All seemed set for the long-anticipated return of Virginia Trioli to her ABC Radio Melbourne morning show on Monday after an extended three-month break.
Diary hears that on-air promos were prepared at the station, while Trioli’s stand-in host, Ali Moore, made sure to welcome the regular host back both at the start and end of her show on Friday.
“It has been an absolute pleasure and privilege to be with you over the last couple of months,” Moore told listeners. “VT will be back here on Monday in this chair.”
But it appears there was a last-minute snag, because the latest word reaching Diary is that Trioli will not be back this week, in which the first radio ratings survey will be released.
We’re told that the most likely date of Trioli’s return is now most likely post-Easter.
ABC insiders suggest the extended leave may be for family reasons, and that in the meantime, Melbourne drive host Raf Epstein is likely to step in for Trioli.
There had been word from well-informed sources late last year that the ABC may have been in the formative stages of creating a new prime time TV show or vehicle in the field of the arts for Trioli.
That talk certainly made sense, as Trioli has previously hosted two dedicated arts shows, Sunday Arts and Artscape, the latter of which included the series, “In Conversation with Virginia Trioli”. But at this point, no such show appears to be on the agenda.
Meanwhile, there will be plenty of interest in the first radio survey of the year this week at both ABC local radio stations in Melbourne and Sydney, after a tough end to 2022.
The final radio ratings of the year saw all major timeslots in both cities – including Trioli’s – copping a hit. ABC Radio Melbourne's ratings saw a particularly tough survey, falling by 1.3 points to 6.2 per cent.
‘I am appalled’: Kerry O’Brien defends the voice
Long-time 7.30 host Kerry O’Brien built his reputation as being the most ferocious interrogator of prime ministers from both sides of politics on Australian television.
But Diary can reveal O’Brien has come out of retirement to throw his clout behind current PM Anthony Albanese’s push for a voice to parliament.
O’Brien doesn’t mince his words in describing how he feels about opposition to Albanese’s proposed voice referendum.
“I believe most Australians want to support the referendum for all the right reasons,” he says. “I am appalled by the efforts of some to dishonestly muddy the waters to defeat the referendum without concern for the damage it will do.”
So motivated is O’Brien to back the referendum’s yes case, he has joined forces for a passion project with indigenous leader Thomas Mayo, publishing a Voice to parliament Handbook, to be published by Hardie Grant, expected to go to the printers within weeks and be released by mid-year.
Mayo believes the handbook is necessary to dispel “misinformation” about what the referendum means. “They (Australians) need these answers because the greatest enemy of progress is confusion and misinformation,” he says. “I believe our collective desire to become a better nation can carry this referendum through to success.”
O’Brien maintains the case for enshrining the voice in the Constitution is “undeniable”.
“I believe most Australians want to support the referendum for all the right reasons,” he says. “This is such a simple proposition for the people of Australia to endorse, and let the parliament decide how it will work.”
O’Brien says the handbook is “based on the facts and on reasoned argument to help dispel confusion around a vital moment in our history in which we all have a stake”.
It’s not the first time that O’Brien has made a very public intervention on a key political issue since his ABC career ended.
At the 2019 Logies, where he was inducted into the awards night’s Hall of Fame, O’Brien made a passionate intervention to defend the ABC against what he saw as “ideological” budget cuts, at a time when the Liberal government was still in power.
O’Brien claimed in the speech – which made headlines across the country at the time — that successive cuts made against the ABC were driven “more by the desire to punish and by an ideological obsession than because the public broadcaster was inefficient”.
Nine defends China series after criticism
Nine newspapers have copped plenty of flak from readers over its “Red Alert” series that ran from Tuesday to Thursday, in which it was claimed, among other things, that China could wage war on Taiwan within just three years.
Diary is told that some of the claims made in private correspondence to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age were that the mastheads were variously “scaremongering”, “panic merchants” and “alarmist”. There were, we’re also told, threats from readers to quit their subscriptions.
SMH editor Bevan Shields doesn’t comment on this last point, but concedes that the reaction to the series was mixed.
“Some people haven’t loved the series and that’s fine,” he tells Diary. “I respect readers who have a diversity of views. But we’ve also had lots of great feedback, and have registered a very big readership from our subscriber audience. The Herald is a grown up masthead and we welcome mixed feedback.”
Shields points to previous similar investigations that had been conducted by Sky News and the ABC.
“I don’t want the Herald to be a newspaper that is too scared to tackle the confronting issues just because we think the topic might be unsettling,” he says. “This is a big world and parts of it are pretty scary — just have a look at Ukraine right now.”
Shields adds that the Nine papers haven’t tried to hide some of the criticism of the series: “In fact, we have published several critical letters to the editor in the newspaper all week,” he says.
Perhaps the most public criticism came from former PM Paul Keating, who continued his recent war of words with one of the series’ authors, the Nine newspapers’ political and international editor Peter Hartcher. He provocatively claimed that the series represented the “most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life”.
But Shields has hit back at the ex-PM’s criticism, saying that the “deteriorating security environment in our region is a huge challenge and we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t explore it.”
When newspapers took Xi’s cash
The Nine papers’ tough stance against the threat of China in its three-part series last week stands in contrast with a much friendlier business relationship they had with Chinese government organs just a few short years ago.
For four years until 2020, the papers (owned by Fairfax until December 2018) – including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Ageand the Australian Financial Review – accepted money to insert a monthly eight-page propaganda sheet called China Watch into its papers. Some other international papers, including The Washington Post, also did so.
China Watch (published by the English language mouthpiece of Xi Jinping’s regime, the China Daily) heavily promoted the Chinese Communist Party, and at times sought to soften the country’s combative international image. In one particularly memorable issue in 2017, side-by-side stories ran about a 37-year-old panda and pets travelling on Chinese planes as “companionship” for “high flyers”.
The decision to take the Chinese money didn’t impress Nine’s then-political editor Chris Uhlmann, who had said including China Watch in the company’s papers was “extremely disturbing”.
The lucrative deal between Nine and China eventually ended in June 2020 when the Morrison government was in the midst of an increasingly hostile war of words with the Chinese government.
When news of the end of the relationship finally emerged in December 2020, Uhlmann – then still with Nine — remained unimpressed: “Better late than never is a generous way of describing this,” he tweeted at the time.
Logies organisers turn off money tap
The great Logies gravy train may be coming to an end, after organisers of the 2023 instalment of the event abruptly turned off the tap of lucrative payments previously provided as an incentive to bring their best talent to the event.
During the Logies tenure on the Gold Coast, which ended last year, Annastacia Palaszczuk, through Tourism and Events Queensland, generously offered each of the networks a payment of $1000 a head for each on-air star they brought to the Logies, up to a maximum of $75,000 per network.
The payment was meant to be used as a sort of “rebate” against the exorbitant costs of bringing the stars to the event.
The Queensland government also generously offered another rebate of up to $25,000 per network if they promoted their participation in the Logies on their respective channels.
But with the Queensland Premier officially quitting the Logies, and the event moving to Sydney for the first time since the 1980s, this column has received word that Logies organisers have told the networks in no uncertain terms that the money has dried up.
In a short email message to the networks, obtained by Diary, the Logies’ chief publicist Kelly Black has bluntly told them that “the previously provided talent rebate will no longer be in place”.
In plain English, that means no more $1000 per head cash incentives. As an explanation to the networks, Black has told them that the decision was taken because “the Awards (are) now being held in Sydney, where most of Australia’s TV industry is located”.
But some TV and production industry sources are not happy with this assessment, given the number of current programs made in Melbourne. The examples are numerous: the ABC’s Hard Quiz, The Weekly, ABC News Breakfast and Insiders, Nine’s Hot Seat,The Hundred and upcoming drama Warnie, and Ten’s The Project, MasterChef Australia, Hunted and Five Bedrooms, to name a few.However, new Logies host Seven has a more Sydney-centric program line-up than its key rivals.
Network sources claim that with the $1000 a head rebates no longer available, there may need to be tough decisions made on which talent to bring interstate to the Logies, now to be held around a month later than normal on July 30 at Sydney’s The Star casino.
Meanwhile, with the event telecast moving from Nine to Seven for the first time in decades, there’s talk that Seven may use the event as a platform for its newest star, TV vet Chris Brown, who has been poached from Ten. The murmurs around the industry last week were that Brown – who will officially join Seven mid-year — and network stalwart Sonia Kruger could serve as “co-hosts” of the event. Watch this space.
Weekend Today hosts to be announced
Nine has been in the midst of hosting reshuffles at several of its news and current affairs shows this year, including Allison Langdon’s move to A Current Affair and Sarah Abo becoming the Today show’s female host.
But well into the ratings year, one other Nine program is yet to announce its line-up for 2023.
Last year, Charles Croucher and Belinda Russell were the show’s hosting duo. But Croucher has now taken over from Chris Uhlmann as Nine’s political editor.
Meanwhile, a further piece of the puzzle became clear a week ago, when the well-liked Russell took to Instagram to reveal her time on the show had “come to an end”, while also stressing she was “looking forward to future opportunities at Nine”.
That means an entirely new hosting duo on the show, and while no final decision has been made, Diary hears that Nine may begetting close to a formal announcement.
On Sunday, Jayne Azzopardi and Clint Stanaway hosted the show, and we’re told the pair are now warm favourites to take it over for good.
If the Melbourne-based Stanaway does get the gig, he will have a frenetic seven-day schedule. On weekdays, he would read the news on KIIS FM’s Melbourne breakfast radio show, Jase & Lauren, before flying to Sydney for two more days of early starts on Weekend Today.
ABC hints at job losses amid pay demands
The dreaded ‘R’ word – redundancies – is said to have been invoked by the ABC amid its stand-off with staff and unions over pay.
We’re told ABC management has expressed the view that the higher the pay rise, the more cuts will have to be made elsewhere.
The ABC’s latest improved offer presented last Monday was for an 11 per cent pay rise over three years – 4 per cent in the first two years and 3 per cent in the last year – plus a $1500 one-off payment. Word from management is this offer is final.
But it remains below the wishes of staff. Unions at the ABC have pushed for 18 per cent over three years, or 6 per cent annually, plus an increase in superannuation to 15.4 per cent.
Union reps are said to have suggested a more ABC-friendly Albanese Labor government had removed a key block to funding for the public broadcaster. But ABC negotiators apparently maintained a new government had not magically provided it with extra funding to pay the wage demands.
Staff now have until Wednesday to decide whether to accept the ABC’s latest pay offer.
Meanwhile, word has filtered out of the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters of persistent generational resentments at the public broadcaster.
ABC insiders suggest that younger staff on insecure contracts aren’t feeling the love towards some well-rewarded Aunty lifers who are considered bulletproof because they’re sitting on permanent contracts.
And as the campaign to become staff-elected director heats up between the likes of Laura Tingle and business reporter Dan Ziffer, it is Ziffer who is lobbying staff heavily on a platform of helping workers with insecure employment secure suitable pay and conditions.
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