Diary has heard quiet word the pandemic challenges of parenting may have played a significant role in the timing of Leigh Sales’ shock Thursday night on-air announcement that she’ll be leaving her ABC 7.30 hosting gig.
The talk inside Aunty is the task of having to juggle the hosting of a national show with her duties as a single mother of two – particularly during nearly five months of homeschooling in NSW in 2021 – couldn’t be underestimated as a contributing factor towards Thursday night’s announcement.
Some news from me, with love to our viewers and my colleagues. https://t.co/fY6SRIpnq2
— Leigh Sales (@leighsales) February 10, 2022
Notably, Sales took off about six weeks of leave in the middle of last year – primarily, we hear, to allow her to dedicate herself to homeschooling her two boys.
Sales noted as part of her on-air sign off on Thursday her kids “want me home with them before 8.30pm, and I don’t think that’s too much for two little boys to ask”.
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Who is in the race to succeed Sales
Much of the speculation for who will replace Leigh Sales as 7.30 host ever has focused on two internal candidates: Insiders host David Speers, and the show’s chief political correspondent, Laura Tingle.
But Diary hears surprisingly neither is the bookies’ favourite to win the role. Instead, the smart money is on an ABC reporter who’s not even currently working in Australia.
Sarah Ferguson may not have anchored a regular ABC current affairs program for years. But it’s easy to forget she was long considered the obvious heir apparent to take over 7.30, having filled the role unbroken for six months when Sales was on extended maternity leave back in 2014. Soon after, Ferguson moved on to host Four Corners.
Crucially, Ferguson doesn’t presently have a permanent ABC role – all because of Australia’s ongoing diplomatic spat with China. The deteriorating relations between the two countries have meant that for about three years, Ferguson has been unable to take up her proposed position as the ABC’s Beijing bureau chief, instead basing herself temporarily in Washington.
Ferguson has one key attribute the show has always looked for: formidable interviewing skills. This has always been seen as the defining trait of a 7.30 host, and was a key reason why its two previous national anchors, Kerry O’Brien and Sales, were both elevated to the role.
With Sales to go, that attribute is likely to be the most important criterion for the next occupant of the 7.30 chair. With near-daily interrogations of major political figures, hosting 7.30 is seen as arguably the most prominent interviewing role in Australian TV.
On that score, Ferguson is at the top of the list, having won media praise after striking fear into virtually every politician who appeared during a six-month 7.30 hosting stint in 2014, from then-immigration minister Scott Morrison to former opposition leader Bill Shorten, ex-treasurer Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne. Critically, the elevation of Ferguson – soon to return from Washington to her home town of Sydney where 7.30 is based – would be a no-brainer in causing by far the least disruption to other programs compared with any other internal candidate.
Ferguson is among five or so key internal contenders who’ll be considered to take over from Sales: that is, if they choose to throw their hats into the ring when she formally departs later this year. Speers, Tingle, Stan Grant and ABC Radio Melbourne morning host Virginia Trioli are considered the other frontrunners for the role.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for an imminent announcement. The ABC will likely hold off until it has appointed someone to replace former news boss Gaven Morris – despite that search process so far taking four months … and counting.
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Bolt taunts Morrison over ABC blitz
Anthony Albanese ended his address to the National Press Club last month by laying down a challenge to PM Scott Morrison.
“I’ll debate him anywhere,” Albanese said. “I’ll debate him on Andrew Bolt if he likes.”
Now Bolt tells Diary he is using Albanese’s offer to try to nail down Morrison and the Labor leader for a debate on his show. There’s just one problem: the conservative Sky host says he can’t nail down the Prime Minister.
“We’ve only one verbal conversation since Scott Morrison became PM. And in that conversation, I said to him: ‘You’re going to have to fight the culture wars.’ He’s refused to do that. And you know what? The culture wars issues are killing him.”
Bolt made a splash in his Herald-Sun column last week when he claimed Morrison “looks finished”.
But some of his frustration with Morrison appears to be directed at his apparent reticence to go on a conservative talk TV show, with Bolt taunting the Prime Minister over his absence.
“I find it interesting that two Liberal PMs (Morrison and before him, Malcolm Turnbull) have been reluctant to go on a conservative show with a conservative host,” he tells Diary. “I find that rather telling.”
Part of Bolt’s anger is directed at a plan by Morrison, first outlined in this column a fortnight ago, to embark on a series of ABC interviews, including 7.30, Insiders and on RN Breakfast.
“Morrison has done this ABC list,” he says. “But if you’re more worried about a conservative interviewer than you are by the ABC, you might not actually be a conservative leader.”
Morrison needs to “give conservatives a reason to be excited”, according to Bolt.
“It seems pretty close to over,” he says. “They’re so scared of criticism from the media left, they’re just sitting ducks. The spotlight has to go on Albanese, but they don’t seem to be able to do that.”
Bolt says he will very clearly give Morrison the opportunity to make those points on his show as part of a debate with Albanese. “We’ll invite them both, and whoever doesn’t turn up, we’ll say so. I’m supposed to be the big scary guy. But that’s ridiculous.”
But Diary hears the early word out of government circles is that Morrison is sticking with his plans for an ABC blitz – and won’t be going out of his way to debate Albanese on Bolt.
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Seven turns aggro on Annastacia
The new year has ushered in a new philosophy at Seven’s Brisbane newsroom towards Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Diary hears the word around Seven’s Brisbane newsroom is getting tough on Palaszczuk is a potential ratings-winning formula in the cutthroat battle between Seven and Nine in Brisbane.
Nine has had the upper hand in recent years, billing itself in its own ads as “Brisbane’s number one”. But in 2022, Seven has decided aggro towards Annastacia is the most reliable formula for challenging Nine’s Brisbane news crown.
You didn’t have to look far last week, in the first official week of the ratings year, to find evidence of Seven’s considerably more aggressive approach towards Palaszczuk.
On Tuesday, they sent along unheralded Brisbane general TV reporter Emily Arnold as the Premier called yet another of her out-of-town press conferences to distract media attention from the integrity crisis sweeping the Queensland government.
Arnold travelled on Palaszczuk’s VIP jet to Bundaberg as the “pool” reporter for all networks for the Premier’s announcement of the $600m rebuild of the city’s Paradise Dam.
But Arnold, on behalf of Brisbane reporters, didn’t give a, ahem, dam about Palaszczuk’s announcement. Instead, she embarked on a brutal 12-question interrogation of Palaszczuk in Bundaberg, in which the Premier seemed to have amnesia about the integrity crisis back in faraway Brisbane.
As Arnold doggedly hammered “integrity issues”, a dismissive Palaszczuk repeatedly challenged the young reporter to name the issues, feigning ignorance of what she was talking about.
Finally, Arnold had enough of Palaszczuk’s repeated denials, telling the Premier: “There are many issues. I don’t think I need to explain them to you!”
It’s fair to say Arnold set the agenda on Tuesday night news bulletins and on the front page of Brisbane’s Courier Mail on Wednesday, which splashed in huge letters: “Crisis. What crisis?”, and also included a subheading accusing the Premier of being in a “state of denial”.
The attack came on the back of Sunrise’s Queensland reporter Bianca Stone last July being branded “very rude” by Palaszczuk, after yet another press conference confrontation.
Diary hears Arnold’s news bosses were thrilled with last week’s feisty exchange with the Premier in the first week of ratings, especially when the Tuesday night Brisbane ratings figures came out showing that Seven pipped Nine for the full news hour in the capital by an average of 3500 viewers, 172,500 to 169,000.
Given Arnold’s ratings success and follow-up after Tuesday, expect Seven to embark on a more aggressive approach to the premier going forward.
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Speers ambushes Barnaby over texts
David Speers was very publicly not amused at Barnaby Joyce a week ago, after he dropped out of an Insiders interview after revelations of texts showing he had called Scott Morrison “a hypocrite and a liar”.
As we noted, Speers even made a point of embarrassing Joyce in a replacement interview on Insiders with Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews, asking her: “Have you had a gutful of being asked to mop up when the blokes won’t front up?”
So when Joyce unexpectedly showed up on the ABC News Channel’s coverage of the NSW by-elections on Saturday night, Speers lay in wait for an ambush.
After others asked questions about the Nationals win in the Monaro by-election, Speers asked: “My one question Barnaby Joyce – why at the time did you think Scott Morrison was a liar and a hypocrite?”
After an eye-roll, a feisty Joyce gave Speers both barrels: “You’re smarter than that Speersy. That stuff is gone by the time you get to Goulburn … the Australian people don’t care about what fascinates you mate. They really don’t.”
He then continued to bat away attempts by Speers to ask the same question: “You’re a great fella, Speersy. You’ve been there for so long. You understand what the game is. (But) you and I know, that stuff is fish and chip wrapping.”
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Eric Abetz’s final ABC confrontation
For years, Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz has been the Coalition’s unofficial attack dog against the ABC.
A succession of ABC managing directors – from Mark Scott to Michelle Guthrie and now David Anderson – have all been given the Abetz treatment, as he has drilled down with his staccato voice into the nitty gritty of how Aunty chooses to spend its $1bn a year in government funding.
Greens senators have coined a specific terms for the compelling spectator sport that is simply witnessing the Tasmanian senator’s spectacular biannual run-ins with ABC bosses at Estimates. They dub it: “Abetz-imates”.
But on Tuesday night, amid little fanfare, it looks very much like it could be the last hurrah of Abetz’s long reign in the Senate as the ABC’s chief nemesis.
The vagaries of Liberal Party preselection have placed Abetz, 64, in third position on the Tasmanian Liberal ticket at the upcoming federal election. At best, that makes him highly unlikely to be fronting up to the Senate beyond June 30 when his term finally comes to an end.
But Diary understands that if Tuesday night happens to be Abetz’s very last interrogation of the ABC, he intends to make it count. We hear the senator will double down at Tuesday night’s Estimates, with plenty of curly questions the ABC boss is likely to have to take on notice. We’re hearing he’s already preparing plenty of questions for Abetz-imates about “ABC waste”.
David Anderson, you have been warned!
Perhaps the most memorable moment of Abetz-imates came back in October 2018, when a fired-up Abetz asked Anderson whether he had previously asked Guthrie, his then recently-departed boss, for a redundancy.
Anderson confirmed there had been talks, but said Guthrie had “made it quite clear that a redundancy was not something that we thought was the right way to go”.
When Diary asked Abetz on Friday about whether he believed Tuesday would be his last ABC Estimates, he replied, quick as a flash: “I won’t comment on election speculation. But I have every confidence that the ABC will be voting for me, as they would miss me too much at Estimates!”
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Jones relaunch after tech issues
The launch of Alan Jones’s own streaming show in December was plagued by technical difficulties, with his site crashing in its very first episode (three minutes after it started) before finally returning a couple of hours later.
But undeterred, Jones – after a spot of back surgery over the summer holiday season – is having another crack with a formal launch of his show by early April.
Jones’s streaming producer and former radio staffer Jake Thrupp is adamant the problems encountered were a one-off — and won’t happen again.
He claims the glitches were simply due to the fact “too many people” were logging into the website: “We’ve been making big improvements. We were in a temporary studio for the initial launch episode, but now we’ve brought in more resources and people, and we’re making set improvements and graphic improvements.”
Jones is still recovering after coming out of Sydney’s St Vincent’s private hospital last week, following back surgery over the summer holidays, and will spend the coming weeks building up to a full launch of the show.
Thrupp says he has learnt from the problems in December, and is now even ambitiously planning to launch a broader digital streaming app, featuring Jones and other broadcasters. He claims he is currently in talks with four TV personalities other than Jones about signing with Australian Digital Holdings, which is funding the Jones show, with the possibility of a 9pm streaming show.
“There’s a group of us who’ve started the company,” Thrupp says. “We’ve signed Alan and we’re going after other talent, initially funded by seed capital and the monetisation of YouTube and Facebook videos.”
He declined to say how much seed money has been raised, or who is involved, other than noting the streaming venture was founded by himself and two friends with a “tech background”, Jack Bulfin and Alex Baird. All options are on the table for generating revenue out of the venture, Thrupp claims – from “live reads” to finding “segment sponsors”.
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