Why would Nine pay Alan Jones $4m-plus not to appear on 2GB and 4BC for the next 13 months? That head-scratcher was being asked time and again in media circles last week.
Now insiders have revealed a crucial reason.
Diary has learnt the timing of both Jones’s departure and his lucrative golden goodbye was carefully calibrated, to make sure he doesn’t become a competitor to 2GB’s new breakfast host Ben Fordham. The key to it all is that under the terms of his contract with 2GB, Jones is forbidden from joining any radio venture that competes in any way with 2GB, 4BC or any other Nine station until July next year.
With Nine paying out Jones’s contract in full (Diary hears it will pay him a full bonus for meeting ratings targets, but not another bonus based on revenue), he’s bolted down to its conditions.
Those familiar with Nine’s thinking at the highest levels say it wants to insulate Fordham from any competition with Jones for an extended period of time in the crucial Sydney breakfast market. The Jones lockdown gives Fordham 13 months of “clear air” to establish himself in 2GB breakfast before Jones’s non-compete is up. For that period, Jones can’t do as much as a podcast for a rival.
Nine sees another irresistible benefit in making the move now. COVID-19 has killed the radio ratings until late September, meaning Fordham will have four months without any immediate worries about the sizeable ratings shadow cast by Jones.
It may seem far-fetched that Jones would return to breakfast when his non-compete expires next year, when he’ll be 80.
But given that a year or so ago, Jones seriously entertained a multi-million-dollar offer from maverick media boss Bill Caralis to join John Laws at the Super Radio Network, Nine isn’t taking any chances.
That’s wise. Two decades ago, Jones and Ray Hadley moved a huge swag of listeners with them when they jumped from 2UE to 2GB, helpin
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K Rudd as our next shock jock?
Former PM Kevin Rudd got media bosses thinking on Twitter last Wednesday, the day after Alan Jones unexpectedly retired from 2GB.
A tweeted photo showed Rudd decked out in full radio regalia, with headphones in front of an on-air microphone, and the message: “I hear there’s an opening at the @2GB873 morning radio slot. Just letting (Nine chairman) Peter Costello and the team know that I’m available. Ready to rock and roll …”
I hear there’s an opening at the @2GB873 morning radio slot. Just letting Peter Costello and the team know that I’m available. Ready to rock and roll... 🙂 pic.twitter.com/qrlZrnKDsz
— Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) May 13, 2020
KRudd was only half-joking. Diary has learnt that behind the scenes, the ex-PM has indeed been exploring opportunities for a media career.
We’re reliably informed there have been serious backroom talks this year involving Sunrise executive producer Michael Pell and host David Koch about reuniting Rudd with former treasurer Joe Hockey to renew their famous “Big Guns” slot on breakfast TV, the original segment to showcase politicians on breakfast TV. That slot played a huge role in catapulting Rudd to The Lodge in 2007.
Rudd was very keen. But unfortunately for the ex-PM, Diary is told Hockey has now gone cold on the idea of the on-air reunion with his old sparring partner. So it’s KRudd alone who will be taking a more permanent presence at Brekkie Central.
But there is yet another intriguing career for Rudd out there — on talkback radio. Jones’s out-of-the-blue 2GB departure last week has had big ripple effects by opening up new radio opportunities on Nine’s radio station 4BC in Brisbane, Rudd’s home city.
Nine has decided ad-friendly local content will be king at 4BC after Jones’s departure. On Saturday, it was announced that former Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen will return to Brisbane to start a dedicated 4BC breakfast show. But with Ben Fordham’s move to 2GB breakfast, the Brisbane drive shift is now open.
Radio bosses want a local for 4BC drive, and who’s more local than Rudd?
His Brisbane riverfront penthouse is just minutes from 4BC’s Cannon Hill studios. And the ex-PM’s increasingly active Twitter feed — full of outspoken, shock jock-style views lately — shows he is craving a bigger media platform.
On Friday night, for example, he even accused ABC chair Ita Buttrose of running “propaganda” for Scott Morrison, and claimed she had a “huge impact on the national broadcaster”. It’s a subject tailor-made for the man who could be radio’s newest shock jock.
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TV deal for Jones
With Alan Jones’s primary media focus soon to shift to TV after his shock radio retirement last week, there has been plenty written about what he cannot do elsewhere until the end of his contract with Nine in July next year.
One misconception that Diary can correct is the SMH’s claim that his Sky News presence will be restricted to two nights a week until his 2GB contract formally ends.
Wrong. We’re reliably informed that under his agreement with Nine, Jones can straight away go up to four nights a week without any breach — providing, of course, that he can agree terms with Sky.
Jones currently fronts two 8PM shows a week on Sky: Jones & Credlin on Tuesdays, and Richo & Jones on Wednesdays.
But there is unlikely to be any rush for Jones and Sky to complete a deal. We’re told those talks are likely to wait until June, after Jones has completed his last fortnight at 2GB.
If Jones does strike a deal to double his shifts with Sky, he will strengthen a line-up already going through a pandemic-led purple patch.
Sky has been the No 1 channel on the Foxtel platform for 14 weeks in a row. Meanwhile, Sky News on WIN, the network’s regional platform that services 30 markets across Australia (and screens both of Jones’s Sky shows) has also been clocking up record numbers in the bush.
For April, the average weekday prime-time viewer numbers for Sky News on WIN were at double their level of a year ago, and in a milestone for the new-ish channel, surpassed the average weekday prime-time figures of the ABC News digital channel by about 7000 viewers during the month.
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Smith trumps Karl
Karl Stefanovic may have asked for Ben Fordham’s coveted drive time shift at 2GB. But it’s 2GB/Sky host Chris Smith who’s an early favourite.
Diary is told Smith will meet Nine radio bosses later this week to discuss a possible move to drive from his current role as 2GB’s weekend host. Smith is currently hosting Sky’s 8PM show on Thursdays, and is the network’s main pinch-hitter to stand in for a host of Sky talent, including Andrew Bolt.
The seat’s not even cold on Fordham’s move to 2GB breakfast, but already the unsolicited applications are flowing in.
Apart from Smith and Stefanovic, others mooted for the plum gig include Seven Sydney news boss Jason Morrison, Sky’s Paul Murray and Mark Levy, who will take the drive reins temporarily when Fordham leaves in a fortnight.
We hear Karl is keen, egged on by his new agent, Mark Morrissey (who also manages Chris Hemsworth). The Today host has frequently been a stand-in for Ben Fordham on drive, and Diary hears he told colleagues at the time that he would love to do the shift permanently if it ever became available.
But given that Today was just beaten by ABC News Breakfast in the ratings for the sixth consecutive week, he may have to focus on his day job.
Murray is also known to love radio. But he has just inked a lucrative, long-term exclusive deal with Sky, and his bosses are unlikely to want him to work for a competitor on a show that finishes three hours before his nightly TV show.
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Nine’s power play
Even by the media’s standards for craziness, Nine has had an eventful week: Alan Jones’s departure, knife-edge NRL rights negotiations, and even two-page weekend newspaper spreads showing Nine CEO Hugh Marks having a weekday picnic lunch with his EA.
Last but not least, there was also the claim in the Sunday Telegraph that Nine chairman Peter Costello had lost the support of other board members, with his deputy Nick Falloon allegedly “favoured to replace” him.
There is certainly no love lost between Falloon and the ex-federal treasurer. Falloon was once top dog as chairman of Fairfax. But at the end of 2018, the owner of the SMH and The Age was taken over by Nine, already led by Costello and Marks. So Falloon was left with boardroom scraps as deputy chair.
Falloon’s demotion under Nine brought him its share of indignities. After the Nine merger, he initially continued to use his chairman’s office on mahogany row in Fairfax’s former national HQ in Sydney’s Pyrmont.
But that didn’t last: Diary is reliably informed that Marks gave an edict to Nine directors soon after the merger: “We don’t allow board members to have an office.” It was a message seemingly aimed directly at Falloon.
We hear Marks’s edict resulted in Falloon’s eviction from his flash ex-Fairfax chairman’s office. He cleared out his gear and set up shop at another Nine company that he did still chair: real estate website Domain Group. But now not even that domain is safe from Marks. This year, the Nine CEO joined the Domain board to shadow Falloon.
At the time of the Nine merger, Falloon seemed to be positioning himself to become Nine chairman, once Costello’s term in the role expired. A well-sourced analysis piece in Fairfax’s SMH in August 2018 even claimed that a patient Falloon would become Nine chair “no later than 2020”.
But now 2020 is here, and the signs are that Costello wants to stay when his current term as chair expires later this year.
There is one final piece of intrigue after this week’s events: a bitter falling out between Alan Jones and Falloon. On Jones’s 2GB show in August 2017, he branded Falloon, along with ex-Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood and board members, “dills”. Within hours, Diary hears an angry Falloon rang the Jones bunker demanding to speak to him.
Three years on, relations between the pair haven’t improved. But interestingly, Falloon and the rest of the Nine board were briefed about Jones’s departure, in the week before he made his on-air announcement last Tuesday.
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Caught short for sport
For desperate sportscasters, the return of the AFL and NRL can’t come soon enough. Obscure sports like skateboarding and Korean baseball have suddenly made headlines, with no local sport being played.
But for sheer amusement value, spare a thought for Nine’s Sydney sports host Erin Molan. On the cupboard bare in one bulletin, she good-humouredly featured a story on the “professional wrestling” body the WWE, best known for its Oscar-winning acting. Thankfully, she did clarify at the story’s end: “It’s not technically a sport.”
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Waleed no poll tipster
The coronavirus pandemic makes it seem like a lifetime ago, but Monday marks the first anniversary since Scott Morrison beat off Bill Shorten’s challenge in the May 18 election last year.
But it’s easy to forget that if the predictions made by everyone from Waleed Aly to Chris Uhlmann had been right on the night, it is Shorten who would now be piloting us through the COVID-19 — while ScoMo would be picking up the pieces of a destroyed Coalition. Who can forget Ten political editor Peter van Onselen’s election night special: “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.”
But on the May 18 media bandwagon, PvO was hardly alone. Nine news anchor Peter Overton, for example, made the early call to the entire national Nine Network viewership that night, that “Bill Shorten will be prime minister for the next three years”.
And don’t forget some huge seat predictions in Labor’s favour for the 151-seat parliament. The Project’s Aly, PvO, Barrie Cassidy and Nine political editor Uhlmann
made predictions early in their telecasts, all suggesting Labor would win 80-plus seats.
Aly was particularly authoritative: “I’m expecting it to fall around 81 (seats for Labor). I’m basing that on things I’ve heard from people who should know.”
The final result? The Coalition won 77 seats, Labor 68.
Here’s hoping some political pundits are better tipsters at the track — or they might go broke.
A ‘mistake’ for ABC to hire Lattouf: Anderson
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