Last week began with a TV story about whether senior politicians were observing the federal government’s “bonk ban” on affairs between ministers and their staffers.
But it turns out the week’s only big scalp relating to an affair came at a bonk ban-free media company.
Nine sources were adamant on Sunday that Nine boss Hugh Marks’s relationship with his departed commercial director Alexi Baker hadn’t breached any company rules.
Why? Because Nine doesn’t have anything approaching a bonk ban. Nine leaders were only given the vague requirement to be “a trusted advocate of expected behaviour in the workplace”.
And so to the $64,000 question: does Nine have any plans to introduce its own version of the government’s bonk ban?
The answer is not yet. “You’ve got to be very careful,” one insider tells Diary.
“Once you introduce a bonk ban, that can bring a whole new set of issues.”
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Marks’ office eviction dramas
“We don’t allow board members to have an office.” Diary is reliably informed that with those words, Nine CEO Hugh Marks last year evicted his deputy chair Nick Falloon from his office at Nine newspapers, formerly Fairfax Media.
The move came just a few months after Nine had taken over Fairfax. That move saw Falloon demoted from chairman of Fairfax to deputy chairman of the enlarged Nine, under Peter Costello.
But Marks had apparently noticed something interesting: Falloon was still using his Fairfax chairman’s office in Pyrmont, months after the merger had been completed.
So early last year, Marks put an end to it once and for all. “I’d like to see you,” he is said to have told his deputy chairman.
Once Falloon came in, the bad news was apparently delivered in person: he would no longer have an office because “non-executive directors don’t get offices here”.
Marks was said to believe it was hard to run a business from a governance standpoint if board members had an office in-house.
He is said to have added a thoughtful touch in delivering the news: getting one of the Nine newspapers staff to neatly fold up Falloon’s clothes. But this thoughtfulness apparently wasn’t taken in the spirit in which it was meant. We’re told there was a terse exchange of words between Falloon and Marks that day.
Falloon had no choice but to clear out his gear. Interestingly, he set up another office soon after at another Nine-related company that he did still chair: real estate website Domain Group.
Fast-forward 20 months, and Marks is said to have not felt “supported” by some Nine board members over news of his relationships. So much so, that by Saturday, the day of an emergency board hook-up that openly discussed those relationships, Marks decided to expedite his departure from Nine.
Could one of the directors who was not “supportive” of Marks have been Falloon?
When Diary reached Falloon on Sunday, he simply said: “See you later Nick, I’ve got nothing to say.”
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Mal admires himself in Q&A green room
Malcolm Turnbull embarked on a media blitz at the start of last week around his much-discussed appearance on the Four Corners #MeToo episode, with no less than three targeted high-profile TV appearances in 36 hours — all on ABC TV.
It started Sunday morning with a joint appearance with former political enemy Kevin Rudd on the ABC’s Insiders, and culminated on Monday night with both Four Corners and Q&A, where Turnbull was campaigning heavily on the Liberal Party’s treatment of women.
With that sudden frenzy of appearances, you might have thought all the Malcolm action was on air. But the real fun came off-camera.
A “peak Malcolm” moment was quietly photographed on Monday night in the Green Room of the ABC’s Ultimo studios as Turnbull waited to go on Q&A.
The photo was taken by the ABC’s second most powerful news executive, John Lyons, fast gaining a reputation for snapping the media’s most candid moments after his live-tweet of last year’s ABC federal police raids.
Lyons’s latest snap is an instant classic. Turnbull is fully engrossed in what must be two of his favourite activities: watching himself on TV and listening to the sound of his own voice.
I’ve walked into an interesting Green Room tonight at the ABC Sydney - a former PM watches “Inside the Canberra Bubble†on â¦@4Cornersâ© while a former Premier gets wired for sound, both preparing for tonight’s â¦@QandAâ© #auspol #4Corners pic.twitter.com/dIq1uZSKvE
— John Lyons (@TheLyonsDen) November 9, 2020
The photo from shortly after 9pm on Monday night shows Malcolm fully engrossed in viewing himself in his prerecorded interview with Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan on the Green Room TV monitors.
As Milligan later tweeted, it was like having “Malcolm squared”.
The Turnbull Q&A was one of the show’s highest rating instalments of recent years, with nearly 700,000 viewers tuning in nationally.
With those sort of numbers, Turnbull could next go one better and host a special one-man instalment of Q&A, where he could do both the Q and the A.
Malcolm asking himself a series of probing questions: now that would be must-see TV.
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Turnbull, Kelly clash fizzles out
Still on Q&A, the final few minutes of last week’s instalment were marked by a fierce one-on-one between Turnbull and The Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly — with the pair swapping brutal character assessments. Things got so heated that the pair were still going even as host Hamish Macdonald closed the show.
“I suspect this might continue in the Green Room,” Macdonald wryly told the audience.
But those hoping for tales of backstage fisticuffs would be disappointed.
Diary is told the on-air hostilities fizzled out to such a degree when the cameras were turned off, that the pair shared a civil glass of wine — and even posed for photos together.
“There were no fireworks,” Kelly confirms to Diary.
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More #MeToo
Last Monday night’s Four Corners #MeToo episode was the show’s last instalment of the year, with senior staff on the show already having headed off on holidays.
But it apparently won’t be the last effort by either Four Corners or reporter Louise Milligan on the issue of politicians behaving badly.
Diary is reliably informed the ABC switch ran hot shortly around 9.30pm last Monday night — with tip-offs about politicians’ behaviour.
We hear the tips involved all sides of Parliament House: not just the Libs. Stay tuned.
Rachelle and I have both had many women coming forward off the record to report similar issues. And we know it is a big thing to raise your voice. But now is the moment. Rachelle is right. You know where to find me. It’s time. https://t.co/BEpp1EygYK
— Louise Milligan (@Milliganreports) November 14, 2020
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Crisafulli’s beat-up on his media past
David Crisafulli, the man charged with taking the fight up to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, seems to like talking up his media credentials.
But the new Queensland LNP leader might want to walk back at least one of the claims he has made on his personal “David Crisafulli MP” website and Wikipedia page.
Crisafulli boldly asserts that in the early 2000s, he was “a correspondent for The Australian and (Brisbane’s) Sunday Mail newspapers”.
That’s not exactly how some staff still around at those papers remember it. So Diary decided to check out “Crisafulli the Correspondent” by conducting our own search of the News Corp library system.
It indicates the Queensland opposition leader filed the princely sum of four articles for the Sunday Mail between May and June 2003, and 15 for The Australian between October 2001 and February 2003.
And you wouldn’t call the articles by our special “correspondent” scoops either. Virtually all of Crisafulli’s 19 articles were simple sports match reports on NBL and WNBL basketball teams, and the NRL’s North Queensland Cowboys.
Maybe that unspectacular start in journalism was why soon after, Crisafulli pivoted to politics.
In 2004, he got himself elected to Townsville City Council, starting a steady 16-year journey up the Queensland political greasy pole.
I’m honoured to be the new Queensland Leader of the Opposition with @davidjanetzkimp as my Deputy. #qldpol @LNPQLD pic.twitter.com/RvrDYo4MQL
— David Crisafulli (@DavidCrisafulli) November 12, 2020
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Landline founder’s sad parting
It was a tough week for one of the stalwarts of ABC TV. Kerry Lonergan, who Aunty dubs the “founding father” of its award-winning rural show, Landline, was told last Tuesday that his contract was up and that Friday would be his last day after 34 years with the public broadcaster.
That apparently hasn’t gone down so well.
We hear that Lonergan, who started Landline in 1991, didn’t return to the office after the call. He’s believed to be seeking legal opinion at the urging of family and friends.
Diary is told his latest offer is six months’ severance pay. Fans in the bush who’ve heard the news say it’s a sad end to a distinguished career.
An ABC spokesman said: “The ABC acknowledges the huge contribution made by Kerry Lonergan, and wish him all the very best for the future.”
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TV returns to Melbourne
With the Victorian border opening up to NSW next week, so will the pipeline of national shows making their way south.
Diary hears that Tracy Grimshaw and Nine’s A Current Affair are making a beeline from Sydney to Melbourne next Monday, the very first day the NSW/Victorian border is open, to show off its southern credentials. Nine apparently also wants to play up that Grimshaw is originally a Melbourne girl.
In further good news for Dan Andrews, we’ve also learnt that Eddie McGuire’s Hot Seat Millionaire will return to filming in Melbourne from this Monday, after having filmed multiple episodes on the Gold Coast in recent months.
Other Nine shows will soon follow. Barring another lockdown, David Campbell and Allison Langdon will be in Melbourne on Christmas Eve for a crowd-free Carols by Candlelight from the Myer music bowl.
But other networks aren’t coming back to Melbourne just yet. An entirely Australian version of The Amazing Race — which is launching Ten’s 2021 ratings year — filmed its finale at Mount Kosciuszko on Saturday, having totally bypassed Victoria.
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Natasha-free shows
The morning after last week’s much-publicised Four Corners 2020 finale, another much more positive tale about the advancement of Australian women struggled to get nearly as big a run.
Early on Tuesday morning, it broke that Natasha Stott Despoja had become the first Australian in 28 years to be voted on to a key United Nations committee for female equality: the body’s global Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
In short, it was a big deal — and a huge achievement.
But while Stott Despoja conducted interviews on ABC Radio Adelaide and Radio National to talk about her big news, Diary is reliably informed that at least two higher-profile ABC programs who had initially sought her for an interview ultimately took a pass.
That’s because Stott Despoja made it clear she wouldn’t be addressing the only story in town on the ABC that day: the much-discussed Four Corners episode.
Diary is told Stott Despoja informed the shows that, for one day only, she didn’t want Canberra bubble issues to “overshadow” Australia’s big win. Fair enough.
Radio National and ABC Radio Adelaide were happy to accept that condition on Tuesday morning. But the other higher-profile ABC shows, heavily focused on the fallout from the Four Corners program, went Natasha-free.
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ABC drops $52K on secret bias report
Details are emerging about the Blackburn report, the secret report the ABC commissioned to examine if there was any bias in its 2019 federal election coverage, which culminated in Penny Wong’s on-air meltdown on election night.
More than a year after it was completed, the ABC still has no plans to release it. But at least we now know that the ABC paid for it. Diary can reveal the review by ex-BBC adviser Kerry Blackburn cost Aunty $52,000 — enough for 10 Cartiers. That’s a fair whack for a report that’s never been released.
That nice little earner means Blackburn — who now works in Victoria as a principal policy adviser in Daniel Andrews’ Department of Premier and Cabinet — is making a bit of a lucrative habit of conducting ABC bias reviews. She’s now been paid a total of $112,000 for two ABC reports. In 2016, she made $60,000, after investigating if the ABC’s business coverage was biased against big business. She ultimately concluded the ABC had no “anti-business” slant. Interestingly, that report was publicly released.
So the big question: why has the ABC chosen not to release Blackburn’s 2019 election report?
We’re told it’s likely because there is criticism of certain on-air ABC journalists in some instances in Blackburn’s final report.
Diary hears a previous 2015 ABC bias review caused a few internal ructions. Former AFR editor Colleen Ryan’s review of the ABC’s 2015 Budget coverage prompted internal controversy by naming names, after looking at whether there was any slant. Most of the headlines about Ryan’s report focused on her critical assessment of Sarah Ferguson’s Budget night interview with then-treasurer Joe Hockey. She found aspects of Ferguson’s interview didn’t meet “impartiality guidelines to treat the interviewee with civility and respect”.
That report has not been forgotten at the ABC, and may be a key reason that the Blackburn report remains secret.
ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie — under tough questioning from Queensland LNP senator James McGrath — gave some clues in September. He admitted for the first time that the Blackburn report contained some “critical feedback” about aspects of the ABC’s campaign coverage.
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Harris’s pay cut offer rejected
There aren’t many Australian TV hosts who would give up a chunk of their salary just to keep a co-host. But Studio 10’s Sarah Harris seems an exception to the rule.
Stellar magazine’s cover story about Harris in the News Corp Sunday papers on the weekend revealed that she made a fascinating offer to Ten Network executives: to “take a pay cut if (former co-host Joe) Hildebrand could stay”. Full marks to Harris for her selflessness.
Diary reckons the number of local hosts to make such an offer could be counted on one hand. But her generosity was spurned, with the Stellar article revealing that Ten decided it “wanted to take the show in a new direction”.
Happily, Hildebrand has now turned up in a mix of new roles at News Corp, 2GB and Seven.
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