In death, as in life, Shane Warne is yet again stealing the national spotlight – even in the face of one of the most important federal budgets on March 29.
Your columnist hears that the government’s regular post-budget Wednesday morning breakfast TV blitz that would normally come the morning after the Treasurer’s speech next week will be severely hampered by the media’s intense focus on Warne’s star-studded March 30 memorial.
The most significant move we’ve learnt of so far involves the Today show. Diary has learnt that Today has ranked Warnie above the budget. Instead of going to Canberra as it normally does the morning after a federal budget, Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon will instead head to Melbourne to host the breakfast show live from the MCG, where Warne’s memorial will be taking place.
It has not yet been revealed what Today’s rival Sunrise will do, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that as representatives of the network that actually telecasts the cricket in Australia, David Koch and Natalie Barr may join Today in prioritising Warnie over the budget.
So spare a thought for PM Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, as they try to find some clear air to sell their big spending pre-election manifesto to a Warnie-obsessed public on the day of the great man’s memorial service.
On the Today show at least, that means there’ll now be no in-person interviews with Josh Frydenberg on his big day.
Not surprisingly, there are rumblings within the federal government that the timing may have been a deliberate move by the Victorian government to overshadow the budget.
A spokesperson for Daniel Andrews strenuously denies any such intent, saying the date for the memorial was always led by the family.
The 7pm timing for the memorial – which will run in some form on Seven, Nine, Ten, the ABC and Foxtel – and the no-doubt huge interest in farewelling Warne will also eat into the viewership of Wednesday night news bulletins covering the previous night’s budget, further frustrating the government.
Diary hears that at least some of the networks are planning to run the memorial on digital channels, as one of the conditions for screening it is that it must run ad-free.
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Waleed Aly chooses The Project and Lisa over 7.30 gig
There has been plenty of talk recently that The Project’s co-host Waleed Aly could be returning to the ABC, the place he first made his name in the media.
Aly is already a regular presence on Aunty, with regular panel appearances on Sunday morning shows Insiders and Offsiders, his own Radio National show The Minefield, and even co-hosting the ABC’s periodic special snapshot of Australian life, Australia Talks, with Annabel Crabb.
So when Leigh Sales made her shock announcement last month that she would be departing 7.30 after the federal election, Aly, with his Ten contract up, quickly became one of the favourites to replace her.
But we can now reveal Aly is definitively not headed for the 7.30 host’s chair. Diary has learnt that Aly has chosen commercial TV over public broadcasting – this time, seemingly, for good. We’re reliably informed that Aly has quietly inked a new seven-figure, multi-year deal with Ten in recent weeks. The lucrative new contract cements Aly’s future with The Project until the mid-2020s, leaving Sarah Ferguson and David Speers as favourites to take over 7.30.
The four-night-a-week deal with Aly (who is described by insiders as The Project’s “intellectual heart”) is also seen as a clear commitment by Ten to its long-term future, after a battling second-half of 2021 that saw the show’s ratings decline.
His retention for Mondays to Thursdays was seen as critical to the future of The Project, given the recent ratings struggles of The Sunday Project in particular. What makes Aly’s long-term commitment to the show even more important is the surprise announcement last week by his co-host, Carrie Bickmore, that she would be taking “a few months” of leave to temporarily move her family to the UK.
Insiders tell Diary that Bickmore will be gone for three months, and won’t return to the show until July at the earliest.
In that context, Aly’s new contract with The Project provides it with critical continuity in her absence at a time when the show’s ratings are under such pressure.
Ten is acutely aware of the importance of stability among The Project’s hosts. In the past seven months, it has forked out big coin to lock up three of the franchise’s four main hosts: The Sunday Project’s Lisa Wilkinson and Hamish Macdonald, and now Aly.
An insider assures Diary that with Aly now locked in, The Project is here to stay: “Signing Waleed is a statement that The Project is an integral part of Ten’s program schedule. It’s not going anywhere.”
Diary hears that Aly has used his strong bargaining position in the new deal to renegotiate some attractive sweeteners. For one, he’ll continue to be allowed additional income streams by appearing on flagship ABC shows such as Insiders, Offsiders (where he had one of his regular appearances on Sunday morning) and Q+A, as well as his regular Sunday gig on RN’s The Minefield.
Additionally, Aly will be given the latitude to pursue “passion projects” on Ten, including major interviews along the lines of his dramatic live and ad-free interview on The Project with Scott Morrison in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election, on the subject of Islamophobia in Australia. With yet another federal election looming, expect more Aly special projects in the lead-up to May.
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Chris Martin writes new music for Shane
In the wake of Sunday’s private funeral service for Shane Warne, some big details have started to emerge about next week’s public memorial service for the legendary spinner.
One big one that Diary can reveal is that global megastar and Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin has written an original composition called The Eulogy especially for Warne.
Early word is that Martin’s instrumental piece – to be played at the memorial in front of more than 50,000 people – hauntingly conveys the megastar’s overriding sense of loss, with the star performing the piece at the piano with orchestral back-up. Diary is told Martin desperately tried to make it to Australia for the memorial, but touring commitments prevented that. The star wrote the piece in Costa Rica, where the group has just started its first world tour since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Amping up the star power at the memorial will be separate musical performances from Elton John and Ed Sheeran, who will perform special versions of signature songs remotely.
The event is being produced by Jam TV, the production house of Eddie McGuire, who is hosting the memorial.
McGuire has carefully recruited key sports figures from each network as VIPs for the memorial: including the likes of Warne’s fellow on-air hosts at Foxtel, Mark Waugh, Adam Gilchrist, Mark Howard, and Fox Sports executive director Steve Crawley, Seven’s Ricky Ponting and Nine’s Bill Lawry, Mark Taylor and the company’s chairman Peter Costello, as part of a “collegiate”, cross-network approach.
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Palmer ‘doesn’t care’ if ABC snubs speech
Clive Palmer’s health is finally on the mend, and he is raring to go for his much-anticipated appearance at the National Press Club, now scheduled for April 7.
But it wasn’t always thus. Diary now hears reliable word from close associates of Palmer that they were fearful about his condition a couple of weeks back when he was apparently hit with the dual diagnoses of pneumonia and Covid-19. Word is that the situation was “touch and go”.
But now he’s on the recovery trail, the Lazarus-like Palmer isn’t about to waste an opportunity to cause some awkwardness at the ABC about whether to screen his rescheduled speech.
Diary, of course, first revealed a month ago that there was much internal hand-wringing at Aunty at the time about whether to screen the original Palmer Press Club speech that was scheduled for February 22, because senior figures felt that broadcasting him live might help to amplify his well-chronicled views about Covid-19 vaccinations.
The counter argument within the ABC was that Palmer will be a significant player in the coming election, and that this in itself was newsworthy.
Eventually, there was a late compromise decision at the ABC to screen the Palmer address on a 90-minute delay – presumably to give Aunty time to edit it before it was broadcast – with TV guides only updated the day before his speech. Canberra journalists were also adamant the speech needed to be covered for news bulletins.
But there was no proposed main channel coverage, with the guides showing an episode of the British vet drama All Creatures Great and Small took priority over the Palmer speech. Of course, when Palmer fell ill and cancelled the speech, this all became academic – but there would be no surprise to see similar Palmer debate this time around.
When Diary reached Palmer’s right-hand man Andrew Crook, on Friday, he was well aware of the dilemmas posed at the ABC by his proposed speech in February.
Crook claims Palmer is unfussed about whether the ABC chooses to screen his speech. “If the ABC doesn’t want to run him, who cares?,” he told Diary. “But Clive has been named the shadow treasurer for his party, and he is very much looking to his appearance on April 7 and outlining his financial and fiscal platform for the federal election.”
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AFL’s secret phone call over Beveridge spray
It’s been quite the week for Fox Footy AFL journalist Tom Morris. A day after his question prompted one of the all-time epic press conference sprays by Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge on Wednesday night, an “ashamed” Morris was making his own headlines when he was fired by Fox over an unrelated issue: the viral leaking of misogynistic comments he’d made about a female work colleague.
The Bulldogs were no doubt relieved that the media attention shifted so quickly from the missteps of Beveridge to those of the journalist.
But this column has also been informed of dramatic developments behind the scenes, directly involving the AFL itself, which will have long-lasting ramifications for AFL coaches such as Beveridge. In short, the fallout means Beveridge in particular will be put on a much shorter leash with media in future.
Word has reached Diary that a very high-level, behind-the-scenes phone call was made on Thursday morning from a senior AFL executive to the Bulldogs hierarchy. The AFL’s message to the Bulldogs is said to have been blunt: Beveridge’s aggressive behaviour towards the media that night was not OK – and could never be repeated.
Beveridge was livid that Morris had revealed Bulldogs team selections ahead of time last week. The coach responded with his already infamous post-game spray that alleged Morris was a Melbourne-supporting “gutter journalist” and an “absolute embarrassment” who was “preying on us” by peddling “muckraking trash”.
But strangely, during his nationally televised spray, Beveridge also made the candid admission that the Morris story had actually been 100 per cent accurate, having been sourced from “leakage” at the club.
The fingerprints that the AFL had become involved were evident in the rapid response of the Bulldogs’ president Kylie Watson-Wheeler, the Australian boss of The Walt Disney Company. Watson-Wheeler pointedly noted in her statement that the club “cannot and does not condone” Beveridge’s behaviour.
Watson-Wheeler also tacitly acted to cauterise rapidly spreading war stories of Beveridge’s treatment of the media: “Everyone is entitled to a respectful workplace and we acknowledge the important and sometimes difficult job the football media have to do.”
This appeared a reference to a lengthy track record of Beveridge incidents with footy journalists, variously including everything from late-night calls to public confrontations, where he created anything but a “respectful workplace”. Stories emerged of the Bulldogs coach furiously attacking high-profile figures such as AFL Media’s chief correspondent Damien Barrett, commentator Kane Cornes and Morris.
It was Barrett who was most candid about Beveridge’s ongoing war with the media. Barrett alleged on the AFL’s own podcast that there had been an extraordinary altercation at the 2015 Brownlow Medal presentation – again seemingly over an accurate reporting of leaks at the club during that year’s finals. “He did basically shoulder me at the Brownlow Medal,” Barrett said. “I haven’t volunteered that. I’ve only ever spoken about that because so many people witnessed what happened after it … it was just the behaviour of an irrational man in the way I saw him act that night.”
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Palaszczuk MP swears at media enemy
Much has been made of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s increasingly fractious relationship with the Brisbane press gallery, as more and more media hold her to account amid integrity allegations and fatigue over her famously onerous lockdown mandates.
There have been heated
put-downs from the premier for everyone from Sunrise Brisbane reporter Bianca Stone (whom she dubbed “very rude”) to Sky’s Peter Gleeson and Nine’s Tim Arvier and Peter Fegan.
And now it seems that her increasingly belligerent behaviour towards the media enemy is now rubbing off on some of her backbenchers.
Up in Townsville, the state’s Labor local member Aaron “Blue Steel” Harper has taken Palaszczuk’s combative stance with the media to extremes.
It all started when the city’s daily paper, the Townsville Bulletin, had the temerity to publish a story about the fruity language he directed at one of his constituents on his Facebook page.
The Bulletin called out Harper’s cry of “bullshit” to describe a claim made on Facebook about youth crime in Townsville. And you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Townsville who doesn’t admit it has a youth crime problem.
But far from backing away from this odd treatment of one of his own constituents, Harper instead doubled down to attack the Bulletin for reporting the story. “This story is total Bullshit,” the social media-obsessed MP posted. “Warning! The Thought Police are out there! And if they think it’s bad when on occasion, I swear, Well … who knows, next thing they will be out to watch what I wear! Get real, get a life Townsville Bulletin.”
The glass-jawed Harper’s post prompted the deputy editor of the Bulletin, Chris McMahon, to last week make a public appeal directly to Harper’s boss Palaszczuk to rein in her lippy MP.
“Hi @AnnastaciaMP can you sort your mate Blue Steel out?,” McMahon tweeted.
“He’s been embarrassing himself on social media the last few weeks … Weird flex to go after the local newspaper on your political Facebook page.’’
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