Nine is getting to the pointy end of deciding who will replace Tracy Grimshaw as host of A Current Affair – and Today co-host Allison Langdon was very publicly making sure last week her bosses were aware of how much she wants the ACA role.
Diary understands a key prerequisite to win the hosting role is being a formidable interviewer, in the wake of Grimshaw’s legendary ACA face-offs with the likes of Scott Morrison and Don Burke.
And Langdon was making it very clear in a fiery interview last week with Victorian Premier Dan Andrews that she was more than a match for the man regarded as the toughest interviewee in Australian politics.
With no sign of her Today co-host Karl Stefanovic, Langdon confronted Andrews one-on-one.
She started by doggedly asking Andrews question after question about the investigation of the Premier by the state’s anti-corruption body, IBAC.
Andrews patiently tried to redirect Langdon to the subject he wanted to talk about: his revival of the publicly owned State Electricity Commission. But Langdon continually returned the subject to the anti-corruption investigation. Finally, when Langdon asked him why Victorians should trust a premier who’s being investigated by the anti-corruption watchdog, Andrews snapped.
“Well can I just say Ally, I behave appropriately at all times and that’s the oath that I swore. And I get on every day and deliver for the people of my great state,” he replied indignantly.
Even at this point, Langdon wasn’t about to give up, telling the Premier he “couldn’t dismiss the corruption quite so easily when you’ve been involved in four inquiries now”. She then went on to accuse an increasingly irritated Andrews of having “a health system in crisis” and “record debt”, before asking him: “Do you deserve another term?”
It was all a far cry from Andrews’ previous interview with the Today show interview exactly a year ago.
On that occasion, Stefanovic invited Andrews to react to comments by Morrison after the then-PM had called for Andrews and other premiers to “step back” and give Australians their lives back after rolling Covid lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
Andrews gratefully accepted Stefanovic’s invitation at the time to take a free hit at Morrison, calling him “a weak leader”, and accusing him of “double-speaking to extremists”.
If Langdon’s ‘‘audition’’ is successful and she wins the ACA gig, word is 60 Minutes’ Sarah Abo would then be favourite to move to Today.
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Tracy’s TV farewell
Speaking of A Current Affair, the festivities are in full swing ahead of its 17-year veteran host Tracy Grimshaw’s final show on Thursday night.
Diary hears ACA will run for double its normal length on Wednesday night, with an hour-long highlights show featuring her biggest on-air moments. Meanwhile, on Thursday, the show will run at standard length but will feature what is expected to be an emotional farewell on-air address by Grimshaw to the ACA audience at the end of the show.
There have been other rewards for Grimshaw as she winds down from her long-term role.
She took time off hosting duties a month ago to travel to the US for a special chat with Paul Hogan, the ex-Sydney Harbour Bridge rigger who got his big break on the original A Current Affair 50 years ago from its then-presenter, Mike Willesee – ironically, the late father-in-law of the favourite to become the next ACA host, Allison Langdon.
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Retiree Chris Uhlmann’s anti-woke tour of Australia
Chris Uhlmann has never been afraid to express views that could see him shouted down in the era of ‘‘just add water’’ outrage.
Even during his time as Nine’s political editor, Uhlmann memorably attacked “identity warriors of the left” and “cardboard cutout Trots”, particularly on social media platforms like Twitter, where he labelled some users “hypocrites as well as flogs”.
And less than two months into retirement, Uhlmann is showing no signs of backing away from challenging the politically correct.
Uhlmann has already returned from an epic 5500km solo return drive from Canberra to Cooktown, in what some of his former Canberra press gallery colleagues have dubbed his “anti-woke tour of Australia”.
Among some of the memorable highlights: his sending of happy snaps from Queensland’s largest coal-fired power station to his ex-Canberra press gallery colleagues, followed by his adventures retracing the sailing of the now-cancelled Captain James Cook to the place where his ship Endeavour ran aground on a coral reef at Cooktown.
When Diary reached Uhlmann, he confirmed his expedition to the giant NRG Gladstone Power Station, 550km north of Brisbane. “I poke my nose into things that interest me,” he told us mischievously. “I went on an industrial tour of Gladstone, particularly to witness its reliance on fossil fuels and other things people seem to hate. It’s a very wealthy town.”
As Uhlmann notes, wind farms or solar power don’t fire the Gladstone Power Station’s massive turbogenerators. Its website says the station is instead powered by “four million tonnes of coal” each year, which is “railed to the station from coalfields in Central Queensland”. In total, its six “coal-powered steam turbines” generate up to 1680 megawatts of electricity. After his industrial visit to Gladstone, Uhlmann drove another 1500km to Cooktown, from where he emerged with a favourable view of Cook’s 48-day stay there after the Endeavour ran aground.
Uhlmann defends Cook’s expedition to Australia.
“The entire trip to Australia was a scientific trip,” he said. “They were enlightened people who had enlightened views. They were not disparaging of the Indigenous people they met.”
Uhlmann said his trip was slightly curtailed by the Queensland floods, with roads he described as “destroyed by the rain”.
Meanwhile, the former Nine political editor is proceeding with his post-political journalism career as a self-described “retired gentleman”.
In April, he will publish his first children’s book, called The Useless Tune, about a magpie looking for a home, with illustrations by his younger brother Paul, before heading off on a lengthy European trip.
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The ABC’s Folau doco not ‘cancelled’
There remains few more divisive sporting figures than Israel Folau, in the wake of his well-chronicled views that gay people would go to ‘hell’ unless they ‘repent’.
Folau was effectively ‘cancelled’ back in 2019 when he was sacked by Rugby Australia in the wake of the comments.
So the conspiracy theories were flying thick and fast late last week when a two-part ABC documentary into Folau – described as taking a ‘balanced’ approach to the footballer’s controversial stance – was pulled from the schedule with just four days’ notice.
What made the decision more embarrassing was that the ABC ran on-air promos for the documentary – eponymously titled Folau — throughout last week.
So it’s probably no surprise that on social media, there were all sorts of conspiratorial claims that a decision had been made to rapidly ‘re-edit’ the documentary.
But Diary is assured nothing could be further from the truth. It now turns out, as the saying goes, given the choice between conspiracy and stuff up, blame the stuff up.
We’re told ‘permissions’ that had been sought for footage to screen were not obtained by the deadline. But Diary hears the plan is still to screen the documentary as soon as possible, preferably by the end of November as part of a month-long focus on sports personalities in the Monday slot normally occupied by Four Corners, which is now in recess until next year.
As part of a revised line-up on Monday night, Paul Barry’s Media Watch will screen in its earliest-ever slot of 8.30pm, while a documentary about racing driver Peter Brock, called ‘Over the Top’, will screen straight afterwards.
Nine papers examining food ‘paywall’
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are understood to be closely examining plans to put food content behind a paywall in the near future, as they look to new ways to grow subscribers beyond the mastheads’ news base.
Diary hears the Nine papers’ plans would take a leaf out of The New York Times’ book, which turned to food as a key subscription driver while people were stuck indoors in the pandemic.
In internal notes and meetings, the editor-in-chief of The Age and SMH, Tory Maguire, has told staff of her ambitions to make the papers’ Good Food section a pivotal subscription driver for the Nine papers in coming years. Currently, the food section, including restaurant reviews, can be freely accessed online by readers (without any need to subscribe) through the goodfood.com.au website. But the plan going forward is to integrate the food content into the general SMH and Age websites.
“As a business we have identified Good Food as a key pillar of our five-year strategy to grow subscribers,” Maguire told staff at the Nine papers. “This includes significant tech and product investment, as well as integration with the television side of the business and the events team.”
As part of this plan, Maguire has created a new position, head of food, reporting directly to her, seemingly elevating the importance of food reporting and commentary at the Nine papers. Previously, it was several layers removed from Maguire, who has now told staff the successful applicant for the position will require “an ambitious audience focus”.
And from what Diary hears, there will be plenty of other changes in positions further down the food chain at the Nine papers.
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Palaszczuk cops media fury over report delay
Question: what do you do with a report that’s scathing of your handling of youth crime, which you know will generate a barrage of negative headlines?
Answer: lock it away for several months, hope the media will forget about it, and then release it unexpectedly in the dead of one random night. This appears to be the latest playbook of Annastacia Palaszczuk amid a whirlwind of unflattering reports in various portfolios including crime, health and housing.
Until last week, the Queensland Premier had sat on a damning investigation into her state’s youth justice crisis by longstanding ex-police commissioner Bob Atkinson. As it turns out, Atkinson had actually completed the report all the way back in February.
It revealed Queensland has effectively lost control of its youth offenders, with revelations only three ankle bracelets were fitted to under-aged criminals in the entire state during a half-year period in 2021, at a cost of $3m. Meanwhile, other offenders were simply released into the community with barely a slap on the wrist.
After nearly nine months of persistent dodging of questions from the Brisbane press gallery about those very details, the Premier’s team of media spinners decided, in their wisdom, to finally release the report at the bizarre time of 8.17pm last Tuesday.
Why so late? Because as experts in media spin would know, releasing a 166-page report at 8.17pm means it missed the top-rating commercial 6pm news bulletins altogether, while ensuring Brisbane’s Courier Mail would have to rush out a very abridged version of the story for the next morning.
Diary hears that some in the Seven and Nine newsrooms, as well as the Courier Mail, were livid at the timing of the report’s release, with dark mutterings about “lack of accountability”.
Key reporters, including Nine’s Tim Arvier, Seven’s Marlina Whop and the Courier Mail’s Samantha Scott, made a point of hijacking Palaszczuk’s 10am press conference the next morning, which was meant to be all about her green energy plans.
But all of the Premier’s energies at the presser were devoted to warding off a barrage of questions about the damning youth justice report and its very late release.
Arvier opened the short-pitched bowling by confronting Palaszczuk head-on: “Bob Atkinson’s review was handed down. He’s just held a press conference … Why did the government sit on it for nine months?”
Palaszczuk put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of under-fire Youth Justice Minister Leanne Linard, who was mysteriously nowhere to be seen when the report was released: “The minister was talking to stakeholders and when she thought it was appropriate to be released, it was released.”
But that did little to appease reporters, including Arvier, who continued to ignore green energy until Palaszczuk eventually lost patience, telling him: “I am not saying any more.”
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Victorian Lib MPs shy of TV election panels
In the ABC’s coverage of the 2018 Victorian election, a dark night for the Victorian opposition was compounded when then shadow attorney-general John Pesutto was told live on air by Antony Green that he had lost his previously safe lower house seat of Hawthorn.
Clearly, Victorian Liberal MPs haven’t forgotten. Pesutto’s brutal on-air experience as an ABC panellist has apparently spooked other Coalition MPs from appearing on any of the election coverage this Saturday night. Diary hears Victorian Liberal lower house MPs, in particular, have knocked back repeated approaches to appear on any election night panels.
For Nine, the sole Liberal rep will be the federal (!) communications spokesperson Sarah Henderson, while on Seven’s panel, state upper house rep Georgie Crozier – whose position is secure — will be the only Lib.
Only one fearless lower house Liberal MP that we know of is appearing, and that’s on Sky News’s election night coverage – with none other than the high-profile departing member for Kew, Tim Smith, on the panel.
And given this will be his final week as a parliamentarian, expect the always-forthright Smith – who’s fallen out with ex-ally, Liberal leader Matthew Guy – to be in the mood for some frank assessments on his way out.
When Diary reached Smith on the weekend, he ominously noted: “There will be some truth-telling.”
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ABC to split into ‘screen’ and ‘audio’ divisions
Some key information is starting to emerge about reputed plans by ABC managing director David Anderson to restructure the public broadcaster.
Diary understands the most likely outcome is splitting the ABC’s content business into three main component parts: a screen division (comprising standard TV operations and streaming service iview); audio (largely radio and podcasting); and the multi-platform news/current affairs.
Word out of Ultimo is that the rationale is the increasing role being played by streaming and podcasts in new media. But this structure would also have echoes of the ABC’s long-term previous split into TV and radio operations, rather than the current ‘‘genre-based’’ structure.
There are discussions about what will happen to the music division, which straddles both screen and audio. Rage is a screen product, while Triple J and ABC Classic FM are audio products. Whether they’ll be split along screen and audio lines remains to be seen.
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