The Chaser Report - Frankly, IDGAF | John Delmenico

Episode Date: October 23, 2022

Head of Zoomer Marketing at Chaser, John Delmenico, has developed a new perspective on why young people shouldn't be allowed in the media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. I'm Charles Firth and with me today is Domite. Correct. And John Delmenico. Hello. The new chief content, delivery, quality, comedy, CEO, head of marketing, etc. at the Chaser.

Yeah, this is like my 10th job with the Chaser. So far, none of them have involved. like a pay rise. Do we pay you? I think three of them involve the word manager. I've gone from a correspondent to an intern, which is a town. That's because you wanted to be. Yeah, that is because I wanted to be.

How many people as a manager do you manage? Theoretically, I'm supposed to manage the marketing, but so far nobody who we've asked to actually like, at least tell me when they're going to market something has done that, which is why we've changed my role name, is that it just didn't work because when we tried to have me managing one person. I liked it.

And that one person being Charles. Yeah, and I'm, I don't take direction. I like that the way the chase has evolved over the years is to not only become a comedy producing organization,

but also a joke of an organisation. Come on today not to talk about my new role. That's probably good. Yeah. I'm talking about a different issue in my career, which is that, so for a lot, anyone who's read the shot last year because I haven't bothered doing it this year,

there was a period where I was doing youth issues at the like problems at the shot yeah and during it does i was calling for there to be more uh youth journalists because from gen z at the time there was like four of us there was me friend of the show leo puglisi uh lavender badge and then jasmine pool all four of us as respected as each other in the industry no problems clearly respect is a very yeah strong word no no he said as respected yeah right yeah um it's a scar that goes from zero to one you're as respected as a 14 year old school boy. Yeah, yeah, okay.

But then the problem's been that the other outlets have actually hired more Gen Z. Like people like Billy Fitzsimons, who's already an editor. Because like she worked up to doing that, which is unfair because what about the rest of us who didn't work up to doing that? Yes. And then a bunch of other places like The Guardian recently hired some young people as well. And then all of them immediately are now doing like TV, other podcasts, and Triple J. And I've missed out.

Oh, no. So in me... You've become the... Dom of the next generation. Were you not full? Did you, at any point, think that working for the Chaser in 2022 would lead to glory an opportunity? Isn't the writing on the wall or rather on the website that doesn't make any money?

Yeah, I have made some, a lot of errors and then also thinking about it, I can't really beat those people in terms of, like, journalistic merit anyway. Well, I mean, Billy Fitzsimons is a great example. All you need to do to be Billy Fitzsimons, who I'm sure is wonderfully talented, just get Lisa Wilkinson and Peter Fitzsimons to adopt you. Yes. And that may help. I'm not saying she didn't, I'm not saying she didn't get there on merit.

No. Because she's from Gen Z, so I don't read her stuff or care. No. But, you know, that's one way to do it. Does she write about how she affords to rent her family mansion? Has she written an article, OMG, my dad's fucking bandana? Because I would read that. He doesn't wear that anymore, by the way.

He's embraced his baldness. I don't know exactly what the other's right. But I know most of it's good because from what I have seen. Okay. Because they've had career progression, is your point. Yeah. So, John, what is it, A, that you want and B, that you think there's any hope in hell that we can offer? Yeah.

How do you remake yourself to sort of be relevant to 2022? So I realized the thing that I was doing that no one else, that the others weren't doing because they were doing like proper journalism and fact checking was I was just like giving a youth perspective. But then I had a look at old media outlets and realized. I realized I was going from the wrong angle. No one wants to hear young people's perspectives on what young people are dealing with. Yes. They want to hear the perspectives that get, the boomers angry, and the boomers interested.

Yes. So I went through old media and started finding topics. I didn't even realize were issues for Gen Z. Right. So what you want is the boomer angle on Gen Z. Yeah. Yeah, right. So we don't actually want genuinely to know what you think or you're, or, you're

experiences are. No. We just want to know a bastardized sort of stereotypical version of it so that we can get angry. Oh, that works. I mean, I'm not a boomer, but I'm closer to boomers than I am your age, I think. So bring it on. When I thought boomer, I thought Channel 9 because they're the oldest, like they're

the highest average age of a TV host and the whitest. So that's where I found out for the Channel 9 papers about the threat to Gen Z called Fran Kelly. Oh, yes. There's this person called Fran Kelly who apparently is just going around stealing your young people's jobs. Yes. And she's causing us all to have issues

throughout an entire entertainment industry is all her fault specifically. Yes, because we shouldn't blame the systemic defundization of the ABC over the last 10 years. We shouldn't blame the fact that the government pulled $1.6 billion out of the ABC, which means that there's only one show left

on the ABC. Yeah. We should blame Fran Kelly for taking that one show from the Gen Z? Is that your argument? Well, that's the argument that the media's taken. So obviously, that's my argument. Yes, yes, good.

And because I was looking at it and I was confused because I was like, because I was like, oh, she's not going to bring in young audiences at 9.30pm on a Friday night. And I was like, 9.30 p.m. on a Friday night on the ABC is not really when I'll be thinking young people are going to be tuning in. Mind you, do you what? Chase has worn everything. Yeah.

That started in that time slot. It did start there. Yeah, I've learned that because that's in every single. article? Oh, really? But it only started there. It's only started there because they had the fat, which was quite successful, a sports comedy show.

And then Tony Squire, as a host of the fat, was poached by commercial TV to do a different show. And with the budget that they had, they got us to do the war and everything as cheaply as possible for the price of a fairly underpaid talk show. So that's the only reason. It was never a good idea to put us on on Friday night. It was just that was a slot that was. Although, just on Frank Kelly, what an amazing thing for a woman.

woman to have a talk show. That has literally never happened before in the history of television. That depends on the perspective. You look actually quite progressive in a weird way. Yeah, I saw that point because people got mad at ABC for this defence where somebody pointed out that she is the first woman over 60 to land a hosting gig like this in Australia. And that usually she would have just been kicked off TV by now. Well, she was kicked on to TV.

That's the weird thing. Yeah. But wait a minute. Where did you? Because it sounds, I mean, I'm not across the frame. controversy. Oh, there was one op-ed piece that I read that too.

And that was in nine. I would have thought that sounds like a Murdoch-style hit job, doesn't it? Like, because isn't the whole thing that the ABC can never do right? So if you design a show that will only be watched

in an old person's time slot and put an old woman in there to host it, then you're wrong because actually Gen Z should have had that slot. Or it should have had it somewhere else. So Channel 9 did multiple articles and a podcast episode about this issue like two months ago. Multiple, I've read one.

And then News Corp jumped on it. Wow. Which then led to Ida Butchro's responding terribly. Like she was like, oh, it's ages and we already give Gen Z enough content and give them enough opportunities as it is. If anything, we're giving them too many, it's time to give older people a shot. Yes, I agree. Yes. Like, at first I was like, that's silly, but now I obviously 100% agree.

Yeah, you know you agree with that. Oh, and then it kicked it off all again and now the show started. I love how, like, it's not the, actually, it's a systemic problem we shouldn't be fighting over the scraps. I love it how even the chairperson of the ABC, Ida Butros, can come through and have a really shit take. Yeah. Well, I must say, the idea that Jan Z would even want a TV show on many a television is bizarre. Like it's going, oh, would you young people like to work at the dinosaur? From there, I was like, because again, I was like, oh, I don't even know Frank Kelly existed.

What else were I not even missing out on because I'm not looking at that area of TV? This is the, this is the strange about the article. So many people who read that article would have been gone, Fran Kelly? Who's Frank Kelly? Like the woman who hosted R& Breakfast for, I think, 17 years was listened to by almost all the kind of top opinion makers in the country who run media organizations. But almost nobody else, right? Let's be, let's be frank. It's not, let's just speak frankly.

But I loved Fran. I know you did, because you run a media organisation. Oh, yeah, of course. Oh, yes. I'm a title of media. When all this went down, I asked quite a few people in my life what they thought about Frank Kelly and if they were fans. And the majority of them had never heard of Frank Kelly. Not only didn't listen to her, but the name meant nothing.

So does this suggest that we shouldn't be doing an entire podcast episode about Friend Kelly? No. I suggest that this is, I am trying to move away twice. Okay, let's move on. We only want to talk about Frank Kelly because we're part of the problem. Yeah, yeah. So from going from there, I learned, I was like, what else can I learn about issues facing Gen Z that Gen Z doesn't know about?

Yep. So then I went to Channel 10 because Todd Samson had a two-part documentary series on this issue and the internet. And it was great because I was almost immediately met with this. The earlier or younger that you start using the internet or using devices, more likely you are to be diagnosed with ADHD. That's an attention. disorder and that's increasing correlated with device use right so immediately that's very early in

their documentary which is a very quick like oh no gen z is getting ADHD from this except they said correlated there which is true that there is a correlation because correlations don't mean anything and this has already been proven wrong by scientists multiple times yes oh correlation in the sense of correlation is not necessarily causation that sort of correlation yeah so Like, there is a correlation, but at the exact same time. Yes, because what it's saying is that people who have ADHD really like their phones in the same way that people who have phones really like their ADHD. Yeah, but it's the same way that people who don't have ADHD also use their phones.

The Chaser Report, less news, less often. What scientists say the actual thing that's leading to this correlation, which they don't mention at all, is that alongside. this correlation is the other correlation that is probably the reason why the diagnosis has gone up by about 50%, which is that testing amongst women has gotten increasingly

better, because they went from not, believing that ADHD almost doesn't exist in females and realizing no, it's the same rate as men, and just changing the testing. And that led to a nearly 50% increase in diagnoses at the same time as that one, which

100% just makes sense of what it is. But you can, I realize this, the best way to talk about Zoomer issues is to just say things that might be true. Yes. And if you just don't assert it as a fact, that's fine. And if you use the word correlation, you can say anything. And then immediately, the whole documentary, they kept talking about how misinformation is rampant online

and people use fear to scare audiences for their own financial gain and keep it interested. While simultaneously saying, you probably have HD from your screens and watching this on. Okay. Yeah, so we'll listen to the next. next clip. I want to warn them to say, don't go on this site.

It's dangerous. It's filled with pedophiles and criminal activity. OnlyFans successfully blurs the line between online influencer culture and pornography, which is why it's growing in popularity amongst kids. Today, we're conditioned to salivate at the sound of a beat. Nearly half of replica's users now see their chatbot as a romantic partner. Did they? The scary part is, we're just at the beginning of what this technology will become.

Is this the Reverend Fred Nile? Can I also just point out, Todd Sampson, a bit young to be having a TV show. I think he's in his 50s rather than in 60s, but we'll let it pass. He's the new generation of TV presents. So what, so, what? So, yeah, so if you're wondering if he cited sources. So where is this airing this show? Channel 10.

This is a two-part documentary series that they've been advertising for literally months. Oh, and he moved from the ABC to Channel 10, which does. doesn't have as rigorous a fact-checking policy. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, so literally at no point throughout the entire two-part documentary does he cite a single source. Yeah, he just says things that are true. At multiple points, they have text come up on screen that have facts, but they don't source for that either.

So there was one that was like, there's one that said most Gen Z people's friends are strangers they've met online and they don't know, which there was, and they said that their source for that was most experts agree. So they're basically pulling like a nine out of ten dentists agree, which It's actually proven that most experts agree that saying most experts agree means that your claim is bullshit. Most experts say that. They also said like TikTok trends,

including the Cinnamon Challenge and Planking, are causing real harm. Planking? Yeah, two trends. Planking's good for you. Blanking something personal trainers get you to do. Blanking is a 10-year-old trend. It was a trend on YouTube and Facebook 10 years ago,

but they're citing it in this as a TikTok trend today. John, I think you've created a straw man here because doesn't Dodd-Sampson come from the advertising industry? Like, shouldn't we just not trust anything that he says anyway? Yeah, that is something they constantly push drags. Like, you can't trust anyone from the advertising industry. Including me. But the other thing I learned about how to do this type of journalism really well

is even if you don't get the information that you want from the person, you can just twist it in the edit. Like when he was talking to an only fan's girl, this happened. How much do you think loneliness plays a role? Oh, big one. In the customers. Yeah, the big one.

So in some ways, you are a kind of cure for loneliness for a lot of people. I can't tell but wonder, is it the cure or is it the cause? So the information he was given was that lonely men sometimes go to only fans to try to make a connection. But instead he twisted it into this weird in-cellar argument. argument that OnlyFans is turning men lonely. But I would also point out that if you're just listening to that, like when you're talking about OnlyFans, the phrase big one out of context really could mean anything.

So obviously, this is all really scary, but I found there's a whole other angle to Gen Z news that I hadn't even thought of, which is really happy news. Can I just, sorry, I'm just going to, did he happen to depict sort of sexy women as part? in part of his documentary. Like, was she on screen, chatting?

Yeah, he interviewed her and helped her shoot one of her videos. So there was a bit of prurion interest in Todd Samson. So you know what? I think, I think Lonely Men are tuning in to Todd Samson's documentary. Yeah. To just, because, and that's causing loneliness, John? Well, Charles, I'm surprised you're criticizing this because he said that people who are criticizing it just don't have kids,

so they don't understand what the problems are. but um but i've got kids yeah so moving on from the bazanas of todd sampson i have happier news that you can also use like pedestrian announced that climate change is sold and that we just never need to worry about it again you mean the nine in nine entertainment owned pedestrian yeah their youth brand yeah um have an article about how anthony albinisi has saved the day and how his climate policies are in line with the parish agreement and we never need to worry about it again with with an exact quote at the end of the article saying, if you've been feeling

way down by climate news, keep this bad boy bookmarked as a little reminder of what's on the way. We all need a bit of hope sometimes. This is why you don't want to work as the Gen Z or Z correspondent. Because you've got to use phrase like, phase like, keep this bad boy bookmarked.

Because I don't know if you, every time you read a youth writer, they can't write in normal language. They've got to use youth lingo to prove that it's, like pedestrian drives me nuts. It has also be a youth lingo that, convinces your older executives that you're using youth lingo. Yeah.

So you can't be actual youth lingo, which I wouldn't understand any of the words. Yeah. It's just things that, yeah, Peter Costello will think, oh, the youth site's being very youthy. Now, this might shock you. So I think that both pedestrian and New Daily do a lot is they do ad posts. So that this whole article about Anthony Albany's climate policy is paid for by our company.

Do you want to guess who's paid for this? Is it the Australian Labor party for any chance? No, it's Colgate. I was just going to say it was... What? I was going to say it's the coal lobby, but you're saying it's Colgate, as in the toothpaste manufacturer. This is the paragraph about Colgate. As much as we try our dandest make our individual habits more sustainable, blah, blah, blah.

Take Colgate, for example, knowing that over a billion toothpaste tubes are chucked out per year in the US, they've developed a recyclable tube. So we don't have to worry about the environment because Anthony Albanese is there, and we don't have to worry about our toothpaste tubes because Colgate's there. I have to worry about the journalism ethics, though. I'm not worried about that. From there, I looked at the other happy news for Gen Z,

which annoyingly seems to all focus around the metaverse, which is the worst thing ever. So they added legs in, and they've got under 200K users worldwide. I thought we'd already been established that the metaverse was a bad joke, which I could have told you, John, based on a little thing called Second Life, which came out about 20 years ago,

and was equally shit. Well, even worse than that is this headline. Samsung is bringing the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to Fortnite as it looks to connect to Gen Z in its latest move into the metaverse. Wow. So these are the happy stories.

And then there's this press conference that is real from Roblox. Hey, everyone. For those of you who may not recognize me as a Robloxian, I'm William White, chief marketing officer at Walmart. And welcome to Walmart land.

What? So, yeah, that's the chief marketing officer giving a press conference to one person inside of Roblox and saying, you might not recognize me in my Roblox form, but I'm the chief marketing officer of Walmart, someone who no one can recognize. Do you want to guess what Walmart land is? It's a giant Walmart store? We are so excited for you to explore and enjoy one of Walmart's newest digital experiences on Roblox, making the best of Walmart's aisles.

virtual. John, you know what? Back in the day, the ABC did try to reach young audiences. They did try to innovate. Did he try to get people like you with new ideas to do new things? And that led to the creation of ABC Island in Second Life, which is an island shaped like the ABC logo, which was quickly hacked.

And I think it was infiltrated with hardcore porn. And after that point, the ABC never, ever hired a young person to do anything ever again. And that's why you can't have a job. That's good, yeah. I mean, the whole segment has really given me a lot of more dread, except for the climate stuff, which I now know I don't have to worry about anymore. Which is, I guess, the main takeaway is, my life isn't going to be ruined by climate change now.

It's going to be ruined by literally everything else. I think that's, I'm with you on that. I think that's a good summary. I think that's a relatively optimistic and encouraging outlook for you, John, compared to continuing to work at the chaser. Our gear is from Road and we're part of the ACAS Created Network and we apologise to John. Okay, Puma.