ARN boss Lauren Joyce let go amid Kyle & Jackie O crisis
A top radio executive has lost her job days after publicly backing Kyle & Jackie O, as the controversial show faces strict new broadcasting rules.
Three days after giving an interview in which she sought to bring calm following news the Kyle & Jackie O radio show had shed market share in both Sydney and Melbourne, ARN radio executive Lauren Joyce has been made redundant.
ARN CEO Michael Stephenson on Friday confirmed the media company was conducting a “restructure” of its “audience and content function”.
“ARN has been evolving its content operations since late 2022 as we continue to build a business that’s ready for the future,” Mr Stephenson said.
“As part of the next phase, we’re reorganising our audience & content function to separate our core content teams from the support teams, allowing us to focus more clearly on creating and delivering great content.
“This restructure includes the role of chief content officer, who will have sole responsibility for content creation and distribution.”
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As chief audience and content officer Joyce was tasked with creating and developing the strategy that would drive listeners to ARN’s suite of proven radio programs.
These include The Kyle & Jackie O Show on KIIS FM, and Jonesy & Amanda and The Christian O’Connell Shows GOLD.
In the latest radio ratings The Kyle & Jackie O Show saw drops in audience share in both Sydney (down 1.1 points to a still dominant 12.5 per cent audience share) and Melbourne (down 0.5 points to 5.5 per cent) and KIIS across the week drop to 9.3 per cent in Sydney while recording a slight lift in Melbourne to a still poor 5.2 per cent share.
By comparison GOLD’s Sydney breakfast team Jonesy & Amanda lifted by 0.8 points in Sydney to a resurgent 8.9 per cent share.
The overall result saw GOLD’s Sydney station finish only slightly behind its much better resourced KIIS stablemate at which ARN has thrown many millions in marketing dollars in the past 20 months in an attempt to bolster Kyle & Jackie O’s foray into the Melbourne market.
GOLD recorded a 8.7 per cent share compared to KIIS’s 9.3 share per cent.
News of Joyce’s axing comes a week after the national broadcasting authority ACMA set about imposing a new licence condition preventing the program’s hosts from using “strong and explicit sexual references” on their show for five years.
ACMA has furthermore requested an independent audit of the Kyle & Jackie O program’s contracts and internal governance after finding the program had on seven occasions breached decency rules under the Commercial Radio Code of Practice. ARN, which has been bleeding ad revenue thanks in part to an activist boycott, now has a week to respond to ACMA’s demands. Radio sources on Friday were unable to confirm who is in-line to replace Joyce as chief content officer with oversight of the looming crisis.
BERETTA’S SHOCK
Sunrise stalwart Mark Beretta is said to have been taken aback by the news his services were no longer required by Seven despite seeing his Sunrise commitments reduced to just two days a week at the start of the year.
Insiders claim the sports presenter’s sideline role as a social media influencer some time ago began wearing thin on his TV bosses.
Although broadly sanctioned by Seven, there are concerns among sales executives that some sponsored content that appears on the social media accounts of Seven stars may come at the expense to revenue that might normally flow directly into the traditional TV operation’s coffers.
Days before announcing his departure from the nation’s top-rating breakfast show Beretta was busy plugging a hotel chain affiliated with rock band AC/DC’s Australian tour.
Though the hotel chain is an established Sunrise sponsor, as too is a petrol distributor featured on Beretta’s Instagram page, there are plenty of others that don’t feature on Seven’s commercial partnerships register.
These include a car manufacturer, multiple holiday resort destinations and a whiskey brand, some of which don’t feature appropriate sponsorship disclosures as stipulated by competition watchdog ACCC.
Of course Beretta has also put his name to plenty of worthy charitable activities and promotions too, including cancer charity Tour de Cure, upon whose board Beretta sits.
Seven, we hear, has no plans to replace the sportscaster whose contract was slashed in recent years from about $350k per annum to $250k.
Sunrise host Matt Shirvington will instead conduct more of the sports interviews that once were Beretta’s remit.
Beretta’s departure meanwhile follows that of the man once considered his potential successor, the burly sports presenter Matt Carmichael who was let go in October.
Turns out Carmichael, who spent his last weekend on Seven’s books covering the Bathurst 1000, has been picked up by former Seven CEO James Warburton, now the boss of racing body Supercars Championship (formerly V8 Supercars).
Carmichael has been appointed director of communications and public relations for the automotive body.
He joins and answers to fellow ex Seven employee Charlotte Valente who departed her role as Seven’s chief marketing officer in December 2022 after a three-year term.
SINGO RECONNECTS WITH FORMER LOVE
Silver-tongued businessman John Singleton appears to have talked his way back into the affections of ex-girlfriend Yvette Hartman, aka The One That Got Away.
Fourteen years after they broke up, Hartman was at Singleton’s side in Sydney this week at a private reception in honour of touring actor Priscilla Presley.
The duo may have expected to go unnoticed in the southern Sydney suburb of Blakehurst on Tuesday.
It was, after all, an unlikely location for lunch with one of the most fascinating women of the sixties.
Singleton and Hartman would prove hard to miss in the private home of Doltone House owner and Biaggio Signorelli Foundation founder Paul Signorelli and wife Carmella, seated as they were at Presley’s table.
Also in attendance were benched Sydney neurosurgeon Charlie Teo and his partner vegan activist Traci Griffiths, former Sydney lord mayor Frank Sartor and ex NSW premier Morris Iemma.
An interesting assembly of Naked Gun fans if ever there was.
Some 90 guests took their seats in the host’s expansive lounge room to hear Presley, 80, take questions from Sylvia Jeffreys about the contents of her new memoir Softly as I Leave You.
Singleton and Hartman were originally in relationship for six years from 2005 to 2011.
Last year, days after Singleton moved out of the Killcare house he bought to share with Sarah Warry, his wife of less than a year, he arrived at the door of Face Mechanic makeup artist and cosmetics company founder Hartman, bearing gifts.
When this writer inquired at the time if Hartman had taken her former love back, she scoffed before replying: “Hey, I’ve read the form guide.”
In other words, no.
The fitness fanatic did agree however to work with Singleton to restore his health and fitness.
Twenty months on, Singleton is looking a decade younger than his 84 years and Hartman is looking like the one to watch.
Karl not drunk at TikTok awards
A media report claiming Karl Stefanovic sounded like a “drunk uncle” during an award presentation at Wednesday’s TikTok Awards has been rebuffed by his employer, Nine.
A spokesman refuted the claim Stefanovic slurred his words and was drunk when he took to the stage at Sydney’s newly named TikTok Entertainemnt Centre to present the award for Video of the Year alongside his Today co-host Sarah Abo.
Showing how out of touch he is with Gen Z, a sneaker and T-shirt clad Stefanovic attempted to fire up a flat crowd by inciting: “Make some noise if you’re gonna get poleaxed tonight and not turn up for work tomorrow …”
When the audience’s response failed to lift the roof, he pushed on with his boozy encouragement.
“As I always say at awards ceremonies, it’s best to drink responsibly but if not, get really poleaxed.”
Any response from the crowd failed to raise the needle on the TV coverage but then why would it?
According to recent data, Gen Zers are consuming less alcohol than previous generations as they prioritise their health and bank accounts over their need to party.
It’s something rum and beer spruiking Queenslander Stefanovic is apparently yet to clock.
FLICKERING LIGHTS GUIDE CHEZZI DENYER
Chezzi Denyer, former Channel 7 producer turned podcaster wife of game show host Grant, has a new job – as a psychic medium.
The mother-of-three took to social media this week to reveal she has spent eight months studying with a medium school in Canada and had graduated with a “certification in mediumship”
According to Denyer, who also has a book in the works exploring her spiritual awakening, she largely became aware of her intuitive gifts following the death of a friend in 2022.
Afterwards she started meditating and taking time out in nature and soon enough “weird things” started happening.
“Lights flickering on and off … birds flying into our windows, things would fall off the kitchen bench, books would fall out of the bookshelves,” Denyer said during a monologue recorded while at the wheel of her car.
While sceptics might suggest a bit of a tidy up of the kitchen bench and bookshelves might have been in order along with some shutters or window decals for the family home outside Bathurst, Denyer chose the road less travelled and enrolled in The Medium School in Canada.
The workaholic Denyers have spoken on the record about the health issues that have plagued them for the best part of two decades.
From his breaking his back in a monster truck stunt in 2008 while working as a TV weatherman on Sunrise to his post-injury dependency on prescription painkillers and chronic fatigue, to her mini-breakdown in 2012 and their joint rehab in a Thailand retreat.
Self-described “poetry alchemist” Chezzi, who also has a history of ADHD, PTSD and postnatal depression, is now studying for her doctorate of “Soul Life Psychology” while working as a medium and intuitive guide.
ABC’S MULTIVERSE IN DECLINE
In April of this year loyal ABC audiences were reassured its chairman Kim Williams knew his place, that he would not seek to influence management decisions within the ABC and that, in the managing director’s words, the “proper delineation of responsibility of board and management” would be observed.
This followed the Sandy “Austen Tayshus” Gutman fracas in which Williams was forced to admit having intervened by contacting the ABC’s radio chief Ben Latimer and criticising ABC staff for rejecting Gutman’s appeals to promote his pub tour on the radio network.
Yet this week, following news Latimer will replace departing ABC Sydney host Chris Bath with yet another white male Radio National recruit, Thomas Oriti, the question of Williams’ enduring influence was again raised.
Williams has previously revealed himself to be Radio National’s Number One Fan.
Radio National is many things – intellectual, analytical, worthy and aspirational – but popular it is not.
It is currently in fierce competition with struggling sports radio station SEN for the wooden spoon in the Sydney radio market race (the two stations tied with 1.2 per cent in the latest survey results released this week).
The ABC staff who perceived Williams’ fingerprints to have been on the decision to dump popular ABC Sydney Mornings host Sarah Macdonald in 2024 and replace her with Radio National’s Hamish Macdonald, fear the situation has bee repeated with Oriti.
Any way you look – and listen to it – the installation of Macdonald in the morning slot and Oriti at Drive suggests a serious change of tone and content at ABC Sydney, for decades a beloved community station.
Where once ABC Sydney sounded like a multiverse of characters – a dry comedienne, a maths-science boffin, a jazz nerd, a self-effacing writer, a passionate foodie and agriculturist, gardeners, bee keepers and endlessly engaged and concerned citizens – on Chairman Kim’s watch, the station looks to be increasingly turning into Radio National Lite.
Of course it will be Latimer who will ultimately be left holding the can just as his departed colleague Chris Oliver-Taylor was over the unnecessary sacking of Antoinette Lattouf.
Originally published as ARN boss Lauren Joyce let go amid Kyle & Jackie O crisis
