TV networks across the country are cutting programming like they’ve never cut before. Except, that is, when it comes to Melbourne’s most popular ever daytime soap opera, now dubbed “Dan TV”.
The major networks have recognised the blockbuster ratings success of Daniel Andrews’ daily 11am visit to Melbourne’s locked-down lounge rooms. So much so, that Diary has learnt they’re on a big-time splurge to beef up the daily soap opera’s production values.
It started in early August after viewers could only hear the Dan side of passionate exchanges between the Premier and members of the Victorian press gallery. This led to audience feedback to newsrooms, demanding to hear reporters’ questions — not just Dan and trusty sidekick Brett Sutton.
But the viewer feedback prompted a war council among TV networks Seven, Nine, Ten, ABC and Sky, where they resolved to make their million-viewer-a-day “Truman Show” slicker.
Gone was the veritable candy store of network-branded mikes, resulting from journalists striding to the podium and fighting for poll position in front of Andrews. For one thing, that set-up risked Dan and the rest of the gang becoming Melbourne’s latest COVID cluster.
The “candy store” has now been replaced by two high-res mikes on the podium, as well as additional mikes dotted throughout the theatre so the public can hear every Dan grilling in glorious surround sound. Not only that, but an audio mixing desk and a sound technician have been added to turn the volume up on the reporters’ questions.
It was also resolved to install a fifth camera in the briefing room, trained directly on the masked Dan interrogators.
And little wonder, with the networks’ low-cost ratings sensation showing no signs of ending.
On Monday, the Premier notches up his 60th consecutive appearance. The word to Diary out of his inner circle now is that Dan won’t relinquish his starring role for even a day until that other set of numbers, the COVID-19 toll for Victoria, hits zero.
‘Dandrews’ jacket soars
Outdoor-wear group North Face has had an unlikely brand boost from Dan Andrews’ regular use of the brand’s jackets for his daily ‘‘Dan TV’’ appearances in chilly Melbourne.
An enthusiastic sales staffer at a North Face Sydney store tells Diary they have even dubbed it the “Dandrews” jacket. “The inquiries are typically from Boomers — we attract a slightly older demographic,” the staffer tells us.
“It’s because the logo is always in shot. It’s an interesting piece of unintentional marketing. Some people now think the jacket is pandemic proof. I mean, he hasn’t got the virus yet!”
Uhlmann backs Sales against leftie ‘thugs’
Nine’s political editor Chris Uhlmann has launched a passionate attack through this column on “left wing thugs” who have trolled two of the ABC’s highest-profile hosts, Leigh Sales and David Speers.
Uhlmann tells Diary that it is time to call out “identity warriors of the left” and “cardboard cutout Trots”, particularly on Twitter, who have been spewing nasty “bile”, accusing 7.30 host Sales and Insiders host Speers of pro-Coalition bias along with other unprintable claims.
But the Nine political editor lashes those trolling the high-profile ABC pair from the safety of their home computers as “hypocrites” and “flogs”.
The left-wing rage reached fever pitch on Twitter last week, with some identity warriors making outrageous and defamatory personal allegations against Sales, along with bizarre sledges that she was “snapping like a terrier for (Scott) Morrison” in her Tuesday interview with Labor leader Anthony Albanese.
For Uhlmann, those sledges were the cue to go public and loudly defend his former 7.30 colleague Sales against the “thugs”. He says it’s also time to stand up for Speers, who has also been copping vitriolic heat from the left on Twitter since his move at the start of the year from Sky News to the ABC.
“A posse of left-wing thugs online is not morally superior to right-wing thugs,” Uhlmann tells Diary.
“The bile routinely spewed at Leigh and David, largely by the identity warriors of the left, offends every standard they claim to represent. It is violent, intolerant and, in Leigh’s case, often sexist.”
He also claims that a growing breed on Twitter of “these cartoon-cutout Trots are hypocrites as well as flogs”.
Uhlmann tells us his decision to go public follows “the pile on following the (Albanese) 7.30 interview and the accumulation of unfair criticism of Speers”. Diary also hears Speers has made a calculated decision to tweet less since joining the ABC, after copping wild claims about his supposed pro-Coalition bias.
Uhlmann has also taken to Twitter to describe the social media outlet as a “self-basting platform” with no real impact, claiming that the “bigoted pitchfork brigade” were “barking at themselves”.
He scathingly addresses the trolls directly: “You are a measure of nothing, and I trust ABC management has the wit to see that.”
Faine the adman
Is Jon Faine spending his retirement years as Australia’s answer to Mad Men’s Don Draper? If someone told Diary that a year ago, we’d have scoffed.
But Faine the adman is exactly what has transpired, 10 months on from his retirement from ad-free ABC Radio Melbourne.
Faine tells Diary that what started as a helpful email suggestion to a mate in Victoria’s health department a month back transformed at COVID pace into him producing and directing a major public health campaign.
The ads are now all over Victorian TV and social media, fronted by big media identities like The Project’s Waleed Aly, Magda “Shazza” Szubanski, Tayla Harris, Shane Jacobson, Michelle Payne and Matt Preston. Most donated their bargain $2000 fees for the campaign to charity.
Faine wants to make it clear his new gig was a happy accident. “I wasn’t pitching for it. I wanted the best outcome for Victoria — never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be executing it!”
It started with his constructive suggestion to his mate in July about the official COVID ads: that they didn’t need “finger-wagging politicians, stern doctors or medical gowns”.
“I told them that they needed to hook well-known Victorian identities that all Australians will know.”
To his astonishment, within a whirlwind few days he was entrusted to make a series of script-free ads, spending lots of his own money before he even had a contract, initially bringing in producer Giordi Caputo, and then, ultimately, 40 contractors across eight ads, including caption writers, lawyers, gaffers and caterers.
He has since been reimbursed and paid a daily rate for a whirlwind few weeks on the campaign. “My naivety came to the fore when I quoted it. The government got a bargain, and the talent were generous and collaborative.”
For his part, Premier Dan Andrews is thrilled, saying the cost paid for the talent on the ads bears “no relation to what their commercial rate might be”.
Karl’s Covid pay cut
As we all know, COVID-19 has affected a lot of people’s livelihoods. Even Karl Stefanovic isn’t immune.
Diary has learnt that even with his agent to the stars, Mark Morrissey, pushing Nine to the limit for several months, Stefanovic’s income has been significantly COVID-affected.
Morrissey struck a deal last week that we’re told could see Stefanovic through to the end of 2023 with Nine.
But gone are Karl’s golden days of $2.5m-plus annual salary packages. Diary is told that his base salary this time will be half that, at around $1.25m.
On the bright side, Morrissey has negotiated some sweeteners.
The first is a big performance component that, if met, could nudge Karl closer to $2m a year if — and it’s a big if — Today consistently beats Seven’s Sunrise in the ratings. In recent weeks, the average margin between Sunrise and Today has dipped below 40,000, the narrowest since Stefanovic was removed from Today in 2018.
The second sweetener is the opportunity for him to pursue prime-time projects. Stefanovic previously fronted “This Time Next Year”, but that show was axed — this time, last year.
Diary hears for his part, Karl has resigned himself to his new lower package, generously recognising “leaner times” in the industry.
Masked Covid secret
The coronavirus dramas continue on Ten’s The Masked Singer.
Diary hears the big whisper among Ten production staff late last week was that they had worked out the names of 16 of the 17 people who had by Friday been diagnosed as COVID-positive. But one case remained a stubborn secret.
We’re reliably informed the talk centred on the as-yet unrevealed female Masked Singer character named Queen, the $1.30 bookies’ favourite to win the show. Ten production staff tell Diary that two of Queen’s close set contacts have now tested COVID-positive. So the big question is: could Queen be the mystery 17th case?
Meanwhile, 280 quarantined Masked Singer staff will be re-tested on Wednesday. Fingers crossed!
Seven’s $200 ‘gift’
Seven’s biggest stars, including Sonia Kruger, David Koch and Sam Armytage, were hit with 20 per cent pay cuts for the June quarter given the network’s tough financial position at the time.
For someone on $1m a year, for example, that would have meant a cut of $50k for the quarter.
But last week, Seven CEO James Warburton — now saving dough elsewhere with his threat to ditch the network’s pricey cricket rights — had some good news for his beleaguered team.
Everyone from network anchors to humble admin staff received the “gift” of a $200 Woolies gift voucher for their “sacrifices” and, most importantly for Warburton, their “make it happen” approach.
Hmmm — a $200 Woolies gift voucher in exchange for a $50k pay cut?
We’re sure those “make it happen” Seven stars are rushing to claim their Ooshies as you read this!
Imre’s back
Imre “Sir Humphrey” Salusinszky is returning to politics, close to four years after he departed as ex-NSW Premier Mike Baird’s senior media adviser.
Diary has learnt that Salusinszky will replace the departing Brad “Escape” Hatch as chief media adviser to Communications Minister Paul Fletcher from next week.
Salusinszky is best known for loyally doing the hard yards on Baird’s attempted greyhound racing ban in NSW. He later claimed the ban was scuppered by a “vicious tabloid jihad”.
It’d be an understatement to say he’s had public differences of opinion with Alan Jones and Ray Hadley. But we suspect he’ll be taking a more pragmatic approach now he needs to once more win friends and influence media people.
Joe’s new horizons
Joe Hildebrand has wasted no time looking for new career options after the dramatic cuts to Studio 10, Ten’s morning panel show.
Studio 10 original Hildebrand has been offered an ongoing role as part-time contributor. Diary hears he’s weighing up Ten’s offer while talking to other networks.
Meanwhile, he’s returned to his old hunting ground, The Daily Telegraph, which will now run two of his columns a week. One will be in a new lifestyle section called SmartDaily, launching in News Corp metros from Monday.
Dave’s purple prose
Sometimes you just can’t win as the boss of a big media corporation.
ABC managing director David Anderson thought he was doing the right thing on Friday by championing Wear It Purple Day, the LGBTIQ+ awareness day, by writing a special note to staff — in purple lettering.
“Dear Colleagues,” the brightly coloured note began, “Please don’t adjust your sets. I’m coming to you in purple because today is Wear It Purple Day.”
But ABC staff privately grumbled that his personal note that day should have led off by championing his own team, many of whom reached the grim end of the line and were spending their very last day at the ABC, many after decades with Aunty.
Popular ABC news presenter Andrew Geoghegan and gun current affairs producer Sharon O’Neill led a procession of ABC staffers who gave Twitter goodbyes, but weren’t farewelled in Anderson’s note. His only nod to the redundancies came towards the bottom of the note, with the bald revelation that the ABC had “successfully closed consultation in relation to all the change proposals” and a brief thanks to staff for their “professionalism”.
As one staffer volunteered to Diary: “(It’s) rubbing quite a few people up the wrong way.”
Alberici’s ABC legacy
She may have left the ABC, but Emma Alberici’s shadow lingers even after the settlement of her case against Aunty.
Relations between Media Watch and the ABC’s news division are on the slide, after the show’s host Paul Barry took a swipe last week over the division’s move to make Alberici redundant.
Diary is told that behind the scenes, there have been tensions between Barry and ABC news supremo Gaven Morris over criticisms made of the news division on Media Watch over the last 15 months.
They date back to a stinging critique by Barry of the news division’s handling of a 2019 Adani story, in which the Media Watch host called out Morris and alleged the division had “spiked” the story after a complaint from the mining giant.
More recently, tensions have escalated in the last fortnight, after Morris and ABC political editor Andrew Probyn live-tweeted passionate defences of Probyn’s much-discussed July Ruby Princess investigation on 7.30, just as Barry claimed on Media Watch the story was “wrong”.
But days after Morris and Probyn doubled down against Barry, the Media Watch host last week upped the ante, this time alleging the ABC was “buckling to criticism” by making Alberici’s chief economics correspondent position redundant.
Without naming Morris, Barry (who called Alberici as “a friend”), claimed ABC “management” had “done itself no favours”. This was seen as a shot at Morris, who oversaw Alberici’s departure. Barry went on to claim the ABC was “seen to be ridding itself of someone it finds too hard to handle. And it sends a bad message to ABC viewers and ABC journalists.”
Barry pinpointed a deterioration of relations between Alberici and the ABC to what he dubbed her “now-notorious articles” in 2018 on corporate tax. He claimed the articles had seen Alberici’s reputation “undermined by the government, by the ABC’s critics and by some ABC insiders”
ABC moves Hamish MacDonald to popular program
The former host of Q&A and The Project will slot into one of the national broadcaster’s key radio programs.
Plan for booze ad blitz on TV leaves bad taste
A draft TV code that would allow 800 extra hours of alcohol ads – including when children are watching – is facing surprising opposition from the alcohol industry.