This is what the Flux. I'm Brett and I'm justin add. It's Monday, the twenty seventh of January. Jasey Boy nine Entertainment may have paid eighty five million bucks this year to get exclusive broadcast rights to the Australian Open, but it doesn't mean that AO can't use its own tracking data. Okay, get this. The OZ Open used tracking data to create Nintendo we Like animations of its tennis matches and this
went bonkers during the tournament. In fact, the first ten days of the tournament saw two point seven million viewers watch the animated OZ Open game set and Nintendo Wii. You can't imagine Nine's happy about this month the man Nah Flux fam. It is the last couple of days to dive into our academy for the month of January, called New Year, New Financially Savvy You. This month it's brought to you in partnership with UH and we'll help
you kick off the new year with a bang. Understand where your money's going, where it could be going to Make sure to download the Flux app and check out the academy this month. Three iconic stories Today Jazzy Boy, Let's do it for our first. Rivers, the iconic clothing and footwear brand will close all of its retail stores across Australia by mid April after it failed to find a buyer. Wow E feels like a pretty big name to go under be Man, So what is going on here? Well, Jaseyboit.
Rivers was actually founded back in eighteen sixty three as a shoe manufacturer and wholesaler. It opened its first retail store in Sydney back in nineteen eighty three when the police were singing every breath you Yep. They'd sell everything from hiking boots to mountain jackets to dress shoes and even Mick Jagger was a big fan of River and back in twenty thirteen, Rivers are sold to Specialty Fashion Group which is now called City Chic. But this is
where the decline really started. So Specialty Fashion Group then sold Rivers to Mosaic Brands for thirty one mil That's the company behind Tiny b Miller's, Rockman's Katies, all your old school fan favorites. But last year Mosaic collapsed and administrators came in to try and sell each of the brands individually. They closed down a range of them. Then Katie shut because they couldn't find a buyer, and now
Rivers is also shutting down. It's one hundred and thirty six store after failing to find a buyer, and about six hundred and fifty people will lose their jobs as well. So what is the key learning here? The retail industry is notorious for being one of the most challenging industries. It's heavily influenced by consumer trends, by economic cycles, and of course the rise of e commerce. In fact, Jazzy Boy.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, retail was one of the only two industries that saw a decline in the number of businesses in twenty twenty four, and the
other one was forestry and fishing. Now, for traditional brick and mortar retailers like Rivers, staying competitive means constantly changing with the times so that it be offering new products, keeping their prices competitive, and also being in the weird and wacky world of social media and branded We've also seen other large retailers close over the last twelve months,
haven't we, Joyboy. We've seen down Ley Sanity close their final stores as well as for a scarf they've been man Rivers's collapse reminds us that even established brands aren't immune to these pressures. For our second story, CNN is laying off six percent of its workforce after it continued to struggle with low TV ratings against more digitally focused news outlets. What the wolf Blitzer is going on here?
Man more so. CNN short for Cable News Network, is the multinational news outlet that was founded in nineteen eighty and b Man revolutionized the news industry because it was the first TV channel to provide twenty four hour news coverage. But as the name suggests, Cable News Network really specialized in being a cable news network, and as cable or
PATV has declined globally, so too has CNN's viewership. In fact, it had nearly sixty nine million TV households as subscribers in the US in twenty twenty three, but that was actually down nearly fourteen percent from two years earlier and b Man. CNN has now worn that it will cut six percent of its workforce as part of plans to
reshape its business to be more digitally focused. YEAP, CNN is planning to create a digital product that will allow viewers to stream the channel through multiple online platform In short, b Man, CNN has finally realized that it needs to shift its focus towards the platforms and products where their audiences are moving to, or they risk falling even further behind. So what is the key learning here? Digital transformation is essential for legacy media to stay relevant. We've seen audience
habits shift significantly over the past decade. Yep. Even a decade ago, consumption of news was typically from a newspaper or broadcast TV, but now news is consumed on demand on mobile and even through social media platforms. In fact, about a third of American adults say they regularly get their news from Facebook and YouTube according to Pew Research. And here in Australia, twenty percent of people say that
social media is their main source of news. So for CNN, this means leaning into a brand new focus of cutting costs in traditional areas while investing heavily in digital growth. For our third and final story, open Ai, the creator of chat GPT, has launched a brand new product called Operator that can perform tasks for you autonomously. First to write your work presentation, then it literally does your job for you. Things can keep it scary up here, be man,
so tell me more well, Jesse boy. The open ai became a household name back in twenty twenty two when it launched the first public version of chat GPT. It was a major breakthrough in AI because it allowed everyday folk like you and I to actually engage very easily in conversational AI. And we know since then the AI industry has completely exploded. Yeah, with Admeta and Google and Ali Baba, Amazon, Microsoft and every single other tech company
under the sun try their luck and get involved. But now OpenAI has announced it's launching a new product called Operator, which is a general purpose AI agent that means it can take control of your web browser and actually independently perform action. For example, you could tell Operator to plan you a date night with your partner and then book it in, or you could tell it to purchase that shirt that you've been eyeing as soon as it goes
on sale. The idea is that it's basically your personal assistant, and the man AI agents have been pitched as the next big thing in AI, so this will be the first major test to see how real that actually is. Quite huge, Jazzy boy, so tell me, what is the key learning here? AA agents could be moving from assistance to replacements. Let's be real, we've all heard the fear mongering that AI is coming for our jobs, and to be honest, so far it hasn't really come to fruition yet.
But with the rollout of AI agents you can see how it could start to take on a whole range of human tasks. And the Man Salesforce reckons that teams using AI see their sales grow seventeen percent more than teams not using AI agents and juse boyd this is
really just the beginning. Yeah. The global AI agent's market size was valued at three point eighty six billion US dollars in twenty twenty three, which feels kind of small, but it's expected to grow at forty five percent each year to twenty thirty so juse boy will be interesting to see how quickly consumers take up operator and whether
it can book my eurotrip for me, Sam. We are giving away big, big prizes in the Flux Academy this month, all focused on kicking off the new year with a bang, so make sure to download the Flex app and check out the academy this month. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on Wednesday.