The Guardian·2026-03-03
Banijay Group to form £3.8bn television super-indie with The Traitors producersThe European maker of television shows ranging from Peaky Blinders to Big Brother is to merge with the UK super-indie behind hits including The Traitors to create a €4.4bn (£3.8bn) global TV production giant. Paris-headquartered Banijay Group, which last year considered making a takeover offer for ITV’s studio operation, has struck a deal to merge its TV production business with All3Media, which is owned by RedBird IMI. The new entity will be the world’s largest independent TV maker, combining Banijay Entertainment hits such as MasterChef, Survivor, Pointless, Hunted and Location, Location, Location with All3Media staples such as Midsomer Murders, Fleabag, Call the Midwife, Great British Menu and Race Across the World. Banijay and RedBird IMI, which is in the process of selling the Telegra
The Guardian·2026-03-03
Kyle Sandilands traded in shocking listeners. This time he was the one to get a shockThe Kyle and Jackie O Show was such a magnet for drama for two decades that when the end of the $200m dream radio partnership came – in the form of a nasty dressing down of Jackie “O” Henderson by Kyle Sandilands – many brushed it off as manufactured. But it was made startlingly clear late on Tuesday that Sandilands’ tirade 10 days ago, which was described by Henderson as “mean and nasty”, was the beginning of the end. Henderson walked off the show last week and lay low, while Sandilands told listeners she “wants a couple of days off to gather her thoughts” and would be back. Sandilands said on Tuesday he had written her a “love letter” and he was sorry. But the fight spelled the end of a highly lucrative partnership which had garnered a landmark 10-year media deal just two years ago. Sign
The Guardian·2026-03-03
MS NOW gains viewers after name change, but owner revenue declinesThe US’s biggest liberal-leaning network, MS NOW, has seen double-digit viewership gains since rebranding from MSNBC, the company’s CEO claimed on Tuesday. “Since the rebrand to MS NOW in the fourth quarter, that momentum has not only held, it has accelerated with double-digit growth in total viewers since November,” said Mark Lazarus, CEO of MS NOW parent company, Versant. The network, home to Morning Joe and the Rachel Maddow Show, had been known as MSNBC since its launch in 1996, and early polling showed concern about the name change among viewers. Lazarus said that MS NOW’s most passionate viewers watched between eight and nine hours per week, “which is the second highest engagement across the entire media TV landscape”. Versant, which formed earlier this year after NBCUniversal spun o
The Guardian·2026-03-03
Kyle and Jackie O’s controversial breakfast radio show taken off air after hosts fall outThe $200m Kyle and Jackie O Show has been taken off the air and Kyle Sandilands accused of “serious misconduct” after Jackie Henderson told the Australian Radio Network she could no longer work with her on-air partner of 25 years. “The KIIS breakfast show will be taken off-air effective immediately, with interim arrangements made for the show,” ARN said in a statement to the ASX. Late on Tuesday, ARN said Henderson had given notice that she “cannot continue to work with Mr Kyle Sandilands”. Her $100m contract, signed in 2023 for a decade of breakfast shows, has been terminated just two years in. Sign up: AU Breaking News email The network said it had also provided written notice to Sandilands stating that it considered his behaviour during the show “an act of serious misconduct which is in
The Guardian·2026-03-03
Telegraph censured for story of fictional family’s struggle to pay school feesThe Telegraph has been reprimanded by a press standards watchdog after it published an entirely fabricated story about a wealthy banker complaining of the impact of school fee increases. Ian Fraser, a freelance journalist and author, complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) that the Telegraph had breached the editors’ code of practice in an article headlined: “We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays.” The article, published online only on 25 May last year, reported on the impact increases in private school fees had had on a named couple and their three children. The story explained how the investment banker Al Moy, 38, and his wife, Alexandra, had a joint salary of £345,000 with two children at fee-paying schools. It said th
The Guardian·2026-03-03
Drusilla Beyfus obituaryTo break into Fleet Street’s national newspapers, the top tier of journalism, by the age of 21, without nepotism, patronage or a web of personal contacts, was remarkable in the 1940s, and it was downright astonishing for the upstart to be female. But Drusilla Beyfus, who has died aged 98, made it on to the Daily Express in 1948, game for anything, such as charming her way on to an RAF plane airlifting coal to the Soviet-blockaded city of Berlin. She landed smudged but triumphant. She had been in print since 17, and remained in it almost to her death. That foreign assignment was a 40s “plucky girl reporter” stunt, but Beyfus’s jobs became both more domestic and more glamorous after, tracking women’s roles in newspapers and magazines. They gave her access to observe modes and manners in a Br
