Ita Buttrose has taken a public position that must be an ABC first: backing Donald Trump.
The ABC chair popped up on, of all places, Channel 10 on Friday, and she didn’t disappoint. Ita even managed to get into an on-air barney about her views with Tristan McManus, the novice co-host of Studio 10, the show she used to front in her pre-ABC days.
The run-in was all about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision last week to intervene in the US election, by calling for Americans to vote in the poll to end “online negativity” and “hate speech”.
Many, including the US President, interpreted this as a clear anti-Trump pitch. “I’m not a fan of hers,” Trump quickly responded. “I wish a lot of luck to Harry, because he’s going to need it.”
That’s where a pro-Trump, anti-Meghan Ita came in. Asked on Studio 10 what she thought of Trump’s comment about Meghan, she replied: “I think he probably said something that many people think.”
To McManus’s apparent horror, she also said Harry should “butt out” of American politics.
“As an Australian, if someone from Britain came here and told me I should be voting and I should be doing this and that, then I’d be telling him to butt out of our business.”
But a shouty McManus then challenged a visibly unimpressed Ita. “I don’t agree with that … Everybody has a responsibility. This isn’t about American politics, because the decisions they’re making can affect the whole world.”
Ita started to say that “Harry has nothing to do with American politics …” But McManus loudly boomed over her: “I apologise, but he has everything to do with it.”
Co-host Sarah Harris then awkwardly steered the chat away from the US election. But someone must have then had a word in McManus’s ear, because just before Ita left, he came back to “apologise if it seemed as though I was rude shouting at ya”.
Let’s hope McManus never needs a job at the ABC.
Aunty’s landslide vote
Still on Buttrose, the most predictable election result of the year will arrive on Tuesday, with the release of the outcome of the ABC staff vote on its 2 per cent pay rise.
After urging from Communications Minister Paul Fletcher for the ABC to follow a general public service pay freeze, Ita offered Aunty’s staff a last-minute poll on whether to defer their raise for six months, from October 1 to April 1, saving $5m. The savings, she told them, would be diverted to “emergency broadcasting”.
But the ABC’s two big unions, the CPSU and the MEAA, are adamantly opposed. CPSU ABC section secretary, Sinddy Ealy, told her members: “You deserve to get your 2% pay increase in full.” The MEAA dubbed the proposal “extremely disappointing”, directing members to “VOTE NO”.
In the race of life, as Jack Lang said, always back self-interest: at least you know it’s trying. Expect a near-100 per cent vote against any delays to the ABC pay rise on Tuesday.
ABC hunts two-decade Sydney crown of ‘No Alan Jones’ 2GB
Nine’s moment of truth as an owner of radio stations has finally arrived — and, interestingly, it’s the ABC smelling blood.
In the most important radio survey since the 1980s, insiders at the new 2GB are sweating on Tuesday’s long-delayed ratings in the country’s biggest radio market, Sydney, featuring no Alan Jones. At stake is the No 1 spot 2GB has held for a generation.
And ABC Radio Sydney, the city’s No 2 rated radio station, has been taking its shot at the crown with targeted ad campaigns.
Why? Because with the departure of Jones, 2GB has abandoned its conservative shock jock formula that has won it the ratings for so long, for an ad-friendly, middle of the road line-up. Its new-look team has certainly taken the “shock” out of “shock jock” — based largely on uncontroversial TV personalities like Deb Knight, Jim Wilson and Brooke Corte.
The old 2GB with Jones at the helm unashamedly leaned right and courted controversy. But drive host Wilson summed up the new 2GB mentality when he said in July he wanted listeners to “wonder which way I vote”.
That new mindset has come since Jones was heavily targeted by social media activist groups like Mad F..king Witches, a campaign that hurt 2GB’s revenues in his last couple of years even as he topped the ratings.
Nine radio insiders now talk about choosing “revenue over ratings”. That’s all well and good but some 2GB types are asking how it will make revenue if it loses its two-decade Sydney ratings crown.
We may soon find out, with radio sharks circling. Diary hears ABC Radio Sydney, chasing its first Sydney ratings crown in the modern era, has in recent weeks used an ad blitz on its own TV station to specifically target the breakfast slot, where Ben Fordham is filling Jones’s giant shoes.
Prime time ad after ad has screened on the ABC’s main Sydney TV channel for its strong-rating ABC 702 breakfast pairing of Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck, second behind Jones in the most recent April survey, and ahead of Kyle & Jackie O on KIIS FM.
Unluckily for Nine and 2GB, they are now confronting the perfect storm of an entirely Jones-free, super two-month survey period, because COVID-19 delayed surveys for nearly six months. That means one thing: no soft ratings landing for 2GB in the first survey back.
Privately, 2GB’s best guess is Fordham will rate a 12 — about a third below Jones’s towering 17.9 in his last survey before leaving.
And if you were to apply a one-third audience loss across its entire new-look weekday line-up, 2GB’s overall ratings could fall from its market-leading 15.4 share in April to around a 10. In that scenario, 2GB’s two-decade crown would be in play. The ABC (second on 9.8 in April), KIIS, WSFM or even Smooth would only have to pick up a portion of 2GB defectors to take over the Sydney radio crown.
Tuesday will be fascinating.
$1m spend on Ben
Nine radio bosses might claim not to be concerned about ratings. But they’ve opened the corporate cash register in a big way to promote their new line-ups in Sydney and Brisbane.
Insiders say Nine have set aside $1.25m worth of campaigns for just two hosts: ads worth $1m for Ben Fordham on 2GB, and a further $250,000 worth for Brisbane’s Neil Breen, 4BC’s breakfast shock jock in training.
‘Beaming Ben’ images have been absolutely everywhere in Sydney in recent weeks. There’s been a mega-sized billboard of him at Sydney airport, posters of him on the back of every second Sydney bus, TV ads in the 6pm news, large print ads in the Nine-owned SMH and rival Daily Telegraph, and daily cash giveaways. Breen has received similar treatment in the less pricey Brisbane market.
Colourful ex-Ten personality Tim Bailey has also been hired as Fordham’s personal weatherman, and a feature profile of Fordham — lined up by Nine in the SMH’s Good Weekend — is said to be going to print in November. But word out of 2GB last persisted it definitely won’t be a PR puff piece.
Meanwhile, Diary hears Fordham’s boxes in the opulent ex-Alan Jones corner office at 2GB remain unpacked — four months after he took over breakfast.
Seven star defends brutal Dan grilling
After a wild week in Melbourne, a high-profile Seven reporter who made a special trip to grill Daniel Andrews in a press conference last week has defended his aggressive questioning about lockdowns that angered the Victorian Premier.
Denham Hitchcock, from Seven’s 60 Minutes competitor Spotlight, tells Diary: “I was pretty surprised a journalist asking questions of a politician at a press conference would draw so much attention. The Victorian lockdown is estimated to cost the country’s economy up to $12b. If he (Andrews) didn’t expect the questions, he should have.”
Hitchcock’s testy exchange with Andrews came during a rollicking two weeks for him in Melbourne, that at one point even involved what he dubs a “polite grilling” by Victorian Police while covering a “freedom” protest.
Hitchcock’s Dan run-in came after he essentially asked the same question of the Premier three times, on the Tuesday edition of Andrews’s daily 11am show, the top-rating Dan TV.
The question? “Would you wreck or jeopardise the economy of the state to save lives?”
After Andrews twice said it was a choice that had been made by “national cabinet from day one”, Hitchcock finally demanded that he “answer that yes or no”. Andrews bluntly responded: “How I choose to answer your questions is, with respect, a matter for me.”
Hitchcock then came under a concerted Twitter attack from a loyal band of Andrews supporters who used the hashtag: #ThisIsNotJournalism. A typical tweet: “No one needs your hot Northern Beaches takes on a pandemic bud. Stick to surfing.”
Hitchcock tells Diary: “I’m surprised by the veracity and numbers of supporters for Dan on Twitter. If asking tough questions at a press conference isn’t journalism, what is?”
Hitchcock now flies back to his current home in Queensland. Dan’s farewell gift to his nemesis? Two weeks of Brisbane hotel quarantine, starting Monday.
ABC’s Fran Kelly: ‘Bring back banned Q&A’
“How many rapists must we kill until men stop raping us?”
That was the inflammatory question by Egyptian-US journalist Mona Eltahawy on Q&A’s most controversial episode in years, featuring a feminist panel last November. The angry remarks ultimately caused Ita Buttrose to intervene to pull the episode from iview after days of national debate.
However, with media regulator ACMA this month finding that the episode didn’t breach any ABC standards, there is a new push to have the ban lifted. The ABC has revealed it has no plans to restore the episode to iview.
But Radio National breakfast’s Fran Kelly, host of the episode in question, thinks it should be. She tells Diary her employer should make the episode available.
“Yes, I think the show should be on the website, because as a matter of … freedom of speech — the public broadcaster should stand by its programs,” she says.
Kelly admitted in November that she should have done more on the show to challenge the contention that “killing men is the answer to violence against women”.
But any flaw in the show does not, she says, change the fundamental principle it should be available to view: “We can attach any rider we want to those programs. But they should be available.”
She’s not alone. Executive producer of the controversial Q&A episode, Peter McEvoy, tweeted a “broadside to @ABCTV” for not reinstating the episode “even after it was cleared by ACMA”.
When Diary reached McEvoy last week, he simply said: “My tweet speaks for itself.”
Smith’s ‘custody’ remark
Being a radio broadcaster on Australia’s best-known radio station, 2GB, can be a blessing. But there are times when the reach that comes with that sort of big media platform has its negatives.
Back in May, a problem was started by 2GB’s weekend morning broadcaster Chris Smith, when he went on his show to claim he had full “custody” of all of his four children from two relationships.
But Smith’s “custody” line didn’t go down well with his ex-wife, and the mother of two of his four kids, Ally Bell. She complained to 2GB bosses and Smith eventually issued an on-air correction: “I said the week before I had custody of all my four kids,” the broadcaster told his listeners. “That’s not the case. The kids’ mum had been doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of parenting.”
Bell tells Diary she was “upset” by her ex-husband’s initial public claim in May, and by what the “custody” comment inferred. “There has been no court case or any legal activity in relation to the custody arrangements of our children,” she tells us. Bell adds she felt the original on-air claim carried the implication that she’d “lost custody” of her kids. “That is simply not the case,” she says.
Pauline’s Today Show ban extended
Three months on from her dumping from Nine’s Today show, Pauline Hanson’s breakfast TV exile shows no sign of ending.
Hanson has, of course, had her share of run-ins with Sunrise and Today over controversial comments she’s made on each show over the last two years. She was famously dumped from Today in July after she claimed many tenants in Flemington’s public housing towers were “drug addicts”.
Now Nine insiders have told Diary they believe Today’s Hanson-free zone has benefited its Brisbane ratings. In the three months since she left the show, Today has won most ratings weeks in Brisbane — despite Hanson’s big following in her home state. So on that basis, Nine says it won’t hurry to bring her back as a regular.
Not that Pauline’s bothered. When Nine dumped her from Today, she told us: “I really don’t care if I don’t go on Channel 9.”
Still, when one door closes, another opens. Diary hears Hanson will now be star panellist on Sky News’s October 31 Queensland election night coverage.
Sport ads to TV’s rescue
Big sport is starting to dig TV networks out of the COVID-19 ad hole.
Off the back of a truck, Diary has sighted Nine’s forward TV revenue figures for October and November compared with 2019.
With a virtual full month of finals leading to the October 25 NRL Grand Final, Nine’s October revenue is forecast to be up 4.5 per cent on 2019. Meanwhile, with three weeks of State of Origin that month, Nine’s November revenue will be up 10.5 per cent on last year. Whispers of an AFL finals-led ad boost for October are coming out of Seven as well. But will it last when footy’s over?
Non-live Insiders
Questions were asked about why a David Speers interview with PM Scott Morrison was shown two days after it was conducted.
Diary has learnt it was the first time since he took over Insiders that Speers has run a non-live interview with a politician. Sources close to ScoMo tell us he couldn’t do the interview live on Sunday due to a “personal commitment”.
Speers told Diary on Sunday: “Our preference is always live, but it was still an important and worthwhile interview.”
Report on ABC’s ‘doctored audio’ scandal blames lawyers
A report has blamed ABC lawyers for failing to pass on complaints by former commando Heston Russell that extra gunshots had been edited into an ABC news report.
‘Pressure from above’: ABC executive pushed by Buttrose
Christopher Oliver-Taylor was under pressure to sack Antoinette Lattouf after Ita Buttrose made clear she was ‘deeply unhappy’ with action taken on the stand-in radio host, the Federal Court has heard.