Radio ravers should turn down volume

Artwork by Peter Nicholson.

EXECUTIVES at Austereo owner Southern Cross Media only open their mouths to change feet.

Proof — if more was needed — came yesterday when the radio network’s WA general manager Linda Wayman told a conference that she encouraged staff to wear condoms to avoid pregnancy because too many staff were on maternity leave.

Speaking at a Mumbrella shindig and ahead of International Women’s Day on Sunday, Wayman also said she didn’t agree with the “union push at the moment that women coming back to work automatically should be allowed to come back part-time”.

Oh, and work-life balance is “bullshit”. Today’s mystery sound: lawyers rubbing their hands together with glee.

No wonder CEO Rhys Holleran was back-pedalling at a furious rate yesterday afternoon, claiming the remarks were “tongue in cheek” and lauding Wayman’s “exemplary record as one of Perth’s most compassionate advocates on all issues surrounding equality of women in the workforce”.

Wayman’s remarks followed Southern Cross’s humiliating loss in the High Court to media watchdog ACMA over the royal prank affair, in which a nurse at a London hospital killed herself after DJs at the company’s 2DayFM rang and posed as the Queen and Prince Charles.

The station now faces sanctions including being taken off air, even if only for a few hours. As then-chairman Max ‘The Axe’ Moore-Wilton said in a 2013 display of erudition, “shit happens”.

In yet another display of communications incompetence from what is supposedly a media company, in November 2013 Southern Cross neglected to tell the ASX that the pair of ratings-dominating monsters it created, ‘Vile’ Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, had decamped to a rival network.

The news caused its share price to plunge and the company used its response to an inquiry from the exchange to again demonstrate tone-deafness, sooking that the pair weren’t actually that important.

Never mind that Kyle and Jackie finished 2014 on top of the Sydney FM radio ratings ladder.

Still, what can you expect from a company that targets young and female audiences but sports a board that has an average age of 60 and is 85 per cent male?

Ladies who lunch

IN other International Women’s Day news, today brings the battle of the bank brunches: at Sydney’s Ivy, the NAB is hosting Jillian Segal, who sits on the boards of the bank and the ASX, and will be waxing lyrical with Sue Ismiel, the founder of Sue Ismiel and Daughters, which owns hair removal brand Nad’s.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, Westpac’s new boss Brian Hartzer has downgraded the annual IWD lunch held by former CEO Gail Kelly to a morning tea.

On hand at the bank’s Sydney HQ will be Hartzer and head of corporate affairs and HR Christine Parker. Both events are at the same time so there’s no way people can do both.

NSX here we come

IT seems Margin Call frightened the horses with our coverage of exotic IPO Global Payment Systems (February 12), with its mention of alleged Norwegian pyramid scheme kingpin Tor Petteroe, mystery Dubai companies and multi-level marketing companies.

The company has extended by six days the time it needs to raise $375,000, to next Friday.

“We had to reassure some people,” chairman Michael Ivkovic told Margin Call.

But he’s adamant the company’s fully underwritten NSX listing is “absolutely” going ahead on either the 23rd or 24th of this month.

Cruel joke

GREYHOUND racing couldn’t be in more trouble right now, with a full-scale investigation unleashed in NSW following last month’s Four Corners expose of widespread animal cruelty, including the use of small animals to “blood” dogs.

So that makes pretty tasteless a 50 Shades of Grey (hound — geddit?) YouTube ad from bookie Sportsbet that featured a woman dressed as a rabbit being chased by a dishlicker. It went up before the scandal broke and was online until Tuesday at 4pm.

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