Eddie’s erectile dysfunction ‘fake news’. Eddie McGuire has used his Triple M Melbourne show to threaten Facebook with defamation action over an ad that appeared on the site using his name to endorse a natural erectile dysfunction drug. Apparently not having heard of the Streisand Effect, McGuire’s spray on The Hot Breakfast yesterday prompted news stories including on McGuire’s TV network Nine. Maguire said on radio that he was keen to let his listeners know he hadn’t actually created or endorsed TryVexan with TV’s Dr Phil. Triple M sponsor Gordon Legal put up defamation lawyer James Norton as an interview guest, who gave Eddie a bit of advice before agreeing on-air to take on the case.
The fake story, mocked up as a GQ article, included quotes apparently from McGuire recommending the pill, and the suggestion he’d be giving away free samples on The Footy Show.
Mamamia deletes anonymous abortion article. Women’s lifestyle website Mamamia is reportedly investigating the “provenance” of a now-deleted article about “post-abortion trauma” on its site after BuzzFeed Australia took it apart based on scientific research and the advice of medical professionals. The article was written by “Mollusc Media”, which doesn’t have any other online presence, and quoted national director of Abortion Grief Australia Julie Cook, and linked back to her website.
Google posts strongest result. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is still eating the lunch, dinner and breakfast (and all the snacks in between) of legacy media around the world at an accelerating rate, contrary to the claims coming from the online monster. In fact the performance in the last quarter was one of the strongest in the company’s history in percentage and absolute terms.
Forget all the spin coming from Google/Alphabet that it is finding it much tougher to grow the business because of the increased regulatory costs, the wash-up from the Facebook data scandal and growing competition in the online space for revenue. That’s a load of rubbish, as the latest quarterly report confirms.
Alphabet’s figures soared more than 24% from the first quarter of 2017. The company said ad revenues totalled US$26.642 billion in the three months to March 31, up $5.232 billion from $21.411 billion in the same quarter of 2017. That’s a growth rate of 24.4% and compares to rates last year of 18.8% for the first quarter of 2017, 18.4% for the June quarter and more than 21% for the third and fourth quarters of last year. — Glenn Dyer
Newspapers welcome royal baby.
Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings. Seven’s My Kitchen Rules ruled the roost with 1.98 million national viewers, though the Mark Bouris-hosted The Mentor which followed was underwhelming (732,000, a drop of more than 1.2 million). It did win the commercial network battle in its slot, but lost to to Four Corners and Media Watch on the ABC. Nine’s The Voice averaged 1.3 million viewers and hung in, but was swamped by MKR. Tens The Bachelor in Paradise averaged 810,000.
In regional markets MKR won with 658,000, then Seven News with 590,000; Seven News/Today Tonight was third with 513,000, then Home and Away with 473,000 and finally the 5.30pm bit of The Chase Australia with 392,000. Read the rest at the Crikey Website.
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