About Mediaweek

Mediaweek

Mediaweek is Australia's leading media-industry trade publication — a digital news service covering the television, radio, newspaper, magazine, digital, outdoor advertising and entertainment businesses. Founded in 1990 as a weekly print magazine by Philip Luker, it published in print for 27 years before going digital-only at the end of 2017. Today it operates from Sydney as a news website, a weekday Morning Report newsletter, podcasts and industry events including the Mediaweek 100 and the Next of the Best Awards.

Overview

Mediaweek's beat is the Australian media business itself: ratings, readership and revenue; executive appointments and departures; mergers, launches and closures; programming strategies; advertising trends; and the personalities who run the industry. Its daily Morning Report email newsletter — published since 2004 — is widely regarded as the industry's most comprehensive daily round-up, while the website carries rolling news, analysis and interviews. The brand also produces podcasts and stages industry events, notably the annual Mediaweek 100 ranking and the Next of the Best Awards recognising emerging talent.

The publication is owned by Vinyl Group and edited by Natasha Lee, operating from headquarters in Sydney, New South Wales. Its readership is the media industry's professional class: executives, producers, journalists, programmers, sales teams and agencies across the country.

History

Mediaweek was founded in 1990 by Philip Luker as a weekly print trade magazine for the Australian media industry. In 1999 James Manning purchased the title from Luker and became editor and publisher — beginning a tenure of nearly 25 years that would make him one of the most recognised figures in Australian media commentary. Under Manning the magazine built a formidable reputation as the trade's paper of record, its weekly rhythms structuring the industry's conversation about itself.

The print magazine's regular features became institutions: Person of the Week, the "Inside" sector columns (Inside News Brands, Inside Radio, Inside Magazines, Inside Digital, Inside Television, Inside Subscription TV), the "Media People" column tracking personnel moves, the photo spreads of industry events, and the regular publication of radio ratings and newspaper and magazine readership figures. The annual Top 25 Media People listing — begun in issue 219 in December 1994 under Luker, with that year's six including Nine's Peter Meakin and Austereo's Paul Thompson — became a fixture of the industry calendar.

The Morning Report, launched in 2004, gave the brand a daily digital rhythm alongside the weekly print cycle — and ultimately pointed the way to the future. By the mid-2010s both readers and advertisers had migrated to the digital platforms, and in October 2017 Manning announced that the print magazine would cease at year's end. After 27 years in print — 28 by the brand's own counting in its farewell message — Mediaweek became a digital-only publication from 2018, relaunching with a redesigned website organised around nine sector verticals, a revamped Morning Report, continued podcasts and a new premium subscription tier.

The digital era

The relaunched digital Mediaweek kept the brand's core franchises while adapting them to the web's rhythms. The Morning Report continues as the daily email digest; the website's verticals cover every sector of the industry; the podcasts — including the Mediaweek industry podcast — extend the brand into audio; and the events business, with the Mediaweek 100 and the Next of the Best Awards, gives the brand a physical presence in the industry's calendar.

Manning's own profile grew alongside the brand's: a decade-long weekly television programme on Sky News Business covering media industry news, executive interviews and broadcasts from upfronts and launches, followed by contributions to other outlets and, in 2026, a new media-industry show, Media Movers, on the Ticker network. His long tenure — running the trade title for a quarter-century — made him the industry's institutional memory, the commentator other journalists called for context.

Ownership

Mediaweek is owned by Vinyl Group, the ASX-listed music and media company, which acquired the title as part of its expansion into media assets. The ownership places the trade publication within a listed group whose interests span music, media and events — a corporate home quite different from the independent publisher-ownership of the Manning era, but one that has sustained the brand's digital operation.

The Manning era

James Manning's 1999 purchase of Mediaweek from Philip Luker began one of the longest publisher tenures in Australian trade media. Manning — already an experienced media journalist — made the title his own: the weekly magazine became essential reading for media executives, its ratings and readership pages the industry's shared scoreboard, its personnel columns the record of who was up and who was out. For nearly 25 years, to work in Australian media was to be covered, sooner or later, by Mediaweek — and to read Mediaweek to know what was happening to everyone else.

Manning's authority derived from access and longevity. He spoke with the chief executives and managers of the media groups year after year, building relationships that gave the title's reporting its depth. The annual Top 25 Media People list — which by 2017 was selecting from a diverse field, half men and half women — reflected the breadth of those relationships: the high achievers of the industry, as judged by the journalist who knew them all.

The decision to end print in 2017 was Manning's own, and characteristically pragmatic. Readers and advertisers had already moved to digital; the Morning Report, launched thirteen years earlier, had become the brand's flagship product; and the economics of a weekly print trade magazine no longer worked. The farewell message to subscribers was frank about the shift — the focus would go where the audience already was — and the 2018 relaunch, with its nine verticals and premium tier, was designed for the readers who had made that choice.

Television and the public profile

For a decade Mediaweek extended onto television with a weekly programme on Sky News Business — industry news, executive interviews and live broadcasts from the upfronts, launches and events where the media industry presents itself to advertisers. The programme gave the brand a broadcast presence unusual for a trade publication and made Manning a familiar face beyond the industry's inner circles.

After the sale of the title, Manning continued as a media commentator — contributing to Mumbrella and The Australian, co-hosting the TV Gold podcast on television history with Andrew Mercado, and in 2026 launching Media Movers on the Ticker streaming network: in-depth conversations with industry leaders about where the media business is heading. The through-line of his career — explaining the media industry to itself — continued beyond the masthead he had run for a quarter-century.

The trade press ecosystem

Mediaweek operates in a small but fiercely contested segment. Mumbrella, founded as a digital-native challenger, built its brand on a more irreverent, opinionated voice — the trade press as provocateur to Mediaweek's paper of record. TV Tonight dominates broadcast coverage with its encyclopaedic episode guides and ratings analysis. Radio Today serves the radio industry's professionals. The Australian's media section and the Australian Financial Review cover the business of media for general business readers.

Among these, Mediaweek's breadth remains its moat: no other outlet covers newspapers, magazines, television, radio, digital, outdoor and entertainment media with the same systematic comprehensiveness. The Morning Report's daily digest — the industry's wake-up email since 2004 — is the product competitors have never quite replicated. For the media industry's professionals, the working day still starts with Mediaweek.

The media trade press

Mediaweek's competitive set includes Mumbrella — the irreverent digital-native rival that has often defined itself against Mediaweek's establishment voice — along with the broadcast-focused TV Tonight, the radio-focused Radio Today, and the general business press's media coverage. Among these, Mediaweek's distinction is its comprehensiveness: the only trade outlet systematically covering every sector of the Australian media business, from outdoor advertising to subscription television, with the ratings, readership and revenue data the industry runs on.

For more than three decades — 27 years in print, and digital since — Mediaweek has been where the Australian media industry reads about itself. In an industry defined by disruption, the trade publication that documented every merger, closure, launch and ratings war became, itself, a case study in adaptation: the print weekly that saw the digital future in its own Morning Report and followed it.