Why Nine believes Karl is worth more than Lisa
NINE Network remain in shock today after the network’s biggest female star Lisa Wilkinson walked last night after rejecting the biggest pay package ever offered to an Australian television personality — not in possession of a penis.
Opinion
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EXECUTIVES at the Nine Network remain in shock today after the network’s biggest female star Lisa Wilkinson walked last night after rejecting the biggest pay package ever offered to an Australian television personality — not in possession of a penis.
The Ten Network has trumped that offer.
At issue for Wilkinson is understood to have been the heavy lifting she has done over the past year while her co-host Karl Stefanovic’s life unravelled following his separation from his wife, a crisis that cost Today tens of thousands of viewers representing almost a sixth of its audience at the tail end of 2016.
As Stefanovic’s popularity plummeted with the much-maligned audience segment known as “older women”, Wilkinson’s soared — and not just with older women, but with all women.
Confident the network would recognise her value at a time when Stefanovic had kicked over into party mode following the end of his 21-year marriage — a period marked by the publication of damaging photographs of Stefanovic fondling his pretty blonde model girlfriend on a Sydney Harbour party boat and at play in Tahiti with billionaire serial-divorcee and Hollywood flunkee James Packer — Wilkinson stood her ground.
How could her bosses not recognise her value at a time when Today’s brand was being undermined by her sidekick?
She was the clearly the only grown-up at the helm of Today. Surely Nine would recognise this in upcoming contract negotiations?
To a point Nine did.
During six long months of negotiations Nine boss Hugh Marks offered Wilkinson a substantial pay rise — up from $1.1 million to $1.8 million — but it was not enough.
If money talked, it had one thing to say to Wilkinson.
Nine believes Stefanovic is worth more.
Stefanovic’s $2 million contract had been negotiated under pressure in the early weeks of 2016 when Nine believed it had to better an offer Stefanovic received from the Seven Network.
Unlike Stefanovic, Wilkinson’s agent Nick Fordham never brought third-party negotiations to the table.
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Until 8pm last night, Nine was completely unaware its star had received a genuine approach from the Ten Network.
In this way Wilkinson likely hoped to avoid becoming the prize in a chook raffle.
She has always been a class act. Holding a gun to her employer’s head would not have sat well with her.
But at the end it wasn’t a case of Wilkinson demanding Nine’s CEO show her the money.
It was a case of her wanting him to show her the love — the love Nine has always had in ample supply for its naughty boy Stefanovic.
The cash-strapped network argues it could not afford to offer Wilkinson any more than the $1.8 million it had on the table, a sum that allows Stefanovic a $200,000 margin.
But has Stefanovic, whose salary has increased tenfold since he joined the show in 2005 on $200,000, been good value at $2 million a year? Has he helped Nine’s Today to a sustained victory over its rival Sunrise? No.
Surely if all things were indeed fair and equal in television, the overrated and overpaid Stefanovic should have been given a haircut, a reprimand and been stripped of his margin which could have been handed to Wilkinson, one of the last remaining people on free-to-air television with genuine star power.
Wilkinson is now poised to sign a contract with the Ten Network that will make her the highest-paid PERSON, not woman, not man, on Australian television.
It must be satisfying to know someone has at last recognised she is indeed worth more than Karl.