In this edition of On Background, the project that Foxtel burned $200 million on goes into “maintenance mode”, is “Murpharoo” coming back to grace The Guardian, and the ABC of hurt feelings.

The inside story of Foxtel’s humbling Hubbl fiasco

It all began with a lavish event overlooking the Opera House on Sydney Harbour in February last year, with News Corp execs, including global News Corp boss Robert Thomson, every Australian media competitor and a smattering of sporting execs, stars and TV talent all invited to marvel at the latest piece of media-tech innovation.

The product at the centre of the launch, Hubbl, was years in the making. Mysteriously named Project Magneto, the streaming device was hyped as the only thing you would ever need to watch TV. Sky News called it a “seminal moment in television”.

But just 18 months after the launch and $200 million later, Hubbl has been all but put out to pasture. Foxtel boss Patrick Delany last week confirmed the tap has been turned off and Hubbl was in “maintenance mode”.

There’s now a very arguable case privately being put forward by media executives: is this the worst product launch in Australian media history?

The Hubbl hubbub was entirely avoidable. Even as the device was being cooked up by Foxtel, the market was already awash with similar products – Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Amazon Firestick to name a few, along with a legion of connected TVs on offer for consumers.

Apple TV is so old that it could have had its driver’s license by the time Hubbl finally hit the market.

Foxtel also had the chance to go in with its minority owner Telstra to pick up a piece of Fetch TV (a very similar product to Hubbl) in 2022. The Telstra TV was on its way to be retired, and the telco needed a home for its 800,000 customers somewhere, so it spent $50 million on Fetch.

Foxtel declined to pitch in, instead partnering with Comcast and pushing ahead with Hubbl. The hubris at play isn’t surprising when you look at what followed.

Finally being launched in 2024, there was the iconic ad campaign. Radio duo Hamish Blake and Andy Lee were paid millions to become the face of the product and the “Every day I’m Hubblin” ad was endlessly mocked online and by ad specialists on Gruen.

In marketing, they say nothing kills a bad product quicker than good marketing, but in this case, it wasn’t the quality but the sheer volume of it. Tens of millions was spent flooding the zone with the ad campaigns, with News Corp’s papers forfeiting millions more in ad space to promote the Foxtel product.

The “stack and save” feature was billed as Hubbl’s key differentiator to fix blowing out subscription costs, but this was misleading as Hubbl offered only Netflix and Foxtel’s four streaming products as those you could save on.

To save, Hubbl-ers had to buy more Foxtel products. They even spun lifestyle shows such as Grand Designs out of Binge onto a new platform named … Lifestyle, alongside Kayo and Flash, a news streamer that was also in sunset mode by that point.

Even with the ad blitz in August last year, Delany admitted most Australians were “are still not quite understanding what it does”.

Then there are the retailers. The product was initially relying on retail sales through Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi, but within months Hubbl pucks were already on discount at half the price.

To top it off, the software itself got labelled a lemon if reviews are anything to go by.

Tech review website Trustpilot website gives it 1.2 stars out of five off 273 reviews. With rumoured total sales of around 80,000 units, Hubbl has been a humbling experience for Foxtel. No wonder its new owners DAZN moved swiftly to bring the whole chapter to a close.

Return of ‘Murpharoo’?

Speculation is running hot in the press gallery that journo-turned-spinner Katharine “Murpharoo” Murphy could be on for a grandstand return to The Guardian as a part-time columnist.

Guardian Australia this week stunned the federal press by promoting Tom McIlroy, five months after he was hired as chief political correspondent, the result of an HR brouhaha. He’s done a sturdy job and is a credible candidate for the top job, but still leaves them without a Canberra luminary in its ranks.

A weekly column from Murphy might just do that. She left the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in June and while On Background put the rumours to her this week, we didn’t get a response.

The Lyons Den

John Lyons, the ABC’s Americas editor and most senior reporter, is no stranger to putting himself in the line of fire. He has reported from war zones across the world and stared down ABC management over its independence, and this week made global headlines for questioning President Donald Trump on the White House lawn over his personal business interests.

Thankfully, politicians from across the board came out in support for Lyons and our own free press back home, from Anthony Albanese to David Pocock to Sarah Hanson-Young and Bridget McKenzie.

But there were a few who clearly want reporters to toe the line when it comes to Trump. Nationals senator Matt Canavan wheeled out the “not on my taxpayer dollars” line after being given plenty of airtime by the broadcaster himself this week, while Coalition colleague Sarah Henderson reckons Lyons’ questions were a threat to our trade, defence and national security prospects.

“Australians should expect the highest standards of our publicly funded national broadcaster,” Henderson said on X. We agree! And employing journalists who won’t toady up to Trump seems like a pretty good bang for our buck.

The ABC of hurt feelings

Back home at Ultimo, the ABC’s enterprise agreement with staff is set to expire in less than two weeks. With bargaining negotiations not really getting anywhere. The union continues to anonymously canvas its members around its offices for their main gripes, with job insecurity, racism, pay inequality and lack of progression all raised as issues.

But after management last month halted negotiations over some meme-laden posters, head of employee relations and safety Josh Keech wrote to the union this week to warn of the “psychosocial risk of harm” that could be caused by what he called its campaign to encourage staff to write anonymous messages to management.

A union gathering working condition gripes hardly feels like something management should be taking personally.

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