News Corp’s Flash site uses vaccine culture wars and Peta Credlin to get subscribers

News Corp’s just-launched news streaming service Flash is using Facebook advertising to promote posts about vaccine culture war topics and its Sky News opinion hosts to convince people to sign up. 

In October Foxtel launched Flash, a sister streaming site to Binge and Kayo that would instead focus on on-demand news video content. 

Visitors to the Flash website are greeted with an image featuring the logos of 20 video streaming channels that users can view, including CNN, Al Jazeera, Fox News and even Russia’s government-controlled broadcaster RT. 

When it was first announced, Foxtel Group CEO Patrick Delany spruiked the app as filling a desire for “news-hungry Australians”.

“We believe the product will tap into a growing demand for diverse, trusted news sources by making the best range of Australian and international 24/7 television news sources even more accessible,” he told MediaWeek in September.

With these lofty ambitions shared with trade publications, it sounds like News Corp is banking the success of Flash on enlightened news consumers flocking to its service. But is it putting its money where its mouth is? 

Analysis of its Facebook advertising reveals the company is leaning hard into its Sky News opinion hosts as well as vaccine and COVID-19 culture war issues to try to tempt people to use its service.

Since November, $4100 has been spent promoting 15 ads about Flash to Australian Facebook users. The most common advertisement has been promoting Sky News, with four advertisements promoting its opinion hosts Peta Credlin, Paul Murray and the channel. 

The next most frequent type of Facebook ads run by the page are around hot-button vaccine issues that are popular flash points with anti-vaxxer groups. Posts about vaccinating children and whether the unvaccinated should have to pay an additional Medicare levy are promoted with a link to the streaming service. 

Curiously, the page’s first advertisement which was run alone was a post about the jailing of QAnon Shaman, an infamous figure from the January 6 US Capitol riots. Perhaps appropriately, this conspiracy theorist has actually shared Sky News Australia content from his social media accounts. 

The page has also promoted posts about a Lonely Planet documentary, its Omicron variant coverage, and general promotion of its suite of channels available for streaming.

While pitching itself as a way for news-savvy individuals to access a world of information, it appears News Corp’s Flash is all too happy to appeal to the base as a tried and tested tactic for making money.