No talent to market for Southern Cross

IT’S coming up on a year since radio duo “Vile” Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O quit Austereo’s Sydney flagship station, 2Day FM, in favour of rival operator ARN’s Kiis, taking with them a large slab of the lucrative mouth-breathing moron market segment.

At the time, Austereo owner Southern Cross Media neglected to tell the market it had lost the profitable pair, earning a please explain from the stock exchange over the resulting share price slump.

And sadly Austereo’s efforts to claw back morning radio market share in Sydney, including by crowding the studio with every early-rising B-list celebrity in town — Sophie Monk, Jules Lund, Merrick Watts and former Spice Girl Mel B — has yet to pay dividends.

Speculation is the crew (except Mel B, who’s already gone) will be replaced by gurning boy-men Hamish Blake and Andy Lee.

So does Southern Cross chairman Max “The Axe” Moore-Wilton now agree the market was right and the Kyle and Jackie’s departure should have been announced to the ASX?

“The market is always right,” Moore-Wilton told Margin Call after yesterday’s Southern Cross AGM.

“Kyle and Jackie O, we would have preferred not to happen, but it happened.”

So has the company revised the way it will disclose the movements of key on-air talent?

“We look to what our requirements are to advise the market and I think we adhere to the rules very strictly,” Moore-Wilton said.

Sounds like a no.

Moore-Wilton got the last word in as reporters shuffled from the meeting room.

“We’ve got to get back to work, not like these journalists,” he catcalled.

Trew’s property punt

THE man who helped bring risky contracts for difference to Australia is taking a punt on the property market.

David Trew, the former Australian chief executive of CFD providers CMC Markets and City Index, has quietly put his $25 million waterside mansion in Sydney’s exclusive Point Piper up for sale. Trew’s three-level 1920s manor boasts six bedrooms, as many bathrooms a boat shed with water access and A-list neighbours including “Aussie” John Symonds.

Property records show Trew’s wife paid $25m for the Wolseley Road spread in 2009.

Agent Elliott Placks, of Ray White, who is selling the property through an expressions of interest campaign, declined to comment on who owned the ritzy plot but said it could fetch up to $30m.

“There’s been five sales above $30m in Point Piper in the past year, he said.”

He said the property had been on the market for about three weeks.

Trew couldn’t be reached.

Medcraft laments subs

CHIEF corporate constable Greg Medcraft was in fine form at Sydney restaurant Bentley yesterday, where he was part of a lunch announcing nominees for the Walkley for business reporting.

After dealing with Australia — a “bit of a paradise” for white-collar criminals — the CBA’s behaviour after the financial planning scandal — “I was furious” — and Whitehaven hoaxster Johnathan Moylan — “we went after him because we wanted to make an example”, Medcraft turned his mind to journalistic standards.

He defended a page on the ASIC site formerly titled “ASIC responds to wayward reporting” as a form of “quality control”.

“The problem with journalism, I mean all the subeditors have been fired … it’s rather sad,” he said.

ASIC’s casino splurge

STILL on ASIC, and Margin Call can reveal the regulator has written James Packer’s Crown Resorts a cheque for almost $20,000 to hold its Melbourne Christmas party at the riverside pokies palace.

An ASIC spokesman says the payment covers lunch for the about 350 staff invited.

Margin Call suspects the casino has played host to wilder bacchanals: ASIC is charging staff to get in and — horror — employees have to buy their own drinks.