CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
At 69 years of age, Betoota Heights resident Tony Brimson has seen a lot of changes in the way Australians consume media.
“Mate I remember when you’d have call a landline to get the exact time of the day” the semi-retired car salesmen tells our reporters.
“I was eating ice cream and milo when they transition from black and white to colour TV”
“I remember seeing Metallica complain that they were going to lose their hundreds of millions of dollars because my teenage sons figured out how to pirate music on Napster. Our Windows 98 was never the same after they accidentally downloaded 984 versions of Lose Yourself by Eminem”
But nothing has really surprised him like the most recent promotional campaign forced in front of him by this very newspaper.
“Oh it’s relentless. Surely I’m not the first to tell you that? Right?” says Tony.
“I get it. I get it. It’s a big deal. You’ve made the transition from print newspaper to the TV show producers. But Jesus, you might’ve mentioned it a few times”
Tony is of course referring to The Betoota Advocate’s new original content series with major global streaming giant Paramount+, a partnership that has resulted in Australia’s oldest newspaper taking a brief break from delivering hard and honest news – and instead begging their nearly 2 million social media followers to subscribe to the TV service and follow their journey into the world of television.
As a loyal reader of The Betoota Advocate, Tony says he and his mates are willing to cop this.
“Look I’ve endured worse. When they first started doing podcasts… That was a rather frustrating time as a Betoota reader. I had every fucking article interrupted by pop-up audioplayers blasting shit into ears”
“Or when they were whoring themselves on talkback radio to sell their books as Christmas stocking fillers. They’ve put us through worse, I can tell you that for free”
“This promotional campaign for The Betoota, is actually quite gentle. From what I understand, they’ve picked four controversial moments in Australia’s modern history and created a 45 minute episode on each. Complete with interviews, animations and their own narrating”
“I watched the first episode last night, on the Rise and Fall of Hillsong. Quite an interesting yarn, see there’s this bloke called Brian right, he runs the whole thing. Actually. Why am I bothering to tell you this? You created the fucking thing”
New episodes of The Betoota Advocate Presents appear on Paramount+ Wednesdays. Watch theme here!
