Four months after his final episode as host of Insiders, Barrie Cassidy finally returns to work with the ABC on Tuesday, having exhausted all of his annual and long service leave on various overseas trips in Asia and Europe.
The question for Cassidy now is what does his ABC existence look like, post-Insiders? And, at 69, does he want a big new project with the public broadcaster, or something more relaxed?
The ABC’s Gaven Morris badly wants to keep Cassidy at Aunty, and is open to anything from a full-time role to a casual gig.
Morris tells Diary he will meet with Cassidy in the next fortnight: “I want to make sure we keep as much of the wisdom and experience in the ABC as we can, in a time of massive media change.”
Word around Aunty is the ex-Insiders host is most likely to seek a flexible arrangement that allows him to pursue other media gigs, while still hosting big political set pieces for the ABC.
The voice of Roxy
Still on Barrie Cassidy, one clear post-ABC job prospect is emerging for the former Insiders host.
During Ten’s “pilot week” a few weeks back, Cassidy shocked the tabloid TV world and went viral on social media by emerging as the narrator of PR maven Roxy Jacenko’s pilot, I Am Roxy.
Word now emerging out of Ten is that I Am Roxy is now likely to be given a full season by Ten, as it was the week’s most successful program. If that happens, expect Ten to make a big money play for Cassidy to narrate the show for an extended run although, as he told Diary last week: “That pilot certainly wasn’t lucrative for me!”
ABC bursts its Canberra bubble
Removing politics from the Canberra bubble: it’s the formula Scott Morrison has rapidly mastered with a voting public fed up with nearly a decade of leadership chaos in the nation’s capital.
Now the ABC and its chair Ita Buttrose are planning to take a leaf straight out of the ScoMo playbook. A slew of senior ABC types, led by Buttrose, ventured far from the latte set of inner-city Ultimo a fortnight ago to halal snack-pack country in Bankstown in Sydney’s southwest.
The mission? To find out what the average Joe in the suburbs thinks of the ABC’s political coverage. And the message from suburban Australia has come back loud and clear on everything from its flagship national panel show Q&A to its local news services.
What the people of Bankstown want from Aunty can be boiled down to four words: “Stop talking about Canberra!”
The ABC’s news and current affairs supremo, Gaven Morris, tells Diary Bankstown wants the May election to serve as a watershed moment in toning down the political talk: “They’re saying ‘Now the election is over, I’m getting on with my life. Talk to me about things that are interesting to me, not in Canberra’. There’s a genuine mood out there to stop talking about the minutiae of politics.”
Morris believes it is time for the ABC to look at areas where there are people who “pay their taxes but aren’t big ABC users”.
“We do a brilliant job of serving metropolitan, urban and regional Australia but we could definitely improve in the suburbs of Australia. Are we tuned in to what people are interested in Bankstown, or Ipswich in Brisbane, Frankston in Melbourne, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast?”
The ABC does not believe it’s a right or left-wing issue. Rather, it thinks viewers are simply “fed up with political agendas” as a whole.
“There are big parts of the community not motivated by issues that politicians talk about all day long,” Morris says.
“But they do have real concerns, and we need to plug into those concerns.”
Aunty’s homework begins now. Post the Bankstown summit, news and current affairs bosses have until December to prepare a three-year plan involving new “pilots and projects” on how the ABC can more broadly reflect what their community wants.
Watch this space.
Forgotten Frydenberg
There’s stiff competition emerging between ministers in ScoMo’s re-elected federal government about who gets the most media mentions in print and on TV and radio.
Diary has learnt the government secretly compiles an official running tally among all of its biggest names that ranks who gets the most media mentions on any given week.
It was federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who unwittingly blew the whistle on the only poll that ministers really care about during the ceremony in which he opened the electoral office of the government’s new NSW senator Andrew Bragg in Sydney.
Frydenberg, tongue firmly planted in cheek, revealed he was feeling a tad threatened about all the attention that was going to Bragg after his much-discussed comments recently about making superannuation voluntary.
The Treasurer, who is only too conscious of number-crunching as the nation’s chief bean-counter, revealed Bragg had relegated him to No 4 in the week’s rankings.
ScoMo, naturally, was No 1, with all the attention about his dealings with US President Donald Trump in recent weeks.
Deputy PM and National Party leader Michael McCormack came in second.
But it was below the PM and deputy PM in the rankings that things got really interesting.
Bragg managed to pip the Treasurer for third spot on the government’s media mentions rankings, with Frydenberg joking he was definitely not happy about it.
So, Josh, here’s some help from Diary. Frydenberg. Frydenberg, Frydenberg. There’s three mentions in one sentence alone.
Hopefully, this column’s multiple mentions of Frydenberg today will do their bit to restore Frydenberg back to his rightful place near the top of the rankings next week. Go Frydenberg!
No Today Tonight
Following the axing of the Melissa Doyle-hosted Sunday Night, the other persistent speculation around the corridors of Seven’s Martin Place bunker in Sydney has been that Today Tonight could make a return as a national 7pm current affairs show.
It’s enough to make Diary all nostalgic for the time Naomi Robson, in full Frontline mode, hosted TT with a lizard on her shoulder.
But if Seven’s news and current affairs supremo Craig McPherson is right, pigs might fly before that happens again.
TT is currently shown only in the form of local editions in Adelaide and Perth.
McPherson was very explicit at a meeting of Seven journalists at Martin Place last Wednesday that TT’s national return was entirely out of the question.
“There will be speculation that we will bring back Today Tonight on the east coast,” he said.
“But I can guarantee you that isn’t occurring, nor is there going to be any other 7PM current affairs show by another name.”
Strange bedfellows
Matt Doran will need to build a sturdy Chinese Wall in his private life following his appointment as the new male co-host on Seven’s top-rating breakfast show Weekend Sunrise, replacing Basil Zempilas.
Diary understands Doran, a refugee from the axed Sunday Night, is now going out with Kendall Bora, the executive producer of Weekend Sunrise’s sworn breakfast rival, Nine’s Weekend Today show.
Together with the inevitable sleep deprivation issues he will face, the new-found breakfast show rivalry between Doran and Bora might add a spicy competitive element to their new-ish personal relationship.
Doran tells Diary he is “excited and humbled” by his new challenge, which starts this Saturday.
Cost UnMasked
It’s one of the year’s biggest ratings success stories, but it comes at a cost. Rumours have been doing the rounds of the TV industry that Ten paid big coin to snatch the rights to The Masked Singer away from Nine and Seven.
The whispers suggest a price tag of $1.5m an episode to put the program to air. If true, that would make it among the most expensive shows ever made in Australia.
There are certainly lots of bills: the show’s much-coveted rights, elaborate costumes, staging, talent and judges, with the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Dannii Minogue costing hundreds of thousands.
But Ten sources, while justifiably thrilled with the show’s success, are also adamant the $1.5m claim is a big exaggeration.
They maintain its real price tag is “well below” $1m an episode.
Last year, Ten executive Daniel Monaghan did little to play down the potential cost of the show before bidding had even started, telling TV Tonight: “You’d have to be mad not to be looking at it, but it’s very, very expensive.”
Some in the industry believe Monaghan’s comments last year eroded Ten’s bargaining power when The Masked Singer’s owner, Korea’s MBC Entertainment, sought expressions of interest in Australia.
At the time bids were being made earlier this year, Ten really needed a hit after a tough period in the first quarter of 2019 when on some nights it endured single figure ratings.
But Ten sources claim they offered only “a little bit more” for the rights to The Masked Singer than the beaten underbidders at Seven and Nine.
Molan versus Johns
Nine executives were annoyed last week that headlines leading up to last night’s NRL grand final had little to do with the sport’s showpiece game.
They instead focused on the alleged feud between Nine’s rugby league anchor Erin Molan and one of the game’s immortals, Andrew “Joey” Johns.
For Diary, what made the matter even more curious was that Molan and the man who broke the story eight days ago, Phil “Buzz” Rothfield, sports editor-at-large of The Daily Telegraph, have always enjoyed a close professional relationship.
Molan and Buzz are co-panelists on 2GB’s weekend rugby league show, The Continuous Call Team, having appeared on the show together less than 24 hours before Rothfield’s story appeared.
Rothfield frequently and generously talks up Molan’s achievements in his weekly Sunday Telegraph column — so initial murmurings out of Willoughby last week that the story was an anti-Nine hatchet job were well wide of the posts.
Meanwhile, both Molan and Johns made significant on-air contributions to Nine’s marathon grand final coverage yesterday — but at selectively separate points of the telecast.
Kochie capers
There was lots of media speculation last week that David Koch had signed a one-year contract extension to stay at Sunrise until the end of next year.
That talk is wrong, Koch tells Diary. As reported by your correspondent a year ago, Koch had already signed a two-year deal back then that already kept him in the Sunrise hosting chair until the end of 2020.
That’s not to say that Koch isn’t interested in a further contract extension into the future and, frankly, it would be a shock if Seven’s new boss James Warburton didn’t give him one.
One statistic says it all: Sunrise hasn’t lost a single ratings day against its Nine breakfast rival Today nationally in 2019.
Koch hints to Diary he remains open to staying at Brekky Central beyond 2020.
“I still love what I do, and I love working with the Sunrise team. But naturally, any extension is based on continued enthusiasm from viewers and bosses to me, as it is from me to them,” he said.
Karl’s role reversal
There was a time when one of Ben Fordham’s highest-profile roles was keeping the hosting chair warm on Nine’s Today show when Karl Stefanovic jetted off to holiday on James Packer’s boat.
But what a difference a year or two makes. In a sharp role reversal, it is Stefanovic who has been keeping Fordham’s 2GB radio drive show chair warm for the last fortnight during the birth of Marigold “Goldie” Fordham, the third child of Fordham and his newsreader wife Jodie Speers.
Stefanovic today returns to being Nine’s highest-paid reserve.
Meanwhile, Fordham comes back to his 2GB drive show, with news his show will also be broadcast into Brisbane’s Macquarie Media’s station 4BC, for the first time today, replacing Mark Braybrook’s drive program.
The move means virtually 2GB’s entire weekday line-up, from Alan Jones in the morning onwards, is now also being beamed into Brisbane, as Macquarie saves on talent costs.
Meanwhile, radio bosses are hoping for more bargain-priced Stefanovic seat-warming gigs at 2GB, given Nine is on the brink of gaining full ownership of Macquarie after its takeover bid.
PVO puts kiss of death on early election date?
Political commentator Peter van Onselen reckons Anthony Albanese is a dead cert to call an early election. But PVO’s track record on poll predictions suggests holding fire on dashing to put on a bet.
Gordon times his run carefully in licence sell-off
After selling off WIN’s northern NSW TV licences, Nine’s largest shareholder, billionaire Bruce Gordon, is free to lift his stake to a dominant position.