Today in Media Files, the footy finals weekend has dominated the newspapers over the weekend, and Seven is using The Australian in a PR push.

Footy fever. Football finals dominated the newspapers over the weekend. Both the Melbourne papers were singing from the same song sheet in celebrating the Richmond Tigers’ win in the AFL grand final on Saturday.

The Melbourne Storm’s win in Sydney in the NRL grand final made the front page of The Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald.

In Queensland, the Townsville Bulletin had renamed itself the Cowboys Bulletin for the past week in support of North Queensland’s losing team in last night’s game.

And Adelaide’s Sunday Mail was also predictably downbeat at the Crows‘ AFL defeat.

Seven’s PR push. The Seven Network has employed The Australian‘s media section in an attempt to get on top of the PR disaster that is its sacking of a cadet journalist in Adelaide after she made a sexual harassment complaint. The lead story in today’s Media section is an “exclusive” running through Seven’s attempts to manage the crisis, including inviting broadcaster Tracey Spicer and the journalists’ union to meet with Seven CEO Tim Worner. Seven has also signed up to sponsor the Women in Media conference next month, which organisers have confirmed, saying they’re still speaking with other potential media sponsors. Spicer was not quoted in the Oz, and neither was the union — the report said neither had yet responded to Worner’s invitation.

Seven insists Amy Taeuber was fired over a breach of contract, but a 7.30 report on the ABC last week linked her sacking to a harassment complaint Taeuber made about a senior journalist in her newsroom. Spicer and the union were both interviewed by the ABC for the report and in a follow-up.

End of print for industry mag. Mediaweek has announced it will stop publishing its print edition at the end of the year. The trade magazine has been publishing weekly since the 1990s, and told readers in an editorial last week that readers and advertisers preferred digital, so they were shifting their focus. The magazine says it means a wider audience for advertisers, and more content across more platforms for readers.

Ten abandons international Formula 1. Ten will no longer broadcast international Formula 1 races, instead showing highlights while full races will be broadcast on Foxtel’s Fox Sports channel. On Twitter, Ten spruiked the Foxtel Now two-week free trial and confirmed it would still be showing local motorsports on free-to-air.

Free TV’s rent-seeking. Free TV Australia wants to continue raiding the public purse, according to its submission to the federal government’s Australian and Children’s Content Review. It claims that licence fee reductions made by various governments were needed to maintain local production. In May, when the government outlined its media law changes, Free TV issued a statement including a statement from Free TV chairman Harold Mitchell:

“This package is crucial for Australian jobs and our ability to continue creating great local programming that is watched by millions of Australians every day. I congratulate the Government and Minister Fifield … A review of the Australian content rules is long overdue and we welcome the government’s decision to conduct a root and branch review of the content ecosystem.”

Not a mention of the measures demanded in the latest statement, which include removing quotas for commercial free-to-air broadcasters on children and preschool content, and for more flexible drama quotas. Free TV also wants the producer offset increased and maintained after a series reaches 65 episodes.

Now remember the commercial TV industry has had licence fees cut, then abolished. So far the industry is looking at more than $400 million in benefits from the reductions to the fees from the former ALP government and the Abbott/Turnbull administrations. The total cost (including the now abolished licence fees at their peak) could cost up to $500 million or more a year (less the spectrum fee).

The release from Free TV Australia does not mention any costs to revenue, so they must be potentially large. The only beneficiaries will be shareholders in the TV companies (including foreign owners such as CBS, if they win Ten) and producers (such as Endemol Shine, 50% owned by 21st Century Fox, which in turn is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family). It is a worry when industry groups and their lobbyists are not upfront about the financial costs of rent-seeking. You know instinctively that it is a big figure and likely to generate unease among voters. — Glenn Dyer

Glenn Dyer’s TV ratings. Peak sport this weekend — the AFL grand final (3.52 million national) had more viewers than the NRL grand final (3.39 million) — and by the way, Melbourne teams now hold the two major trophies for our winter football codes. The AFL had 2.68 million metro viewers on Saturday watching the Tigers win, the NRL had 2.33 million who watched Melbourne Storm’s victory last night. The NRL easily won the regional battle, with 1.07 million viewers tuning in as compared to 844,000 for the AFL grand final.

The AFL presentations brought more viewers for the second year in a row — 3.69 million people watched nationally (2.80 million nationally and 893,000 in the regions). But that was a long, long way from 2016’s figures when the Western Bulldogs beat Sydney. Just going on the figures, the Tigers do not pull viewers like the Bulldogs or Sydney did last year (4.09 million for the game and 4.11 million for the presentation). We have no idea of the streaming figures from Telstra or the AFL for the game and how long they watched for. 

The national NRL audience last night of 3.39 million was down on the 3.57 million for last year’s win by Cronulla over the Storm, and down on the last non-Sydney grand final between Brisbane and North Queensland in 2015, which averaged 3.69 million viewers. Again we do not have streaming figures from Telstra or the NRL and for how long they streamed. The average viewer figures for Seven (AFL) and Nine (NRL) are for watching the entire game. — Read the rest on the Crikey website