Review into handling of 60 Minutes child ‘retrieval’ in hands of Nine board
THE Nine Network’s internal review of 60 Minutes’ botched child “retrieval” story is complete — the results are in the hands of Nine’s board for its consideration.
Confidential
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THE Nine Network’s internal review of 60 Minutes’ botched child “retrieval” story is complete — the results are in the hands of Nine’s board for its consideration.
Once the six member Nine Entertainment Co board has considered the review which has been conducted by three current and former Nine staff, members including non-executive chairman Peter Costello, Nine CEO Hugh Marks and former CEO David Gyngell, are expected to meet to decide how best to formally address the crisis that resulted from an ill-conceived and produced story that humiliated the network, disgraced its once highly respected news division and cost the network upwards of $1 million.
While the cost to Nine, though great, is hard to measure, at 60 Minutes the cost is already being felt acutely.
Reporter Tara Brown, senior producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson and sound recordist David Ballment — dubbed affectionately in some Nine circles now as the “Beirut Four” — are still on leave following their release from jail and return home five weeks ago on April 20.
Without them, the program’s executive producer is struggling, say internal sources, with a lack of stories.
“A program such as 60 Minutes would usually have stories bedded down and planned weeks and months in advance, but now staff are being redeployed to fill gaps in the schedule,” said one insider.
As a result the program, which has been on air 37 years, is recruiting additional reporters from across other Nine programs to help cover the shortfall.
National Nine News anchor Peter Overton filed the report Sisters First, Rivals Second on swimming siblings Cate and Bronte Campbell for Sunday night’s program.
Today host Karl Stefanovic has been pushed into action.
Last week a tribute to deceased veteran 60 Minutes reporter Richard Carleton, who died 10 years ago, hinted that beleaguered new executive producer Kirsty Thompson is, said one, “literally scrambling” for content.
The mood in the little cottage next to the tower on the back of Nine’s Willoughby lot is, Confidential has learned, “awful.”
“Pregnant with dread,” a source told Confidential adding staff await a decision from the board on which of their number may be disciplined and sacked.
“The good ideas have quite literally dried up.”
Whether this is because new EP Thompson is now under huge pressure in what is only her fourth month in the job or because the program’s budget has been slashed after Brown’s report on Sally Faulkner’s broken family blew out with unrelated costs including a hefty compensation payment to Faulkner’s estranged husband Ali Elamine remains unclear.
The program’s ratings are also causing heartache.
The program has lost 19 per cent of its audience compared to this time last year.
The show is averaging 790,000 viewers (Five Capital Cities consolidated audience) per epsiode compared to 969,000 last year. These figures reflect a softening in ratings at 60 Minutes over two years. The show dropped more than 200,000 viewers in 2015, down from 2014’s 1,207,000.”
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