Caller defies ABC host’s Johannes Leak cartoon ban
Praise for an Oz cartoonist went down like a lead balloon with ABC radio host Rod Quinn. But listener Carol had the last word.
It’s a story ready-made for, well, a Johannes Leak cartoon. National ABC overnights radio host Rod Quinn was not going to tolerate a listener praising a Leak sketch in The Australian during a recent edition of the show’s daily quiz.
Maybe Quinn was in a bad mood due to the infamous date on which the show aired. In the early hours of September 11, listener Carol prefaced her quiz test by saying: “The best cartoon I have seen for a long time was in yesterday’s The Australian.”
The cartoon in question seems to be a Leak special: Dan Andrews warning masked reporters of the dangers of opening too soon and undoing “all the great work”, against a backdrop of Melbourne cafes and schools being boarded up.
But Carol’s praise for an Oz cartoonist went down like a lead balloon with Quinn, who replied: “It’s hard to believe that anything good would be in The Australian … In fact, let’s not even talk about it.”
After Carol apologised, Quinn replied: “No, no, you weren’t to know that. But I don’t want to give them any publicity, if that’s all right with you. Only if it’s OK with you Carol.”
An ABC spokesman said Quinn’s comments were “droll and throwaway in nature and made during lighthearted banter with a listener in a quiz segment”.
But Quinn’s hard line didn’t deter Carol from getting in the last word on the cartoon, delivering one final burst of gushing pre-quiz praise: “It was just such an intricate, clever, hilarious cartoon. I’ve asked one of my children if they would be able to print it and get it made up like a photo and frame it. I thought it was brilliant. Anyway, may I please have (question) number 5?”
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Why The Age’s Dan rant vanished
“It’s a stuff up. Not a conspiracy.” That’s how an insider at Melbourne’s The Age explains the strange omission of a Dan Andrews take-down by Nine’s star national political editor Chris Uhlmann from the paper’s Wednesday edition.
Diary has now learnt of a Wednesday morning intervention, post-omission, by James Chessell, the Sydney-based executive editor of both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, to make certain that the piece was belatedly reinstated, a day late, in The Age on Thursday and also online that day.
Uhlmann’s latest fortnightly column — which until last week had routinely run in both the SMH and Age every second Wednesday — took big shots at Andrews’s Victorian extreme lockdown COVID-19 strategy.
In fact, to dub Uhlmann’s words as scathing of Andrews would be an understatement.
“Nowhere in this often-opaque democracy has a less transparent court system, bureaucracy, police force or government than Victoria,” Uhlmann wrote.
“Its systems of power have combined to deliver the wanton destruction of its vibrant society. Its government has condemned its people to a poorer future, to higher unemployment, more poverty and less opportunity.
“Rejoice. Dan Andrews has destroyed the village to save it.”
But what’s really intriguing is the gulf between Sydney and Melbourne on how the Dan take-down ran on Wednesday.
Covid-19 in Victoria... destroying the village to save it. @9NewsAUS #auspol https://t.co/gkghJ1oBzY
— Chris Uhlmann (@CUhlmann) September 15, 2020
The SMH, as always, featured Uhlmann prominently, both in its print edition and online.
Not so for The Age. He was nowhere to be seen in Wednesday’s physical paper — strange for an opinion piece so interesting to Victorians. His column was also absent from The Age website for much of Wednesday morning. Then it suddenly materialised late morning, featuring the SMH’s 12.03am publishing time. Curious.
We’ve now learnt the backflip was down to a mid-morning discussion between Chessell and The Age’s acting editor, Michelle Griffin. The pair apparently resolved that running the story online that day and belatedly in the physical paper on Thursday would now be a good idea.
Uhlmann’s piece ultimately ran in The Age’s Thursday print edition. An Age insider now tells us the initial omission was down to “a bit of overthinking” at The Age about whether the column was too hot.
Chessell has refused to comment.
But the initial non-publication, then belated publication, of the Uhlmann piece leaves food for thought for The Age’s incoming editor Gay Alcorn when she starts next week.
Some personal news. Proud to be appointed the next editor of The Age. @theage.
— Gay Alcorn (@Gay_Alcorn) September 11, 2020
ABC bias review ‘critical’ on 2019 election coverage
The ABC has for the first time admitted that a secret bias report it commissioned about the 2019 federal election campaign provided “critical feedback” about its campaign coverage, Diary can reveal. For Aunty, of course, the campaign culminated in its now-infamous May 18 election night coverage, featuring Penny Wong’s mood deteriorating in front of the nation as the ScoMo “miracle” unfolded.
Now, finally, we’ve been given some insight into whether the taxpayer-funded Blackburn report found any bias. On Wednesday, under intense questioning from Queensland LNP senator James McGrath, the ABC’s editorial director Craig McMurtrie admitted on Wednesday that the still-secret report had identified both “good and bad” aspects of the ABC’s 2019 campaign coverage.
Initially, a shy McMurtrie tried to take the bias questions “on notice”, after giving vague replies to a joint parliamentary standing committee on electoral matters. Finally, a frustrated McGrath, the committee’s chair, had enough after more than 10 minutes of futile Zoom grilling about, among other things, why the review hasn’t been released by the ABC.
“You surely would know whether the review made observations or suggestions about bias,” McGrath asked in exasperation.
That finally prompted McMurtrie to give some insight: “There is good and bad always,” he said. “There were positive things said about the accuracy of the coverage, the extent of it, its comprehensive nature, its quality, and, yes, with any comment or any work we do with academics or reviewers, we also look for them to provide critical feedback as well.”
McMurtrie also revealed who had asked for the report: “Ultimately, it’s commissioned by the managing director of the ABC (David Anderson),” he said.
But he didn’t cast any light on why the ABC will not publish the Blackburn findings — despite it publicly releasing the bulk of its other independent reports. McMurtrie confirmed the ABC had now released “21 external reviews” since 2007 — even a 2020 report into its “COVID-19 coverage” — and yet still nothing from 2019 on the federal election.
Meanwhile, the report’s reclusive author, Kerry Blackburn, is today facing huge challenges in Victoria as a principal policy adviser in Daniel Andrews’ Department of Premier and Cabinet.
And the bias review wasn’t her first dance at the ABC. In 2016, Blackburn was paid $60K for a report — which the ABC then readily made public — finding Aunty had no “anti-business” bias.
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Koch talks good ‘game’
To put it into AFL parlance, Sunrise has already won the Holy Grail of the breakfast ratings premiership for 2020. But Nine’s Today show has given the Seven juggernaut its first serious on-field challenge in two years.
Notably, Today got within 16,000 ‘‘fans’’ of Sunrise last Tuesday on a five-city basis. So even though the Seven show hasn’t yet lost a game this year, it’s getting close. So Sunrise coach Michael Pell has decided to put his strongest team, David Koch and Sam Armytage, back on the park five days a week, to go head to head with Today’s Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon.
Both Koch and Armytage will now be full-time on Sunrise until at least the end of the 2020 season, and, depending on how ratings go, possibly for the 2021 season as well.
When Diary caught Koch on Sunday, the Port Adelaide president gave us an intriguing ‘‘game summary’’ of the 2020 breakfast TV season so far.
“Had a very strong first half, the opposition improved during the third quarter,” Koch started. “So we’ve adjusted at the start of the fourth quarter and changed our rotations off the interchange to finish the game solidly.”
Game on.
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Clive’s $8m cash splash
Clive Palmer’s $93m ad spendathon dominated the 2019 federal election campaign, ending in the so-called ScoMo miracle. Anyone remember “Australia ain’t gonna cop it”?
Well, there’s no new jingle yet, but he’s back! With 40 days to go until the Queensland election, Palmer fired the unofficial starter’s pistol for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s bid to retain office, starting with two full-page attack ads up the front of last Wednesday’s Courier Mail.
— Clive Palmer (@CliveFPalmer) September 18, 2020
“SHAME ON YOU BOTH,” reads one ad featuring large photos of Palaszczuk and Queensland’s chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young. Another screamed: “IF SHE DOESN’T MAKE THE DECISIONS SHE SHOULDN’T BE IN THE POSITION.”
— Clive Palmer (@CliveFPalmer) September 17, 2020
The ads will leave the Labor Party with an uncomfortable sense of deja vu about May 2019. No surprise that ex-PM Kevin Rudd on Wednesday took to Twitter to accuse Palmer of “crossing a dangerous line by bullying QLD’s Chief Medical Officer” in the ads. But will Palmer make the same impact in 2020?
Sources close to Palmer tell Diary he will stand in up to 70 seats, and that under new Queensland electoral laws, he will be capped at about $100,000 per seat, plus an extra $1m that can come from one of his corporate entities. If the Palmer camp’s sums are right, he’ll have $8m to splash this election. Enough to make an impact in a state election.
— Clive Palmer (@CliveFPalmer) September 13, 2020
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Seb dumps Twitter ‘posers’
Q&A host Hamish Macdonald and other ABC stars have started boycotting Twitter over what Nine’s Chris Uhlmann has dubbed brutal trolling by “flogs” and “thugs”.
Now commercial TV names are joining them.
Seb Costello, Nine’s ex-European correspondent and now one of its senior Melbourne reporters, confirms to Diary he deleted his Twitter account last week. But unlike his ABC counterparts, he says his momentous decision had “nothing to do” with trolls.
Instead, Costello — son of Nine chairman and ex-federal Treasurer Peter Costello — has written off Twitter as a time-wasting forum not worth his energies.
“My day starts at 4am,” he tells Diary. “It’s a lot of time to leave yourself accessible to Twitter, which doesn’t represent the real community. Aside from journos, it’s full of posers and fake accounts. To be honest, it’s taken up too much of my time.”
Costello the Younger says from now on, he will only give his content to those who pay for it — not to Twitter, where he has until now been donating his time and tweets for free. “I made a decision that Channel Nine pays me, so I’m going to give them my all. But Twitter doesn’t pay me — so what’s the point of spending any part of your day on there?”
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Nine’s new radio deal with rival
Sometimes, owning your own radio network just isn’t enough.
Diary has learnt Nine thinks it needs more ammunition than its own high-profile drivetime radio shows on 2GB, 3AW and 4BC to plug its 6pm TV news bulletins on the east coast.
TV sources tell us that Seven bid upwards of $500,000 in cash and contra to exclusively advertise its state-based 6pm news bulletins in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on Nova FM’s high-rating national Kate, Tim & Joel 3-6pm drive time radio show.
But Seven was told by Nova a fortnight ago that it had been beaten in the bidding by none other than Nine, which of course already owns the country’s most valuable radio stations.
Now, why Nine feels it needs to advertise elsewhere is anyone’s guess. Surely it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact it doubts the ability of its new-look radio team to deliver a prime-time audience to its TV stations … does it?
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Matt’s post-POO career
After three unforgettable weeks, it’s time to send Plate of Origin, or POO, to TV heaven.
After falling to a disastrous 342,000 viewers last week, it won’t be back. So Seven has decided to flush POO out of its system for one last time through a lengthy double-episode on Tuesday night.
But with no POO in 2021, what prime-time format is left for Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan — who the network paid big bucks for after their departures from Ten’s MasterChef last year?
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Urzila ‘Lockumentary’
On Sunday, a quarantine marathon for the breakout star of this year’s season of Ten’s The Masked Singer, New Zealand comedienne Urzila Carlson, finally ended.
Carlson had served the last four weeks, and six of the last 10, in quarantine across two countries, Australia and NZ.
She was first locked in a hotel for two weeks in Sydney when she flew in from NZ as a late replacement for US star Lindsay Lohan.
Then Carlson flew into Melbourne to film The Masked Singer, only for it to run into chaos last month after 17 crew tested positive for COVID-19.
So then it was two more weeks for her in a Melbourne quarantine hotel, before jumping on the first flight to Auckland to start yet another two quarantine weeks. There, Carlson even starred in The Masked Singer’s finale from her hotel prison. For the rest of the time, she’s killed time by filing a daily “Lockumentary” about hotel iso experiences on Instagram, amid test after test for the virus.
“Going to Melbourne to film I was excited about the cuisine and the night life,” she dryly told Diary in her last days of lock-up. “I had no idea I was embarking on a ten-week journey of self-discovery.”
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Josh’s lock-up drama
Talks are getting tense between federal Treasury and high-profile media groups over COVID-19-driven changes to the October 6 Budget lock-up.
Diary hears one of the snags is about a hardline stance being taken by Treasury about letting Sydney-based editors, big-name journos and techies into Canberra for the big day.
It’s even possible entire Melbourne media groups will be locked out of lock-up.
Meanwhile, national media groups say it’s particularly critical techies are allowed into Canberra from other cities, or they may struggle to even get live crosses to air and update websites, come 7.30pm on October 6.
One senior media source warns of chaos: “They don’t realise Josh Frydenberg’s big moment in the spotlight could turn into a disaster if Treasury doesn’t start being a bit more flexible.”
Tight NRL finale draws strong TV audience
The ratings for the closely-fought match between the Panthers and the Melbourne Storm were up on last year’s NRL centrepiece but were easily outstripped by the TV audience for the lopsided AFL Grand Final a week earlier.
ABC ombudsman changes ‘sympathetic’ Hezbollah stories
The taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s watchdog received more than a dozen complaints about an article that readers claimed was ‘too sympathetic to Hezbollah’.