Today in Media Files, Australian youth media outlets are banding together in a push to get young people enrolled to vote in the same-sex marriage survey, and Isentia has confirmed its poor performance for the last financial year.

Youth media push AEC enrolment. Australian youth media organisations have banded together to push their readers to enrol to vote this afternoon, ahead of the electoral roll closing for voting in the national same-sex marriage postal survey. Vice and FBI Radio will black out their sites for three hours, running a message telling readers to spend their time registering or checking their details. Pedestrian and Junkee are blacking out their ads for the same three hours, and will run over-the-top ads directing readers to the AEC. All their content uploaded will be related to LGBTQIA issues. Vice Australia features editor Maddison Connaughton said in a statement it was the first time Australian youth publishers had worked together on an issue. “We think this marriage equality vote is that important. We know the vote has been purposefully designed to disenfranchise young people,” she said. 

Isentia confirms poor performance with results. Media monitoring and insights agency Isentia has confirmed its poor performance in its full-year performance results announced this morning. It had already written down its content marketing agency King Content, and forecast poorer-than-expected earnings in a market announcement at the beginning of the month. Last week, executives briefed journalists on a company restructure, which they said would focus on longer-term contracts and full media monitoring and data insights services. CEO John Croll said in an analysts briefing this morning that the previous year had been disappointing, but that the board and management were confident Isentia would have a “consistent investment profile going forward”. The King Content write-down was worth $39.4 million, and there was a statutory net loss of $13.5 million compared to a profit of $24.3 million in the previous financial year. Net profit after tax and amortisation was down to $24.7 million, a decrease of 24%.

Just a moon over a sun. While most of the American media breathlessly covered the solar eclipse, there was one notable exception. Fox News host Shepard Smith did not even try to hide his disdain for covering the event from the studio, commentating the peak of the eclipse with, “They know this is all it’s gonna be, right? Just a moon over a sun.” At one point he used his phone and wireless mouse to demonstrate a total eclipse of his phone, and finished with “How was it? Was it everything?”

Fairfax is now Stuffed. Fairfax Media in New Zealand has rebranded as Stuff, the name of its most popular website across the Tasman. CEO Greg Hywood said the renaming recognised Stuff’s “tremendous national brand strength and its position at the centre of our strategy to to drive digital growth”. Fairfax also announced a new CEO for Stuff, Sinead Boucher, who was previously the group executive editor for Fairfax in New Zealand.

Glenn Dyer’s TV ratings. The Block (1.544 million nationally), True Story with Hamish and Andy (1.179 million nationally) won the night for Nine, a good night. Now to tonight when Mad as Hell and Utopia are back on the ABC (a very good night) with The Bachelor — who increasingly seems to want to remain just that — on Ten. Nine has The Block and Doctor Doctor (also a good night).

But hang on, before all that there’s a couple of other points to be made about last night. The audience still likes Hamish and Andy, but in the last four weeks there has been a definite drift away from the program: on August 1 the program had 1.278 million national and 878,000 metro viewers. A week later the figures were 1.335 million/905,000, then a week ago, 1.265 million and 900,000. And last night 1.172 million and 766,000. It all depends on the worth of the story, but it is looking a bit same old each episode now.

The House (877,000 nationally) should be required viewing for everyone in Australian classrooms at least twice in their school lives and at citizenship ceremonies because it is not preachy or populist. Hell’s Kitchen (871,000 nationally) remains stuck in its own private hell, but at least it’s not Shark Sank, sorry, Shark Tank (630,000) on Ten which is adrift so far as viewers are concerned.

In the regions, Seven news topped the most watched list with 611,000, followed by Seven News/TT with 511,000, then Home and Away with 508,000, The Block was 4th with 500,000 and the 5.30pm bit of The Chase Australia was 5th with 412,000. — Read the rest on the Crikey website.