Sharp Shooting: Dumped Nine star Alex Cullen in line for new gig on rival Seven
Just over three months on from departing Today over a $50k blunder, presenter Alex Cullen is tipped to be the frontrunner to host a new show.
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Five years after daytime talk show The Daily Edition was scrapped by Channel 7, we hear the program, or a show rather a lot like it, is once more on the drawing board at the network.
Seven programming execs are seriously stressed about the success of Channel 9 game show Tipping Point.
At a series of executive meetings, ideas for remedying the problem have been discussed.
Top of the pile, or so we hear, is a strong 3pm-5pm news show that potentially could lift the ailing ratings of Seven’s 6pm news lead-in, The Chase.
But who would host it?
Departed Today sports reporter Alex Cullen is, we hear, at the top of Seven’s wishlist.
Cullen’s reps have been in discussions with Seven we hear and Cullen, who previously appeared on Seven’s screens as a reporter on Sunday Night, is expected to screen-test within days.
What a remarkable turnaround that would be for the sports presenter Nine sacked for pocketing $50k from Adrian Portelli.
Among other talent being looked at to host are Nine’s Belinda Russell, Seven news presenter Michael Usher, Weekend Sunrise host David Woiwod and reporters Katrina Blowers and Blake Johnson.
Karl crusades for Crown
Having been relegated to a lowly reporting position in Nine’s Saturday night federal election coverage, Karl Stefanovic went crusading on behalf of another commercial partner this week, Crown Casino.
Wearing his Crown ambassador hat, Stefanovic set off to Crown Sydney where he donned an apron to record a cooking segment alongside chef Alex Pavoni of a’Mare restaurant.
Stefanovic later posted the segment to his Instagram page where it was buttressed with a full-screen slide featuring a Crown logo.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission has been known in the past to take a dim view of influencers who neglect to disclose ad content on their social media accounts.
So too, it seems, does Nine when the talent it pays close to $3 million forgets to acknowledge outside sponsorships.
On Wednesday keen-eyed observers claimed the post, which also featured Stefanovic’s daughter Harper and wife Jasmine, was without a disclosure identifying the lengthy spot as an #ad.
By Thursday this column observed the post was tagged #CrownPartner. It had also had been edited during the previous 24 hours.
A Nine spokeswoman dismissed any suggestion there might be an issue with Stefanovic’s post and said Crown occasionally sponsors Today “at times throughout the year”.
She added: “Karl is an ambassador of Crown as he disclosed on his post.”
The post comes as Stefanovic takes a back seat to Sydney newsreader Peter Overton and A Current Affair host Ally Langdon, Stefanovic’s former Today show co-host, in Nine’s Federal Election coverage this weekend.
Instead of anchoring the coverage, the Today show’s jester will be dispatched to cover the mood and celebrations at the Liberal Party’s headquarters when Opposition Leader Peter Dutton learns his fate.
Sarah Abo will cover the celebrations at the ALP camp.
Stefanovic also can’t complain at being overlooked in promos for the coverage.
Even though his is the ninth and final head featured in a promo graphic depicting specialist commentators.
Nat cheers for Liz
Liz Hayes was sighted in Seven’s Eveleigh building this week putting some spit and polish on her almost exclusive (she was pipped by a print publication) interview with Jock Zonfrillo’s widow Lauren Fried.
While the Spotlight team and Seven’s promo department are eagerly anticipating a bumper ratings event, one who can barely contain their excitement, or so we hear, is Sunrise host Natalie Barr.
According to our spies on the ground, Barr has been telling other female talent they should not feel threatened by veteran Hayes’ power and should get behind her appointment to back in the network’s news and current affairs division.
“Liz is Liz Hayes and it’s in everyone’s interest that this works. She deserves respect,” is the roughly paraphrased version of cheerleader Barr’s ringing endorsement.
It’s a sentiment not everyone can embrace however and some think news star Ashlee Mullany has good reason not to.
Mullany has been identified as a future star of Spotlight and was under the impression 2025 would be her year.
Hayes’ arrival came as a surprise to Mullany who we hear took executive producer Gemma Williams aside to ask why she wasn’t informed of Hayes’s recruitment prior to a press release being distributed.
It’s a fair question as Mullany is a talent – and gorgeous – and any company (or bloke for that matter) that fails to recognise that and value her is a dope.
We put the question to Seven about Mullany’s Spotlight dream and was told she has investigations in the works for the show having wound up her gig as Seven’s Europe & Middle East correspondent in February.
Congrats Ash!
Meanwhile after a decade on the ground working the rounds at Seven we can understand why she might have felt overlooked in the excitement about Hayes coming on board.
Of course Hayes has only signed up, so far, for one guest appearance – an appearance put at a pricey $20k by industry insiders.
Seven declined to comment on that speculation but did dismiss rumours Zonfrillo’s widow was paid for her interview.
Backlash to Kyle’s dummy spit
Kyle Sandilands’ Wednesday morning on-air dummy spit and threat he’d pull his KIIS FM breakfast show from Melbourne by year’s end if southern audiences didn’t hop to it and accept the duo, went down like a navy suit at a pontiff’s funeral with non-fans.
The day before the release of radio ratings that would reveal the show lifted slightly in the city, Sandilands had raged on air: “You either glue on in Melbourne or you (CENSOR BLEEP). One or the other … I’ll just take the show off, Melbourne. You can (CENSOR BLEEP).”
It was a threat that evidently delighted some who have refused to embrace the Kyle & Jackie O radio show and quickly flooded chat platforms with backlash comments.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” one posted to reddit.
“I can barely contain my indifference,” said another.
“Don’t wait Kyle. The merciful thing to do would be kill the Melbourne show immediately,” remarked a third.
“Dudes threatening people who aren’t listening … to listen,” said one incredulous respondent.
The tone soon turned serious on the back of news KIIS’s parent company had announced a raft of redundancies.
“ARN are doing mass redundancies to keep up with Kyle and Jackie O’s salaries and for what? For Kyle to walk out twenty minutes into a four hour show because “the vibes are off”?”
Old friends
ABC-TV Media Watch producers left its chairman Kim Williams’ recollections of when he met comedian Austen Tayshus in 1998 on the cutting room floor.
In a statement supplied by Williams and featured in the show the under scrutiny chairman said he and Tayshus’s alter ego Sandy Gutman had a “brief involvement some 27 years ago”.
Missing from the expose was Williams’ admission the men met “when (Gutman) was cast for a theatrical moment attaching to the opening of the sound stages at Fox Studios in Sydney”.
Williams added: “He may be a friend of my former wife Kathy Lette. Kathy left me in 1988.”
The revelation sheds light (and perhaps a little personal bitterness – though he did add that they are now friends) on Williams’ motivation for using his position to intervene on Gutman’s behalf to line-up a slate of regional radio interviews to promote a 40th anniversary comedy tour.
Eleven radio interviews in the end did take place following Williams’ intervention.
On Thursday Gutman told news.com.au he suspects the men first encountered each other “in the eighties” after the comedian broke through with his hit comedy album Australiana in 1983.
“It might have something to do with Kathy Lette. We were all around in the eighties,” Gutman said, contradicting earlier comments attributed to him on the ABC’s Media Watch program, in which he called Williams a friend of some 40 years’ standing.
“I don’t think we’ve ever broken bread or had a Shabbos dinner … I’m of similar age to him though, so we might have been in the same circle at one time,” Gutman said.
Hoping to further clarify the origins of the relationship, this column attempted to reach Lette.
The Puberty Blues author, who was married to Williams from 1983 to 1989, had not responded by publication time.
Williams has been caught up in the controversy all week with furious ABC staff demanding to know if the organisation’s chairman had sought to interfere with regional radio content or used his position to influence managers.
Gutman’s allegations he’d encountered anti-Semitism within the ABC’s regional operations are said to have further inflamed the matter and motivated Williams to act. Gutman is Jewish.
Williams has denied his actions were in breach of editorial policies but acknowledged overstepping in relation to a comment he made describing ABC staff as “arrogant”.
Gutman was still bruised by the ABC report at week’s end.
“(Media Watch host Linton Besser) called me a washed up entertainer. It was personal. I’ve been working for decades. They accused me of weaponising anti-Semitism,” he said.
The controversy gave the ABC’s new managing director Hugh Marks an opportunity to establish public boundaries in his relationship with Williams, who has denied Marks was his pick for the job.
It was lost on few however that the man who’d thrown the Nine board into turmoil in 2020 by failing to declare his romance with a subordinate, leading to his shock resignation from that company, is now presenting himself as a champion of corporate governance at the ABC.
And just months after he told the ABC allegations of workplace misconduct at Nine on his watch and vented in Nine’s culture review remained “a shock”.
Originally published as Sharp Shooting: Dumped Nine star Alex Cullen in line for new gig on rival Seven
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