Greg Tingle official blog: 2009

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Monday, December 28, 2009

Media Man Website Network Updated

Websites

Media Man

Media Man International

Media Manager

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Friday, December 04, 2009

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Friday, October 09, 2009

Media Man Australia Website Network Milestone

Media, publicity and portal development company, Media Man Australia, is delighted to announce its latest in a series of significant milestones.

Media Man Australia has expanded its network website portfolio to 15 websites, headed up by flagship website portals www.mediaman.com.au, www.casinonewsmedia.com and www.australiansportsentertainment.com

The latest website portals to be launched by Media Man Australia are Global Gaming Directory, Multi Currency Casino, Hollywood Slot Games and Cleopatra Slot News.

As part of Media Man Australia's global strategy and coverage of the casino, hotel and resort sector the company is also building up a Global Gaming Directory, World Casino Directory and World Gaming Directory. These will link into a Multi Currency Casino interface.

In addition MMA is the owner and operator of over 25 website domains covering the media, publicity, lifestyle, gaming, tourism and financial sectors.

The Media Man Australia website network attracts approximately 3 million hits per month and the Media Man Australia company website is in the Hitwise Australia top ten (entertainment category).

Some of the key brands Media Man Australia and its ever growing website network have worked with include PartyGaming - PartyCasino - PartyPoker, Virgin Games - Virgin Casino, William Hill Online, Playtech, Casino Rewards - Captain Cooks Casino, InterCasino - Marvel Entertainment, 888, PKR, Centrebet, Betezy, World Poker Tour, The Bingo Affiliates, Vegas Partner Lounge, Aspinalls, Titan Casino, Titan Poker, BetUS.com, Play4Property.com, PropVid, Virgin Blue, Webjet, Wotif, Foxtel, DGM, Ruby Rabbit De Nom, Universal Peace Centre Retreat, Richard Bradley Productions, Maxx-G Aerobatics, Messages On Hold, WWE Shop, UFC Shop, and the Australian Stunt Academy.

Media Man Australia enjoys supporting worthy community initiatives and some of its favorite charities and community minded organisations include Virgin Unite, beyondblue, The Shane Warne Foundation, The Salvation Army, Variety, Barnardos, Earth Hour, Climate Action, Sea Shepherd and Friends of Bondi Pavilion.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Media Man Australia Profiles Updated

Casino

Games

Slots

Sports Betting

Movies

Media Companies

Australia

Travel and Tourism

World Directory

World Casino Directory

World Gaming Directory

Global Gaming Directory

Media Man Australia News

News

Entertainment News

Technology News

Sports News

Financial News

Media News

Property News

Community News

Casino News

Online Casino News

Global Gaming News

Poker News

Website

Media Man Australia

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Friday, September 18, 2009

Monday, September 14, 2009

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Media Man Australia Website Network Updated

Websites

Media Man Australia

Media Manager

Casino News Media

Australian Casino News

Property News Media

Monday, April 27, 2009

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities to Employ Gambling Theme - Gambling911.com - 12th February 2009

Gambling911.com has learned that upcoming episodes of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities will feature "some casino and gambling themes". The show's second season was the highest rated launch in Australia's history.

George Freeman, played by Peter O'Brien, ran a number of Australian casinos (gambling houses... "with no name" and unadvertised, sort of the opposite of casinos to that of the James Packer's Crown Casino (which is all above board and advertised, mainstream and is legal etc).

As we have come to learn, the world of casinos and bookmaking in Australia is quite fascinating to say the least, and this should play in superbly with the Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities theme.

Media man, Greg Tingle gives us a taste of the old school gambling lifestyle in Australia:

"My grandfather, Eric Fraser Cameron Tingle ran a SP bookmaker operation from Newport Beach plant nursery which also doubled as a barber shop... tripled as a SP hangout. Today Newport Beach TAB is next door. A decade ago I used to regularly have a punt at the TAB with the late, great (and notorious) Big Time Bristow.

"I caught up with Tim at his home at Newport, just around the corner from my old home at Pittwater, 3 weeks before Tim's unfortunate (and natural) death. I pointed to Chris Master's book entitled 'Not for publication' and the chapter entitled, Guilty Buildings'. I recalled to Tim, ‘That's you isn't it Tim?' TB replied, ‘You nailed it in one Greg'. That's the scoop... its never been published or put in the public domain before." (Credit: Gambling911.com)

Media Man Australia Profiles

Underbelly

Network Nine Australia

"Big" Tim Bristow

Australian Casinos

Casino News

Australian Casino News

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Online Gambling Heating Up in Australia - Gambling911 - 6th February 2009

The online gambling industry is really starting to get hot in Australia it seems.

The land down under is seen as the land of opportunities, but it is often forgotten by the folks up north. That's not so much the case with the online gambling sector. Last month we watched with excitement as the Aussie Millions Poker Tournament turned out yet another millionaire. It's now among the most popular live tournaments in the world today.

Many of the world's top online casino brands have been doing the ring around down under to see what media, PR, spin and online exposure mileage they can secure in the land known to be settled by convicts, back in the days when Captain Cook set shore and 1000s of Aboriginals were murdered in the progress.

Well known media analyst and entrepreneur, Greg Tingle of Media Man Australia is taking his share of the phone calls and letters of enquiry.

"We're been doing business with some some of the world's top online casino brands for a number of years now... Virgin Games, PKR, 888, WPT and Betfair. Recently the amount of enquiries coming in has been huge," Tingle told Gambling911.com Friday. "We've locked down business deals with PartyPartners, Slotland, JackpotCity, The Bingo Affiliates, BetCruise, and recently we joined our mates down the road here at Bondi Beach... Rewards Affiliates.

"Captain Cooks Casino has been hugely popular, but I haven't figured out whether it's the Bondi Beach locals or international whales coming to our region to check out the bronzed Aussies. We were privileged to spearhead the Ezybet sports betting media and publicity campaign which attracted major Australian and international interest."

Most of the excitement centering around the Australian sports betting sector has to do with deals being reached with the NRL (National Rugby League).

"The NRL (National Rugby League) is like a religion in Australia, and punters love having a punt," said Tingle. "The massive campaign was impossible to miss, and sources at the NRL are even looking at following some aspects of the TitansBet (Gold Coast Titans) business model".

Tingle also says, "There was also good interest by worldwide online casino entities to penetrate Australia, but the Ezybet exposure and worldwide story has really lit a fire under the industry."

More online casinos and poker sites will be entering the Australian market in the coming months, Tingle advised. (Credit: Gambling911)

CAP Down Under A Great Success - iGaming Business - 19th December 2008

Leading online marketing resource and community website for Internet casino affiliates, CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com (CAP), has announced that its first-ever CAP Down Under event in Australia was a resounding success.

The four-day affiliate marketing conference was held over the last week of November at the five-star Shangri-La hotel in Sydney and saw 180 people attend. CAP stated that 80 percent of attendees were Australian while 66 percent were affiliates and that the event was organised partially in response to requests from members of its CAP Forums, a highly trafficked social networking community administered from its main site boasting almost 8,000 members, an industry-leading figure.

“This was an incredible event, CAP Down Under attracted a ton of participants from all over the world,” said Alex Pratt, the event’s organiser.

“From the opening party sponsored by RewardsAffiliates.com in the Opera Bar with its stunning views of Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House to the attendance of Australian Boxer Jeff Fenech who played heads-up poker against the delegates for prizes, there wasn’t a dull moment. And with a huge variety of experts in the affiliate marketing and search engine marketing fields, there was no shortage of informative discussion either.”

CAP Down Under was the first Australian iGaming affiliate marketing conference in history and saw leading exhibitors from all over the world including ReferBack.com, CanBet/IAS, CentreBet.com and 888.com.

“The team at CAP Down Under have done awesome,” said Greg Tingle from Media Man Australia, a participant who also served as a moderator while assisting with coordination duties.

“It’s been a great conference. Some of the stuff that we’ve seen, slots and poker and search engine news, it was very impressive and I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about CAP Down Under here in Australia.” (Credit: iGaming Business)

Ferguson dumped as Nine scrambles for No. 1, by Conrad Walters - 12th January 2009

The Nine Network, conceding the need to rebuild its 6pm news bulletin if it is to have any hope of dethroning Seven's ratings supremacy, has dumped the newsreader Mark Ferguson in favour of the 60 Minutes journalist Peter Overton.

Last night it began trumpeting the journalistic background of its new frontman, who claims ownership of the anchor desk at Channel Nine tonight, with Mark Ferguson remaining as reader of the weekend news.

The promotional shots featuring footage of Overton in some of the world's hot spots is a clear attempt to distinguish him from Seven's frontman, Ian Ross, also a former Nine news reader.

Media analysts yesterday gave the network cause for optimism, saying Overton was likely to be well received and respected.

"For Nine to start to get a bit of traction of Seven, this is where they've got to make the inroads," said an analyst at PHD, Barry O'Brien.

"They've given Mark Ferguson the opportunity. It hasn't quite worked out. So I suppose in 2009 you've got to try things. Overton's got appeal, [but] television is always a roll of the dice."

Another media analyst, Greg Tingle, agreed that Overton's appeal would help Nine. He predicted an initial boost as curious viewers tuned in. He believed that community work done by Overton and his wife, Jessica Rowe, would extend the appeal.

"I would definitely expect the ratings to boost up, and I think the Australian public is ready for the change," Mr Tingle said.

The move was a "calculated risk", he said of the station that once seemed unassailable in the ratings. "Because, let's face it, Channel Nine can't afford too many more stuff-ups."

Nine Network executives yesterday stressed Overton's journalistic credentials. "[Overton] is the undeniable choice for us," said the director of news and current affairs at Channel Nine, John Westacott.

For the past eight years Overton has been a presenter on 60 Minutes, where he has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Indonesia and as anchor of the September 11 coverage in 2001. He will continue to file stories for the network's flagship current affairs program.

The change in personnel is directed at Channel Seven, where Ian Ross has consistently won the 6pm competition for viewers. "As commercial television always is, we're locked in a very demanding fight for ratings," Mr Westacott said.

"The combination of Peter Overton and Mark Ferguson gives us the best crack at rebuilding our 6 o'clock news." (Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)

Strong local content, by John Elder and Tom Reilly - The Sunday Age - 5th October 2008

Cheap and nasty — and even worse, boring — is what Australian-made free-to-air television was looking like for a few years. Big Brother with its turkey-slapping pants down was probably the lowest point … along with that great trite hope of locally made drama, The Alice, a pretty-looking stinker with its travelogue photography and toothless characters born from a drongo dreaming.

"It was looking pretty ordinary for a while," says commentator Greg "Media Man" Tingle. "But what a difference a year makes. We now have what's almost an epidemic of Australian-made shows. Just look at Underbelly on Nine, Rush on Ten, and Packed to the Rafters on Seven. They're mixing it with the best foreign imports and coming out on top.

"There are so many quality shows being produced, it's hard to keep up with them."

Tingle says the unsettled mood of the free-to-air networks during the late '90s and early 2000s — unnerved by the threat of cable TV and the internet revolution — has been turned around such that "there's a feeling we're entering a golden age of Australian television".

Seven's homey sitcom Packed to the Rafters has been watched by an average of 2 million viewers since it debuted Tuesdays at 8.30pm just after the Olympics. Many of those viewers stay tuned for the enduring hospital soap All Saints. Seven is also quite gleeful about the 1.6 million who regularly watch Monday's gritty City Homicide.

At Nine, where the ratings are sustained right now by endless repeats of Two and a Half Men, the good ship Sea Patrol held its own in the first half of the year with more than 1 million viewers. And we learned that almost 600,000 Victorians had not yet downloaded Underbelly illegally when they tuned in to the first pixellated episode last month; add them to the million interstate viewers who watched in April, and it may have earned back its legal fees.

While the two newest cop dramas, Nine's The Strip and Ten's Rush, are struggling, the numbers show that Australians have rediscovered the habit of watching dramas with a local accent.

The turning point came a year ago, Tingle says, with the return of David Gyngell to the helm of Channel Nine. "What the Australian networks desperately needed was a creative boost to competition," he says. "Without a strong Nine asserting itself, the industry doesn't flourish. The other thing that's happened is the networks have stopped just looking at numbers and started focusing on quality. That's what healthier competition has achieved."

Dr Vincent O'Donnell, an honorary fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's School of Applied Communication, agrees Australian TV has had a resurgence in the past year as a result of increasing competition between broadcasters.

"Historically, Channel Nine was always regarded as the home of well-written drama shows that were well-received by audiences, while Seven liked to consider itself as the broadcaster which excelled at sports," he says. "But a few years ago those perceptions started to change as Nine faltered. I believe when they commissioned Underbelly, it was probably as a result of that shift. It was an attempt to reassert themselves in this area of fast-moving, well-written drama."

O'Donnell says commissioning a big-budget program such as Underbelly "is a gamble for networks but one which hopefully they'll continue to make.

"A big-budget drama like that would cost … $300,000 to $400,000 for an hour of television. If a network bought a drama in from America, they'd probably get something for little more than a tenth of that. But it's important to remember that Australian audiences have always tuned in to these well-written locally produced shows, so hopefully networks will have to keep investing in them, even if they do cost a lot."

According to Geoff Brown, executive director of the Screen Producers Association of Australia, the Underbelly strategy was the result of a change in attitude to project financing by the major industry players. "A few years back, the Film Finance Corporation made a decision it would invest in 13-part Australian mini-series, along with the network licensees. What it did was ramp up budgets and led to shows like Underbelly, with substantially better production values and better writing.

"In film production, the critical relationship is between producer and director; in television, it's between producer and writer. We have very good writing teams in television, and certainly the investment in writing is one of the main reasons why the current crop of Australian productions are doing so well. A good idea doesn't work without good writing."

Brown points to programs such as The Circuit, Rush, Sea Patrol and East West 101 as examples of good writing translating to success with viewers and critics. "We make the best drama for the cheapest dollar anywhere in the world. We have to compete with the CSI franchise, which costs … $5 million to $6 million an hour to make. For the high-end of Australian drama, you're looking at $600,000 an hour … so our stories have to be more narrative-driven."

Brown says Australia has a history of producing good television "but the networks lost their way in the '90s and early part of this millennium. They backed away from Australian drama in particular and put their focus on infotainment and reality programming. They kept serving up more Big Brothers and in the end this didn't work for the networks. The audience has shown itself to be more sophisticated … and now Seven and Nine are re-establishing their brands on the back of good old Australian drama."

Some analysts point to a lack of quality programs from the US — a result of the writers' strike that crippled Hollywood — as a key reason behind the resurgence of Australian-made drama.

"This makes our local offerings even more appealing," says one industry insider. "There was also a hiatus where few local programs were being made, so again, when new ones came around, there was even more interest in them.

"The shows are actually good. The networks have invested heavily in them: probably figuring that they have to meet their local content quotas, they might as well invest and do it properly. The scripts and the acting have reflected this willingness to take it seriously and make hits."

And that added slice of healthy self-image — attributed to the efforts of former prime minister John Howard — is another reason audiences are keen to watch shows for Australians, by Australians, about Australians.

"We're not selling shrimps on the barbie any more," says Greg Tingle. "We're a more sophisticated society and our television programs demonstrate that.

"Our locally made shows are hot exports in their own right, and they help sell the country. Our entertainment is part of the tourism spiel … the rest of the world sees us moving ahead with quality. The confidence for that was certainly bolstered under the previous government."

Jonathan Nolan, chief executive of Pisces All Media, which runs the Hottest on TV website, agrees. "No matter what else you might say about him, John Howard made Australians feel great about themselves. It really started with the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but Howard actually presided over a cultural shift that saw the death of the cringe factor — the adolescent craving for approval from America and Britain," he says.

"Even the dumbest talking-heads on TV have the confidence not to cringe and fawn all over celebrities visiting from overseas. Compare that to the old days, with Molly Meldrum constantly saying how wonderful it was that such-and-such a pop star was in the country."

Nolan says evidence for this new-found confidence can be seen in private investment in television production. "We had a sheltered workshop here, where everything was driven by government grants. All that did was compomise quality. That's no longer the case. People invest in these shows because they believe in them, not just because they're getting a tax break …

"The pay-off is that we now perform extremely well on the overseas market. You get a show selling well overseas — like Stingers or Police Rescue — (and) you have an earner for life. At the Roma Fiction Fest (a television awards and buying festival) in July, there were buyers from all over Europe looking at the Australian shows with the greatest interest.

"The Italian shows looked like something from the '70s … they were desperately clinging to their own culture, while the Australian shows were more sophisticated and well-placed for the international market."

Dr Sue Turnbull, co-ordinator of the Media Studies Program at La Trobe University, says the Australian push into the global market was pioneered in the '80s by Neighbours, Home and Away and older programs such as The Sullivans and Prisoner. One British critic whinged at the time that UK television was overrun by Australian content. "There were 11 different Australian soap operas being shown on British TV in a week," says Turnbull.

In the '90s, the Australian invasion died down such that only Neighbours and Home and Away held a significant audience. We were making some good shows, but the Brits weren't interested. "There was the great failure of Sea Change to find a market in the UK. It never got a release."

Now, Aussie producers are deliberately targeting the global market ahead of local viewers. A second series of Sea Patrol was planned ahead of the first series release, with a view to an international release — which it gained through Hallmark.

Turnbull says that the later episodes of Kath & Kim were blatantly written for the UK, featuring appearances by Kylie Minogue "and the fellows from Little Britain".

While Australian-made "usually goes well at home — from the days of Graham Kennedy on IMT to Packed to the Rafters — audiences won't watch bad Australian TV. Like The Alice."

With MICHELLE GRIFFIN (Credit: The Sunday Age)