Nerves abound at Seven as James Warburton returns home
As Warburton returns to Seven, the men who testified on behalf of Seven in his 2011 legal battle against the network, now find themselves answering to him
Historical revisionism — that’s how James Warburton’s barrister, John West QC, summed up the testimony of some members of Seven Network’s senior management team in the NSW Supreme Court in 2011 after the network launched legal action to delay the move of Seven’s then sales and digital chief to rival Ten as that company’s CEO.
In a bruising battle that left casualties on both sides and resulted in the court delaying Warburton’s move to Ten by six months rather than the 15 months originally sought by Seven, Seven’s chairman Kerry Stokes earnt the ire of Warburton’s counsel after telling media at a shareholder meeting “Warburton ... may have embellished upon the truth”. Seven’s then boss, David Leckie, was described by the presiding judge as “like Caesar … not ready to go” (and relinquish his job to Warburton) and found to be not “persuasive” in his testimony.
Other senior Seven executives, including current revenue office Kurt Burnette (the man who, up until Friday, many believed would be Seven’s next CEO) and current commercial director Bruce McWilliam, were, the judge said, “uniformly supportive of their employer’s case”, a position that might be expected if they hoped to keep their jobs.
Now with Warburton’s homecoming to Seven — something he said was not on the cards when this writer called him in 2017 — the men who testified on behalf of Seven in that case eight years ago find themselves answering to him. It’s a situation that was making many nervous on Friday following news Warburton had replaced Tim Worner as Seven CEO at a network where morale is poor thanks to the events of recent years, including revelations — discovered by this writer — of Worner’s extramarital affairs with former company PA Amber Harrison.
Not only is Warburton inheriting a media company whose share price is wallowing at an all-time low of 37c — it was worth $5.35 in January 2011 before the expensive legal battle against Warburton played out — he is also inheriting a company wasting precious resources putting out fires on several fronts while governance and management issues continue to pile up. Among them:
● The arrest last month of Seven’s former commercial director of programming John Fitzgerald for allegedly misappropriating some $8 million of company money over a 14-year period. Seven has been waging a legal battle against Fitzgerald since 2016 following a company audit.
● Seven’s implication in the investigation of former Tennis Australia directors Harold Mitchell and Steve Healy by Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) over the allocation of the tennis broadcast rights to Seven. ASIC alleges the directors failed to disclose the interest of other parties in bidding for the broadcasting rights and the court has heard Mitchell made repeated unauthorised calls to Kerry Stokes’s right-hand man Bruce McWilliam during negotiations. Mitchell and Healy have denied any wrongdoing.
● Seven executive and Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith, has spend the past year defending a series of articles published by Nine (formerly Fairfax Media) that portrayed him as a war criminal, a bully and domestic abuser, making him the subject of a long-running inquiry. Roberts-Smith, personal friend of Seven chairman Stokes and Stokes’s appointee to Seven Brisbane, vehemently denies the claims and is suing the media company Nine for defamation.
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● Reports relations broke down between Seven’s news bosses and outgoing CEO Worner, stalling the network’s decision to drop the axe on Seven’s expensive flagship current affairs program Sunday Night — from which executive producer Hamish Thomson was sacked in June after he allegedly told a staffer she “needed a good f...” — and resurrect weeknight current affairs program Today Tonight in the eastern states.
● Reports relations between Worner and programming bosses broke down in recent years with programmer Angus Ross frustrated by ex-programmer Worner’s management style.
● The personal health crisis that has engulfed network star Andrew O’Keefe, host of Seven’s top-rating news lead-in The Chaser, forcing him to take time out for rehabilitation and threatening the future ratings dominance of the critical program.
● The loss of the tennis rights to new media behemoth Nine.
● The release of Seven’s results this week which inside sources say will be more bad news for the company ripe for takeover.
Warburton, whose reported $1.3 million salary is half that of Worner’s, has his work cut out for him.
annette.sharp@news.com.au
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