and, somehow, the word “bombastic”.

So, naturally, we put the two men at the centre of it in the same room.

Vinyl Group CEO Josh Simons and Mumbrella publisher Tim Burrowes sat down at Mumbrella HQ in Sydney to discuss their public clash, the role AI could play in journalism and the difficult business of making publishing pay.

The conversation is frank, occasionally fiery and surprisingly civil. No furniture was harmed.

Think of it as a media peace summit, with microphones.

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You probably know Matty Fahd from the Gogglebox couch. But before he was critiquing TV for a living, he spent 18 years working behind the scenes in media, from the agency trenches to helping build TikTok Australia.

Then he did something many of us have probably fantasised about: he walked away from the corporate gig.

With Gogglebox Australia back for a new season, Matty joins me on Newsmakers to talk TikTok, taking the gamble on becoming a full-time creator, and why leaving the job he always wanted ultimately gave him something much more valuable: time with his family.

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Google gets the click. Meta gets the conversion. But did either of them actually create the demand?

New research from SCA and Seven suggests that by the time a consumer searches, clicks, or buys, much of the hard work is already done.

The research looked at almost $73 million in media investment and more than 615,000 customer outcomes, and raises some big questions about how marketers measure what’s actually working.

On this episode of Mediaweek Newsmakers, I’m joined by SCA’s Olly Newton and Kim Loasby to talk attribution, what consumers say versus what they actually do, and why performance marketing can’t work without brand building behind it.

Read more here: https://www.mediaweek.com.au/sca-seven-attribution-research-newton-loasby

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We here at Mediaweek wanted this chat to be a little bit different from our usual ones.

We all know about the bust-up with Jackie, the court case and the new show, Kyle Sandilands Live, which launched today. And while we touch on some of that, I wanted to go somewhere else.

Full disclosure: I’ve known Kyle for around 15 years. I first met him when he and Jackie were at SCA, before coming back into his orbit when they moved to ARN.

So I wanted this conversation to be about the Kyle I’ve observed over those years. The boss his employees know - and the one many remain fiercely loyal to, following him from one chapter to the next.

Because it raises an interesting question: if Kyle really is as nasty or vile as some of his critics claim, why do so many of the people who work closest to him keep choosing to do so?

Having spent a long time working in radio myself, I’ve always found Kyle something of an anomaly. He can be brutal on air, but off air, he’s often the opposite. With some other broadcasters, that switch gets flicked the other way.

Make of that what you will.

This conversation is looser than most. A little more personal, too. And, quite frankly, that’s probably exactly how Kyle would like it.

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If you've ever wondered whether marketers are giving far too much credit to the last click, this episode is for you.

In this episode of Newsmakers, I’m joined by  Seven's director of sales, Katie Finney, and Prophet CEO Jordan Taylor-Bartels to unpack why the industry is moving beyond last-click attribution, what actually drives demand, and why TV, audio, podcasts and digital work best when they're working together, not competing for credit.

We also dive into what the Seven-SCA merger means for advertisers, why live moments still matter in a search-first world, and how better measurement is helping marketers make smarter decisions.

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Simon Ryan has seen this industry from both sides of the table. He used to run things inside a legacy global holding company - now he's the one building a business, giving those same networks a headache. 

Kind of poetic, honestly.

He's the founder of RyanCap, which he built fast and sold to Cosmo Five in Paris in about three years. So when he talks about why the big guys are struggling, he's not guessing - he's lived it.

And he does not hold back.

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Antoinette Lattouf has become one of the defining figures in Australia’s media and political landscape - not just because of the Federal Court case against the ABC, but because of the broader questions it raised about journalism, power, and what happens when reporters become the story themselves.

In this episode of Mediaweek’s Newsmakers, Lattouf speaks candidly about the legal battle, the personal fallout, and the moment her career changed overnight.

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There are journalists who cover the news, and then there are those who somehow end up standing in the middle of history as it unfolds. Michael Usher has spent the better part of three decades doing exactly that.

From the chaos of 9/11 in New York to the Iraq War, the London bombings, royal weddings, federal elections and some of the most defining moments in modern television news, Usher has built a career that reads less like a résumé and more like a timeline of global events. 

So, it’s no wonder he’s become one of the country’s most trusted broadcasters. But what makes this conversation fascinating isn’t just the headlines he’s covered - it’s hearing how it all started.

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