On the face of it, the departure of My Kitchen Rules’ long-time host “Paleo” Pete Evans from Seven was all about his hopelessly kooky causes. Think his $15,000 light machine alleged to cure COVID-19, his advocacy of bone broth as a breast milk substitute, and his claims that most sunscreens are “dangerous”.
But Diary has learnt of another big issue at play in Paleo Pete’s departure, apart from his famed kookiness — money.
With Seven in heavy debt, it simply had too many (expensive) cooks in the kitchen. Evans was just the lowest-hanging fruit.
Diary can reveal that Seven’s kitchen talent, spearheaded by Evans, Manu Feildel, Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and Colin Fassnidge, carry a whopping $4m-a-year price tag. Post-coronavirus, that figure is no longer sustainable.
Losing Evans immediately cuts about $850,000 from that $4m-a-year budget. But according to Seven insiders, there are still some big numbers on Seven’s books: those of Feildel, Preston and Mehigan (who are all on about $1m a year), and Fassnidge (about $600,000 a year). Karen Martini and Ed Halmagyi, cooking regulars on Seven’s Better Homes and Gardens, are a comparative steal at $300,000 a year.
In a case of interesting timing, it was also announced last week that Therese Hegarty, until last week the head of Seven Studios (and formerly Seven’s long-time production boss), was departing as part of Seven’s “ongoing transformation”. Andrew Backwell will take her role. Hegarty is said to have presided over the explosion of Seven’s salaries in the kitchen.
But with Hegarty gone and the once-top rating MKR unlikely to ever return to our screens after turning into a ratings dud, can all of those enviable pay packets survive?
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GetUp chases cash via the ABC
With no federal election to get involved with until 2022, GetUp has instead picked up a media cause to keep its supporters occupied.
And it looks like being a lucrative one for the progressive activist group’s coffers.
GetUp last week used a report called “It’s Our ABC” as the hook to launch its newest campaign, fronted by former ABC journalist Quentin Dempster, to “fight to protect” the public broadcaster.
The report was written by Emma Dawson, long-time policy adviser to ex-Labor communications minister Stephen Conroy.
And who did Dawson work hand-in-glove with when she was with Conroy? Why, none other than the ABC’s current strategy supremo, Mark Tapley — who, back then, just happened to be Conroy’s chief of staff. Quite the coincidence!
This @percapita audit reveals fiscal ill health of the ABC. It tracks destructive impact on all audience services from aggressive defunding since 2014 budget. In July the ABC Board will have to flag further cuts. ABC is there for us in a crisis. Now we must be there for the ABC. https://t.co/LCc7MSOTGA
— Quentin Dempster (@QuentinDempster) May 3, 2020
But there’s some confusion about whether GetUp’s newest campaign is a fundraising drive for the ABC, or for GetUp.
Handy donation forms have been prominently attached to GetUp’s ABC pitch, asking its supporters to build on the “momentum created by this incredible report” by chipping in “to the next stages of our ABC campaign”. Never a body to waste a fundraising opportunity, GetUp also tapped its supporters to fund the report in the first place.
GetUp clearly thinks that deploying activists in Bananas in Pyjamas costumes resonates with its supporter base, and has escalated its ABC campaigning in marginal seats. In the 2019 federal election campaign, for example, it even shelled out for an ambitious “save the ABC” cinema ad campaign, again featuring Dempster, in three marginals: Boothby and Mayo in South Australia, and Wentworth in Sydney.
Dempster’s message in the GetUp ads for the 2019 poll? Vote for “a strong ABC” by not voting Liberal. That was, of course, part of a concerted national anti-government campaign by GetUp.
But the GetUp ABC cinema ads didn’t translate into electoral success. Of the three seats where the ads screened, two (Boothby and Wentworth) were regained by the Liberals in the 2019 poll.
Our report with @percapita @QuentinDempster reveals the damage the Coalition’s aggressive, death-by-a-thousand-cuts agenda has inflicted on the ABC. It's the very first time these cuts have been analysed on the back of two unprecedented crises and huge losses in regional media.
— Paul Oosting (@PaulOosting) May 4, 2020
But in its latest campaign, GetUp says it wants to use the “extended opportunity” created by the coronavirus-driven delay to the budget until October to pressure the government for more funding for the broadcaster.
So will a Coalition government with cash resources stretched to the limit by COVID-19 be swayed by a GetUp-commissioned report seeking more money for the ABC?
The early signs aren’t great. When Diary reached Communications Minister Paul Fletcher on Friday, he ominously claimed the ABC enjoyed “a level of security that private sector (media) businesses and employees can only dream about”.
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Fawlty cameo
Still on that headline-making GetUp ABC report, there was an odd problem with some of its information-gathering. Its pivotal graph, titled “The ABC: Death by 1000 cuts”, bizarrely featured a photo of commercial TV star Melissa Doyle next to a mention of “Radio National cutbacks, including axing Sunday Night”.
As Manuel from Fawlty Towers would ask: “Que”? Diary can definitively confirm that Doyle does not, and never has, worked for Radio National. She did until last year host something called Sunday Night, but that was a TV program on Seven, not a Sunday night ABC radio show. Perhaps someone involved in the GetUp report had a bit of trouble spotting the difference?
The online version of the report was ultimately updated after some spontaneous Twitter critiques emerged last week, with Doyle hurriedly edited out.
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Knives out at Nine?
Who exactly at Nine has got it in for its CEO Hugh Marks and chairman Peter Costello? The subject was creating great intrigue in the media sector at the weekend after a two-page spread in Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph claimed that “some members” of the Nine board are now “pushing openly” to oust the pair. There were even photos of Marks enjoying a Wednesday harbourside picnic lunch in Sydney with his EA, Jane Routledge.
There are certainly plenty of people with axes to grind with Marks, after a week of redundancies at Nine as it, like many other media outlets, adjusts to the realities of the post-coronavirus world.
But with the talk of board members pushing for Marks to go, this did not seem the work of a common or garden disgruntled staffer.
The seven-member Nine board is a legacy of its merger with Fairfax Media at the end of 2018, divided between Nine and ex-Fairfax figures. Four members — Costello, Marks, Samantha Lewis and Catherine West — were already Nine directors before the merger. But three — deputy chairman Nick Falloon, Mickie Rosen and Patrick Allaway — joined Nine from Fairfax post-merger.
Before the merger, Falloon was chairman of both Fairfax and property website Domain Group. But Falloon has had to play second fiddle to Costello at the enlarged Nine since the merger.
Meanwhile, Marks has even infiltrated Falloon’s other piece of board real estate at Domain. While Falloon remains chairman there, Marks and trusted Nine lieutenant Lizzie Young joined the Domain board with zero fanfare this year.
But if The Sunday Telegraph story is to be believed, Falloon may soon be in for a promotion at the expense of his current ultimate Nine boss. The story claimed that Falloon was now “favoured to replace Costello”.
When Diary reached Falloon on Sunday, he was in no mood to chat. “I’m busy. I don’t want to talk to you,” he said gruffly, before hanging up. Costello and Marks couldn’t be reached for comment.
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‘40 years’ for 60 Mins
Is 60 Minutes about to become the highest-profile TV casualty of COVID-19? It has certainly been the hot rumour around the corridors of Nine in recent weeks, amid heavy cost-cutting throughout the embattled TV sector.
The talk was fed last week by the socially distanced redundancies via Zoom of a number of longstanding 60 Minutes staff, including travel manager Vanessa Thomas and veteran cameraman Richard Malone.
But through this column, Nine’s head of news and current affairs, Darren Wick, is ending the speculation once and for all, telling Diary that Nine is committed to 60 Minutes for “the next 40 years”.
“The future of 60 Minutes has never been in question. It’s one of our strongest and longest-running brands and a program we are immensely proud of,” Wick said.
“It’s been telling amazing stories for 40 years, and we’re looking to it telling even better stories for the next 40 years.”
Wick concedes he has made cuts at 60 Minutes and beyond, without specifying numbers. “Yes, we’ve had to make some difficult decisions at all news and current affairs programs. But I don’t think they’re an island in the media on that.”
Wick is right on the fact that all current affairs programs, not just 60 Minutes, are facing cuts. Diary also hears at least four staff at A Current Affair were sent packing last week as well.
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Flying high no more
But the “difficult decisions” at 60 Minutes don’t end there. With the redundancy of its travel manager last week, Nine is taking a machete to 60 Minutes’ famously stupendous travel budgets, the biggest in Australian TV.
Diary can reveal 60 Minutes typically has traditionally spent an average of $70,000 a week — or a whopping $3m a year — to send reporters almost continuously to business class lounges and five-star hotels around the world.
Of course, with planes grounded, COVID-19 has obliterated that number to virtually zero for the time being. The only international connections Liz Hayes and co have made in recent weeks have been on Zoom or Skype.
But even when global travel returns, the bloated travel budgets of 60 Minutes’ heyday will not, Diary is informed. Tens of thousands of dollars every week will permanently be slashed from the show’s travel budget.
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Ray of ScoMo sunshine
The bromance between Ray Hadley and Scott Morrison is back on, three years after Hadley ended it because of ScoMo’s on-air dalliance with the ABC.
Back then, 2GB’s morning ratings leader made headlines when he told his audience: “The love affair, or the bromance that has been written about, is over.”
That bust-up came when Morrison chose to appear on ABC Radio Melbourne’s Jon Faine program — on the same morning that he knocked back Hadley for his regular weekly morning spot on 2GB.
Hadley has confirmed this to Diary: “It was about him appearing on the ABC, when he was unavailable for our morning chat.” Hadley declared at the time: “The regular chat with the treasurer is now abandoned,” dubbing him “boring” and “full of platitudes”.
But three years — and a pandemic — can change things. In an interview on Wednesday, Hadley told Morrison: “A few years ago I had a blue with you and it was the subject of much publicity. I want to apologise … I think you have handled yourself with class, dignity and distinction and a level of energy I’ve rarely seen.”
When Diary asked Hadley about the change of heart, he said: “I was sincere. I was sorry that I hammered him, because he’s been a really good PM.”
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The King of the West
Can a current high-profile national TV personality somehow also juggle the demands of high political office?
Seven’s Basil Zempilas, Western Australia’s best-known media identity on the national stage, is currently mulling that question.
To say that Zempilas’s work life is complicated is an understatement. Not only is he a Seven anchor and AFL caller, he also works for Seven’s bitter rival Nine as breakfast radio host for Perth’s top talkback station, 6PR. And now he’s also considering having a tilt at the vacant role of Lord Mayor of Perth, with elections due in October.
Zempilas is warm favourite to be elected Perth Lord Mayor if he decides to go for the job. But he only wants to become King of the West if he can hang on to his media gigs. Think Clover Moore calling rugby league while also running Sydney.
Diary is told that Zempilas’s contract with Nine’s 6PR expires at the end of the year. Nine is keen for Zempilas to stay on 6PR; Seven, maybe not. His ultimate boss at Seven is Perth business royalty Kerry Stokes, who loves Zempilas. But the big man apparently isn’t crazy about having his favourite west coast TV talent on a Perth radio station owned by sworn rival Nine.
So speculation has swirled about whether Zempilas will renew with 6PR at the end of the year — and if he doesn’t, who could possibly replace him. One name that has popped up is another Perth identity, Nine’s 60 Minutes reporter Liam Bartlett, himself ex-6PR.
But would his Nine bosses let Bartlett work for 60 Minutes and 6PR simultaneously? Unlikely.
“Breakfast radio in any capital city is a demanding gig,” a Nine source told Diary.
“A 60 Minutes story can take two weeks. He’d have to commit to one or the other.”
New set, new host … but not much has changed at the ABC’s Media Watch
Paul Barry’s successor Linton Besser signalled that, as it has in the past, MediaWatch will continue to attempt to keep journalists contained within Green Left ideological guard rails.
We owe her nothing, says Ita, as Lattouf grilled over ‘controversial’ Gaza posts
Sacked ABC radio host Antoinette Lattouf conceded a social media post claiming ‘Gaza is being annihilated hourly’ was controversial, but said it was a statement of ‘fact’.