Annette Sharp: Nine stalwart John Westacott could be sexist and cruel

Newsreader Peter Overton may have teared up announcing the death of long-time TV exec John Westacott — but not everyone mourned the man who set a new low benchmark for propriety among Nine executives, writes Annette Sharp.

Media company Nine remembered former 60 Minutes executive producer John Westacott as an industry “giant” and “legend” last week, but the tears that threatened to spill onto newsreader Peter Overton’s news script during his tribute on Nine’s news bulletin on Monday night weren’t shared by all.

Women who worked under the routinely offensive Westacott during his days at the helm of Nine’s flagship current affairs program 60 Minutes, and afterwards as Nine’s news director, remembered a man who in 2008 set a new low benchmark for propriety among Nine executives when he told Nine reporter Christine Spiteri, who later sued Nine for unfair dismissal, she lacked “f**kability”.

Before this time he infuriated another senior woman reporter who applied for a job at 60 Minutes by telling her she wasn’t “film star” enough for the show.

“He told me ‘we like our reporters to look like films stars’,” the woman painfully recalled last week in a statement, revealed to be patently untrue when Paul Barry was recruited to the 60 Minutes stable in 2004.

Hollywood was a theme with Westacott, who liked to tell staff he ran his unit “like Hollywood … and I can do whatever the f**k I want with my stars”.

John Westacott certainly made headlines during his time with Channel 9.

For too long it seemed that he could, and while it worked for his favourites, others felt no love at all from the news boss who once cruelly dubbed one longtime Nine anchor the “fat cow”.

After one-time Nine chief executive David Gyngell doubled Westacott’s salary in 2002 after the restless executive used an offer from Channel 7 to leverage his position and salary (a manoeuvre later copied to great effect by Karl Stefanovic who, gosh, look at the time, must be due to repeat that play any day now), incoming and returning CEO Sam Chisholm was forced to take an axe to Westacott’s salary and bring it back down to size.

As well as being a sexist dinosaur, Westacott, who died of a suspected heart attack while sailing on Sydney Harbour last week, will also be remembered as the man who tried to shop Nine’s entire A Current Affair unit — complete with Jana Wendt as host and himself as EP – to Channel 7 in 1990, and the newsman who famously refitted his yacht Celeste on Nine advertiser Toyota’s dime at a cost of $60,000 in 1995 for a story about the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.

Finally put out to pasture in 2009, Westacott spent his last decade pursuing his beloved yachting.

Westacott was 73. He is survived by third wife Cecile and two adult sons.

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