It’s a rare occasion that chess splashes the pages of an Australian newspaper. But ABC Radio Sydney’s afternoon presenter James Valentine unwittingly helped to put the game (or is it a sport?) squarely on the front page of The Daily Telegraph and a dominant subject on the city’s talkback radio last week.
It was all because of a Twitter rant by former Australian representative chess player John Adams after he was contacted on Tuesday for an interview by Valentine’s producers.
Shortly after the request but before any interview went to air, Adams didn’t hold back. He tweeted that the ABC had “taken the view that chess is RACIST given that white always go first! They are seeking comment from a chess official as to whether the rules of chess have to be altered! Trust the taxpayer-funded national broadcaster to apply ideological Marxist frameworks to anything & everything in Australia!”
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
— John Adams (@adamseconomics) June 23, 2020
I just received a phone call from an ABC Sydney based producer seeking a comment about the game of chess!
The ABC have taken the view that chess is RACIST given that white always go first!
They are seeking comment from a chess official as to whether
Speaking to Diary, Valentine strongly denied Adams’ claim that his show was arguing that chess was racist, or that he was pressing in any way for black to go first. “We’re not prosecuting the case that chess rules need to change,” he tells us. “I’ve been the victim of a pre-lash — I was attacked before I’d done anything!”
Valentine, once the saxophonist for Aussie band The Models, says he was simply interested in the origin of white going first in chess, in the context of the current “cultural environment”. After Adams’ rejection, an interview eventually ran on Wednesday with Kevin Bonham of the Australian Chess Federation, in which Bonham clarified there was no evidence of the black and white pieces being “a racial thing” and that the colours were used to “standardise” the game’s rules. Valentine said the interview was sparked merely by curiosity. “We’re a light entertainment show, just coming off two months, three hours a day of wall-to-wall COVID-19 coverage. Now we’re back to our normal light entertainment brief, and were just curious to find out whether in chess circles, is there a debate about this? That was the end of our interest.
“We’ve been accused of political correctness gone too far — but has the outrage now gone too far?”
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ABC’s Ita rounds on her mate ScoMo
The days of chummy selfies and mutual public backslapping are finally over for PM Scott Morrison and ABC chair Ita Buttrose.
As recently as February, a proud ScoMo tweeted out a photo with a beaming close-up of himself and Ita, and the caption: “So glad Ita took on this job.” A year earlier, in first announcing her appointment, Morrison stated: “Australians trust Ita. I trust Ita and that’s why I have asked her to take on this role.”
But as of last week, the feeling definitely isn’t mutual. Late on Friday, Buttrose, ScoMo’s own “captain’s pick” as ABC chair, viciously turned on her backer. She used a crowd-pleasing 600-word diatribe to simultaneously rally her ABC internal stakeholders and smash the government.
Ita’s statement piece, which turned up on the ABC’s own website later, was titled: “What would Australia look like without the ABC?”.
Reading between the lines, the outburst was motivated by comments from ScoMo on Thursday that there had been “no cuts” to the ABC’s budget, despite the broadcaster’s 250 redundancies.
“The ABC’s funding is increasing every year,” the PM said. “The ABC would be the only media company or organisation in Australia today whose revenue, their funding, is increasing. It would be the only one in the country.”
But his “no cuts” assertion prompted an icy Ita put-down. “Let me clarify the cuts because there seems to be some confusion in government circles about them,” she said.
No prizes for guessing who that was aimed at!
Ita Buttrose - What would Australia look like without the ABC?https://t.co/kYndPKeOOq
— Nick Leys (@leysie) June 26, 2020
Ita went on to claim that government savings measures for the ABC “reduce funding” by $84m over three years. “These funding cuts are unsustainable if we are to provide the media services that Australians expect of us. Indexation must be renewed.”
By now, Ita was on a roll. She even invoked the prospect of a dystopian future where “a Balkanised and parochial bunch of broadcasters … compromised by profit” roamed wild, with the ABC no longer around to keep them in check.
Pointedly, Ita’s statement was bookended at both ends of the statement by a specific pointed rebuke, directly aimed at the government: that a lack of funding for the ABC was an assault on Australia’s “democratic culture”.
Your move, ScoMo.
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‘Not nervous at all’
Last week’s ABC cuts would have stung Ita Buttrose because, only a year ago, she was very confident of avoiding them.
The ABC chair was asked by one of her own employees, Rafael Epstein, on ABC Radio Melbourne in May last year if Aunty’s staff should be “nervous” about losing their jobs. Ita’s reassurance in reply back then appeared absolute. “No, I wouldn’t be nervous at all … There are many ways of achieving savings, you know. It’s not just people.”
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Let the games begin
A six-week process to finalise the ABC’s job-cutting program has already begun.
Last week, the high-profile ABC positions of names like chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici and national rural reporter Dominique Schwartz were made redundant. Documents were emailed to ABC staff by news supremo Gaven Morris, and quickly and widely sent externally.
But Diary understands that in other cases, the process is less straightforward. For example, in news and current affairs, while there will eventually be a final count of 70-plus redundancies, we hear that in excess of 100 staff were told on Wednesday that they were in areas where roles could be made “potentially redundant”.
In some divisions, a brutal process is already under way to work out who stays and who goes — with a “skills assessment” process performed by various divisional managers to help make the final determination. That process of finalising “remainers” and “exiters” will likely be completed by August.
Diary understands that a fortnight-long “expressions of interest” process to apply for redundancies may help to simplify the cuts because people who actually want to leave could reduce the number of “forced” redundancies.
From what we’re told, the Hunger Games Mk II has been averted, for one reason: there have already been higher than anticipated numbers of people putting their hands up to leave the ABC.
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Aunty on Aunty
Insiders’ David Speers conducted a testy interview with Communications Minister Paul Fletcher on Sunday, dominated by the ABC job cuts. The show was rounded out by a minute-long editorial from yet another ABC personality, Radio National’s Patricia Karvelas, about, yes, the ABC. Karvelas called on the government to “fess up” that the job cuts were caused by it cutting funding to the ABC.
"Why have you capped the money for the arts sector and not the construction sector?"@David_Speers interviews @PaulFletcherMP about the Government’s new support package for the arts and entertainment industry. #Insiders #auspol pic.twitter.com/jTaO2oEiKJ
— Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) June 28, 2020
And the ABC introspection is highly unlikely to end there. Expect it to gain new momentum at the National Press Club in Canberra, with Diary understanding that Aunty’s managing director David Anderson will make a nationally televised address on Wednesday next week. From what we hear, ABC journos will be vying to grill Anderson on last week’s cuts.
That would certainly be the case if last Wednesday’s Press Club address by Labor’s Anthony Albanese is any guide. ABC federal political reporter Jane Norman didn’t waste the opportunity to ask about the ABC, giving Albanese a free kick to attack the government over last week’s job cuts.
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PvO’s “kiss of death”
Scott Morrison, watch out. Ten’s political editor Peter van Onselen is making election tips once more. Two whole years early, he’s now all but called the 2022 federal poll for the Prime Minister.
A good thing for ScoMo, you might think. But Diary senses that, far from making the PM feel more confident, PvO’s latest big call is really sending Morrison and his backers into a cold sweat.
PvO’s tip during last year’s election campaign that then PM-in-waiting Bill Shorten was a certainty to beat ScoMo has, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, been viewed as a “kiss of death” for the then-Labor leader’s prospects.
But has the kiss of death now simply crossed to the other side of politics? On PvO’s political podcast with Ten’s national affairs editor Hugh Riminton, “The Professor and The Hack”, van Onselen’s certainty is now in ScoMo’s favour: “I just can’t see, I cannot see how the government finds itself in a situation where it loses the next election.”
Sound familiar? It’s eerily similar to the call PvO made in May last year, in the very first “The Professor and The Hack” podcast all the way back in May last year. “There’s no way that Scott Morrison can win it and I’m happy to have that replayed time and time again to my shame if he does win it.”
When 2GB’s new breakfast host Ben Fordham put PvO’s prediction to Morrison himself, you could almost hear the tremble in the PM’s voice in response. “Well, help us from the predictions of any commentators, Ben!,” he exclaimed.
Be afraid, ScoMo. Be very afraid.
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Ten’s new newshound
The Ten network was last week taken over by a new identity in its newsroom: network news presenter Sandra Sully’s baby dog, Keiko.
And Ten’s newest “newshound”, as network jokers have dubbed him, has made himself right at home.
“He’s too little to leave at home for my whole shift,” was Sully’s excuse to Diary for Keiko’s newsroom presence when we caught up with her last week. Yeah, right Sandra!
Apparently, Ten’s head of news Ross Dagan has now given permission for Sully’s “spoodle” (a cross between a shih-tzu and a toy poodle) to set up in his own office during his presenter’s nightly 5PM news bulletins.
His official reason is his concern that Sully’s new Ten mascot, appropriately at 10 weeks old, will create “too much distraction” in the newsroom going forward. But insiders think the reason is more straightforward: Dagan, they reckon, wants to “hog the dog”.
The only worry now is Ten’s famously vigilant security guards. Sully tells Diary she’s considering getting him “microchipped with a Ten pass” for easy access going forward. But if all else fails, she says that at only a foot long, “he’s small enough to smuggle him in my handbag”.
Expect an on-camera appearance for Keiko with Sully in the 5pm bulletin in the coming days.
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Lawsie’s long lunch
Society’s post-COVID return to schmoozing continues.
Diary’s spies spotted a deliciously high-powered media nosh-up at Sydney dining institution Otto on the Woolloomooloo wharf on Friday.
Radio great John Laws was joined at Otto by new 2GB breakfast presenter Ben Fordham, his brother Nick and even the so-called “sensible Stefanovic”, Karl’s brother Peter.
We called Fordham later to ask if this was simply a high-powered coaching session from a morning radio legend.
The new 2GB breakfast host didn’t deny it: “I’ve sought advice from a range of radio people like Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Ross Stevenson, Basil Zempilas and John Laws,” he told Diary.
And it turns out Friday wasn’t the first time he’d caught up with Laws, who Fordham’s father John once managed.
“Lawsie has been generous with his time and even invited me around for a drink a week before I started the breakfast shift.
“I made the mistake of taking a bottle of Wild Turkey (Laws’s favourite bourbon), and fell out of his apartment at about 11pm.”
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Hywood’s return
He’s back!
Diary last week heard of sightings of ex-Fairfax Media boss Greg Hywood at Channel Seven’s Sydney headquarters in inner-city Eveleigh.
Now we know why. Diary on Sunday confirmed that Hywood has taken his first major Australian media assignment since Fairfax was eaten up by the Nine Entertainment Co in their $1.6bn merger.
Hywood will undertake a review of Seven’s The West Australian and Sunday Times newspapers. We’re told his key focus will be to do much of what he did for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age: move the Seven papers to a “digital first” footing. However, his brief will also be to preserve the print operations at the same time he drives digital.
Seven boss James Warburton said on Sunday night that he was “delighted” that Hywood was “available” for the job, after he had most recently been involved in other mysterious media projects with global brands in Asia.
COVID-19 seems to have played a significant role in Seven’s decision to lure Hywood to conduct the review.
The CEO of Seven’s WA papers, Marina Fewster, conceded that “the impact of COVID on WAN has been significant”. “We are looking at all options, and Greg’s experience will be invaluable, to ensure we can continue to deliver to audience, client and shareholder expectations,” she said.
Sources maintained that the review was simply a “project” for Hywood at this point. But could billionaire Kerry Stokes still have some other plans in his vast empire for the former Fairfax CEO?
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7.45 nightmares
Commercial rivals are breathing a huge sigh of relief that ABC radio’s 7.45am news bulletin is about to disappear.
The Project’s Steve Price, once program director of Melbourne’s top station 3AW, reveals he still has nightmares about the ratings impact the 7.45am ABC news used to have on his station’s audience. “When I was running 3AW’s programming from 1990 to 2002, that quarter hour between 7.45 and 8am was the only quarter hour we got beaten,” he tells Diary.
“It was the people’s alarm clock and signal post for the day. Our audience would turn over to listen to that. Then they’d eventually switch back.”
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Majestic Fanfare stays
Diary can reveal one feature of the ABC’s 7.45 bulletin will remain: the iconic 18-second version of the orchestral “Majestic Fanfare” that heralds the start of the news.
That longer version has until now only been played once a day, at 7.45. But we’re reliably informed a decision has been taken that even though the 7.45 bulletin will shortly go, the long version of the Majestic Fanfare will stay.
Diary is told that the 18-second Majestic will now be shifted to the 7am news bulletin.
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