It’s been suggested on social media this week that US-based political journalist Jonathan Swan, as the son of the ABC’s coronavirus king Dr Norman Swan, would be better referred to as “Jonathan Cygnet”.
But the Cygnet trumped his father last week, both globally and in his home country of Australia. Swan Jr’s blockbuster interview with US President Donald Trump, which melted down Twitter last week.
The interview saw the Cygnet catapult past his father in terms of Australian media mentions, with Streem figures showing 537 metro mentions for Swan Jnr for last week versus 330 for Swan Snr.
And this despite COVID yet again being the issue of last week, with the imposition of Stage 4 lockdowns in Victoria!
Swan Jr’s rapid elevation to global fame comes a few years after Diary was told that Nine tried to lure him back to Australia with a plum on-air political gig.
The Cygnet ultimately stayed in the US.
However, Swan Jr does have history back in the Australian media, having worked in the Nine newspapers’ Canberra bureau before, we’re told, he fatefully went on “leave” to take up a fellowship as a US Congressional aide back in 2014.
...here, you can now create your own Swan meme. pic.twitter.com/MmMRq0Aw02
— Peter Chen (@pete_himself) August 6, 2020
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Kristina Keneally rants at female TV junior
Kristina Keneally has refused to back down and even played the “gender” card, after Diary presented her on Sunday with allegations by Nine’s Today show of “unacceptable” behaviour towards a junior female TV producer.
A furious unsolicited phone call was made by Keneally to Today during its regular segment with Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Labor deputy leader Richard Marles 10 days ago.
The junior female producer in her early 20s ultimately hung up on the shadow home affairs minister, with Today alleging Keneally berated the producer “in something between a shout and a scream”.
As we noted last week, the segment didn’t ask questions of Dutton about a story on the ABC’s 7.30 the previous night which alleged a Border Force officer mistook negative flu tests for COVID results on the Ruby Princess, setting loose 2700 passengers.
An @AusBorderForce official mistook common flu tests for COVID-19 tests for cruise ship passengers aboard the #RubyPrincess, allowing 3,000 people to disembark despite hundreds of them having #COVID19Aus. #abc730 @andrewprobyn #auspol pic.twitter.com/ESyi9nDZoL
— abc730 (@abc730) July 31, 2020
This caused some questioning among members of Nine’s Canberra bureau, as we revealed last week. But it turns out the person who was by far the most upset about this omission was Keneally.
Nine sources claim that as the segment aired last Friday week, the shadow home affairs minister embarked on a colourful tirade at the junior producer, demanding that she force Today’s co-host Allison Langdon to grill Dutton on the Ruby Princess.
But Nine sources have told Diary that the power imbalance of a former NSW premier and one of Labor’s federal top brass allegedly acting so forthrightly with a much younger woman did not go down well. “We were disappointed someone like Kristina Keneally would, in something between a shout and a scream, vent at a young female producer,” a Today insider told Diary. “It was unacceptable behaviour.”
We’re told the junior female producer was so upset with Keneally’s tone in the phone call that she hung up.
But Keneally denies “shouting and screaming” in her own defence, seeing Nine’s response as a “gendered take”.
“Do they really describe a woman’s behaviour as ‘shouting and screaming’?,” Keneally asked Diary on Sunday. “Well, that’s quite a gendered take. I’ve been in politics and media for almost 20 years, and while I know how to have a direct conversation, I don’t raise my voice in a work setting.”
Today was also shocked by the demands that Keneally made on the call: “In all our years of doing political stories, we’ve never received a call from a politician directing us on what questions to ask their political opponents,” the Today insider said.
But Nine’s anger about this has only seemed to prompt Keneally to double down. “I recommend that the Today show listen to Channel 9’s political reporters on how to hold government ministers to account — including Peter Dutton’s failure to stop the Ruby Princess — and not just rely on them as talking heads.”
However, Nine says this editorial decision was simply not one for Keneally to make. With 723 COVID cases in Victoria and 13 deaths the previous day, they say, the Ruby Princess simply wasn’t the top issue of the moment.
“If we’d devoted time to it, for two or three minutes, that’s less time we would have had on the story of the day. And with all due respect to Kristina, we don’t know yet if the 7.30 Ruby Princess story was a silver bullet or not.”
Plenty more to play out on this one.
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Dan now a reality ratings hit
It’s become the ratings smash of Melbourne’s lockdown 2.0.
Dan Andrews’ must-watch televised daily coronavirus briefings have become so successful from a network TV point of view, that if his political career fails, he may yet have a future as a talk-show host.
For an unbroken 37 straight days as of Sunday, host Dan has fronted Melbourne TV’s hottest new show, with locked-down Melburnians a captive audience for his low cost reality show.
Now Diary has crunched the numbers, and guess what? Melbourne daytime ratings haven’t been this good since Ray Martin’s Midday Show in the 1980s!
We’ve found that Andrews’ briefing announcing Stage 4 lockdowns eight days ago hit the magic one million TV viewer mark in Melbourne. The ABC topped the Victorian TV viewing numbers with just under 500,000 peak viewers for Dan, followed by Seven with 253,000, Nine 184,000 and Ten 73,000.
Take into account viewing in other states and streaming, and the real national figure watching live is an estimated 1.5 million-plus viewers.
As Seven’s news supremo Craig McPherson tells Diary: “With Melbourne in lockdown, Dan Andrews has become its resident rock star.”
The soaring Melbourne viewer and streaming numbers for Dan have come despite the fact that much of the “Danticipation” has been taken out of it.
Leaks from the Andrews camp’s COVID-19 war room have consistently seen the g toll numbers pre-empted hours before the 11am briefing.
Desperate contact tracing in search of a masked COVID leaker has so far failed. Maybe Dan should take a leaf out of the book of his NSW frenemy Gladys Berejiklian, who avoids leaks by tweeting daily case numbers before her briefings.
Then again, Gladys doesn’t rate like Dan.
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Harto, Vanstone for Aunty?
The five-year board terms of ABC deputy chair Kirstin Ferguson and South Australian businesswoman Donny Walford on Aunty’s board are up in November.
So it’s no surprise that there’s plenty of talk behind the scenes about whether a shake-up is on the agenda.
The word around Ultimo is that the ABC’s rock star chair Ita Buttrose may have sent a signal
to Communications Minister Paul Fletcher’s office that she’s looking for fresh blood, including adding to her own considerable media expertise on the board.
At the moment, apart from Buttrose, the only other board name with media experience is ex-Seven West Media CFO Peter Lewis.
We’re hearing that could be about to change. Former News Limited chairman John Hartigan is perhaps the name most bandied about on Diary’s ABC bush telegraph as a board contender. The next most mentioned is former immigration minister and latter day panellist on The Drum, Amanda Vanstone.
But don’t rule out some other media figures coming into contention. Ex-60 Minutes presenter Jana Wendt, ABC elder statesman Stan Grant and Anita Jacoby have all been mentioned in media circles as possible candidates.
The next three months will reveal plenty.
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Fordham v Mitchell duel
Diary’s item last week, “2GB cuts 3AW’s grass”, about the maverick member for Kew Tim Smith bombing the Sydney airwaves in his relentless bid for the Victorian liberal leadership, unwittingly caused not one, but two civil wars.
The first is a classic struggle in Nine’s radio operations between two of its biggest names,
3AW’s morning king Neil Mitchell and 2GB’s new breakfast princeling Ben Fordham. The second involves Smith’s brazen campaign to overthrow Victorian Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien.
Our item highlighted 2GB’s obsession with Smith, which has raised eyebrows in Melbourne where he struggles to get a look in.
But on Monday, a sarcastic pre-dawn email popped up in our inbox from 3AW’s Mitchell, a Diary reader. “Thanks. Now you’ve encouraged Tim Smith, who already thinks there is a conspiracy to keep him off air. Simple reality is … there is very little room on any program for political point scoring. It is about fact and about decision makers.”
Hours later, Mitchell backflipped after Fordham and Smith yet again doubled down that morning. On Fordham’s 2GB show, Smith accused Daniel Andrews of having “blood on his hands” and again called for his resignation following the introduction of Stage 4 restrictions.
That spurred Mitchell into action, belatedly making room for Smith on his Monday program. Mitchell roasted Smith on whether his “blood on his hands” comments were responsible in the middle of a pandemic.
LISTEN | Victorian Liberal MP @TimSmithMP tells @BenFordham Premier Daniel Andrews and his government have "monumentally failed the people of Victoria". pic.twitter.com/FUdmmuXcbU
— Ben Fordham Live (@BenFordhamLive) August 2, 2020
Exhausted by the saga, Diary woke on Tuesday to yet another twist: Fordham launching a full frontal attack on Mitchell, and endorsing Smith as the next Victorian leader of the opposition.
“Neil said: ‘We’re all about facts and information and accountability.’ Well Neil, here are the facts …. Your opposition leader, Michael O’Whatshisname is not up to prosecuting the case. Tim Smith is, and that’s why you’ll be hearing more of him on this show.”
There is only one possible solution: an on-air duel between Fordham and Mitchell, with Diary to moderate.
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Tweets after dark
Nine on-air identity Seb Costello, the son of the media group’s chairman and ex-Liberal federal treasurer Peter Costello, continues to freely offer his political opinions.
On Sunday, he was once more back attacking the Victorian Labor government on Twitter, this time questioning the position of the state’s embattled Health Minister Jenny Mikakos.
I’ve always striven to be upfront and measured about the challenges facing us.
— Jenny Mikakos MP #StayHomeSaveLives (@JennyMikakos) August 8, 2020
So it pains me to see the incorrect assumption made that somehow I can single-handedly report on the actions of countless individuals and many agencies involved in our pandemic response.
Without mentioning her by name, Costello Jnr launched a targeted strike on Mikakos for a series of tweets she sent in the wee hours of Sunday morning, culminating in her declaring: “The truth will set you free.”
Naturally, it didn’t take long for Seb to respond: “If someone with an important job is sending rambling tweets after midnight, it’s probably time they let someone else do the important job and focused on looking after themselves.”
If someone with an important job is sending rambling tweets after midnight, it’s probably time they let someone else do the important job and focused on looking after themselves.
— Seb Costello (@SebCostello9) August 9, 2020
Take care everyone.
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Emma takes ABC to Fair Work
The Emma Alberici vs ABC dispute is escalating fast. Diary has learnt that the ABC’s chief economics correspondent has now formally taken her gripe with the ABC to the Fair Work Commission.
A Fair Work spokesman confirmed on Friday that an early “preliminary hearing” had already taken place via phone hook-up on Thursday morning, in a case listed as “Alberici v Australian Broadcasting Corporation”.
The hearing came after Alberici fired an early shot across the bow at Aunty in the wake of the ABC’s decision to potentially make the position of chief economics correspondent redundant. As we revealed last week, Alberici sent a letter to the ABC detailing claims of unfair treatment by some of her colleagues.
Legal representatives for both parties are understood to have been represented in last week’s phone hook-up, with Alberici’s representatives making her case under Section 739 of the Fair Work Act.
The early skirmishes of what the ABC will no doubt hope is not a long-running case were presided over by commission deputy president Val Gostencnik.
As we noted last week, the ABC had already been preparing its lawyers to handle any legal fallout from her potential redundancy, so the Fair Work filing won’t have entirely come as a surprise.
Alberici had called in her own lawyers in 2018 in the wake of controversy over her much-discussed analysis piece on corporate tax that upset then-PM Malcolm Turnbull.
The New Daily revealed lawyers representing Alberici helped to negotiate the article’s re-posting, as well as a statement from the ABC that reaffirmed it held “respect” for Alberici.
Meanwhile, a drawn-out “redeployment” process, in which the ABC looks for potential jobs that fit the “skill sets” of Alberici and others before their possible redundancies are finalised, continues.
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The Masked Osher
The much-hyped return of last year’s ratings smash The Masked Singer to Ten from this week comes despite plenty of behind-the-scenes dramas.
Diary is reliably informed that on Friday, the army and the police strode into the show’s Docklands Studios set, just to check that everyone was being COVID-compliant.
But that’s just the start of it. We’re told the show’s maker Warner Bros has taken such a
professional attitude to the process that all crew have been required to wear a mask on the set, and security guards have even been reassigned as dedicated “door openers” to avoid COVID contamination.
So seriously are staff taking it, that the show has even offered the startling sight of Osher Gunsberg leaving the studio decked out in a full hazmat mask!
There are also crew dilemmas. Many are Sydneysiders who have driven their cars down for the show, which does not wrap filming until later this month.
With Gladys Berejiklian embarking on a hard closure of the borders as of Friday, some on the set have done the sums on putting their cars on a truck back to Sydney — a cool $3000 shipping bill.
Meanwhile, when the show wraps on August 23, expect everyone who returns to Sydney, from Jackie O to Ten’s head of entertainment Steven Tait, to submit themselves under guard to two weeks of luxurious hotel quarantine at the local Quality Inn, at $3000 a head.
Unprecedented times indeed
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