TV and radio networks circle in-demand Bickmore
Carrie Bickmore is shaping up as the hottest signing of 2020 with television and radio networks clamouring for the star’s signature. But who’s actually after the popular host? Annette Sharp asks.
Opinion
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Carrie Bickmore is shaping up as the hottest signing of 2020 with television and radio networks clamouring for the star’s signature.
Bickmore was scheduled to meet with Ten bosses last week to ink a new contract and discuss her future with the broadcaster as co-host of The Project.
Meanwhile, radio network Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) has separately doubled its efforts to woo Bickmore to the breakfast slot on the embattled 2Day FM station claim station insiders.
Bickmore, who currently hosts a weekday drive radio program with Tommy Little from her Melbourne home town on SCA’s Hit FM, has been offered the struggling breakfast show on the network following the axing of breakfast team Grant Denyer, Ed Kavalee and Ash London in August.
SCA has failed to find a breakfast team to rival the success of Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O since the pair migrated to KIIS FM in late 2013. Bickmore is seen as their best chance to turn the breakfast show around.
And then there remains the approach from Ten’s rival Nine who sounded the star out to co-host its troubled breakfast show, Today, with Karl Stefanovic.
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Nine later denied The Sunday Telegraph’s report that Bickmore would join Stefanovic at the helm of Today in 2020, however this newspaper stands by the report and the claim, made subsequently in Woman’s Day magazine, that the approach to Bickmore came at embattled Stefanovic’s own suggestion.
All of which makes the courtship of Carrie the hottest game in town at the moment, a fact that is creating headaches for Ten.
Bickmore’s contract negotiations with Ten, traditionally signed off on by early October, are understood to have stalled weeks ago.
Ten offered “no comment” when the question was put yesterday concerning whether Bickmore has been secured for 2020.
One of the highest profile women on Australian television, industry insiders believe Bickmore, 38, is hoping for a sweeter deal from the network that made her a household name and is rumoured to have her on an annual contract worth $750,000.
Ten, who took a chance on the one-time Rove Live newsreader in 2009 appointing her to its then fledgling The Project, is said to feel that given Bickmore’s vastly reduced workload, she is already earning top dollar there.
Bickmore’s profile has soared since she picked up a Gold Logie in 2015, later leveraging it to launch a cancer fundraising foundation and signing a lucrative contract to be the face of beauty brand Garnier. In 2019 she added to her haul when she picked up an Order of Australia medal.
But since returning to work in July following a seven-month maternity leave break following the birth of her third child, daughter Adelaide, in December, Bickmore’s commitment to Ten has effectively halved.
Whereas she previously appeared five nights a week on The Project, this year she reduced her appearances to three nights — something Ten hoped would increase again by the end of the current television ratings season.
However the stretched-thin Bickmore has not.
In contrast she has continued to broadcast five afternoons a week for SCA, a company so desperate to sign Bickmore in 2017, it refashioned its drive radio slot — moving it forward by an hour to 3pm — to accommodate Bickmore’s The Project schedule.
Despite her apparently waning interest, Ten is hoping to keep Bickmore and certainly block any move by a television rival.
“No one at Ten thinks Carrie isn’t a great asset,” a source informed this column.
“She has helped them capture a TV market — and in the news category — something once unimagined for them, but possibly after 10 years her heart is no longer in the job.”
Television sources speculate her actual value to Ten today might be double the $750,000 Ten currently pay her, a figure equal to the $1.5 million touted in this newspaper’s report concerning Nine.
Bickmore has previously said she could not juggle The Project and breakfast radio — a comment that suggests if she moves to 2DayFM, she will quit the TV show: “When we first started The Project, Hughesy (co-presenter Dave Hughes) was doing breakfast radio and then came back and did The Project at night. I watched him nearly die and it was certainly not something I could do with a family.”
Bickmore’s absence from Ten’s 2020 season Upfronts preview 10 days ago was further interpreted by many as a sign that she no longer considers Ten her priority. In her absence, Ten handed MCing duties to The Masked Singer host Osher Gunsberg at events in Sydney and Melbourne.
Should Bickmore walk from The Project, Ten has the depth to cover for her.
Ex-Today anchor Lisa Wilkinson, former Seven newsreader Chris Bath, Studio 10 host Sarah Harris and former The Circle co-host Gorgi Coghlan (now believed to be among costumed finalists on Ten’s The Masked Singer and favoured for a timely career-lifting win) are well credentialed to replace her alongside Project veterans Waleed Aly, and Hamish Macdonald.
annette.sharp@news.com.au
Twitter: @InSharpRelief