Celebrity chef Pete Evans was taking a leaf straight out of the Pauline Hanson playbook with his statement to the 60 Minutes cameras on Sunday night.
A gaunt-looking Evans looked straight down the barrel: “I’ll just make this one statement: if I disappear or I have a fricking weird accident, it wasn’t an accident. OK?”
It was highly reminiscent of Hanson in 1997, the year she formed a party called One Nation. In her famous “voice from the grave” video, also down the barrel of the camera, she stated: “Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now it means that I have been murdered.”
It’s not the pair’s only common ground. Out of the blue, he’s also suddenly become a vocal supporter of US President Donald Trump, a Hanson favourite. So with Diary’s revelation last week that for prime minister Tony Abbott knocked back an offer from former Labor leader Mark Latham to take a place on One Nation’s NSW senate ticket, could Kooky Pete be next?
Pete Evans’ controversial views on everything from sunscreen to dietary advice has attracted the ire of health professionals. His social media pages have also given exposure to some of the more bizarre theories surrounding COVID-19. #60Mins pic.twitter.com/tYyheAT3N7
— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) June 7, 2020
How ABC ‘cuts the grass’ of its rivals
A secret list shows that the ABC is using hard-won public funding to boost its presence on Google through hundreds of search terms, in a bid to attract viewers to its TV and streaming platforms.
Diary has uncovered the list that shows a pandemic has pushed to new heights the ABC’s “Google-boosting”, in which Aunty directs online searches for its content to prioritised ABC ads on Google.
The document shows the ABC bid for and won 1289 keyword search terms on Google as of late May. It generally paid between 1c and 8c per ABC ad click for the privilege. But what has really put noses out of joint among free-to-air rivals — like Ten, Nine and fellow public broadcaster SBS — is that in some cases the ABC’s Google-boosting spend is targeting competitors’ shows and platforms, including streaming services 10play and SBS on Demand.
As one rival executive told Diary: “We’re fighting for our lives here because of COVID-19, and even the ABC has recently been crying poor. But at the same time, they’re spending government money to cut our grass.”
The search terms, primarily covering high-profile ABC shows like Killing Eve, Bluey and Four Corners, generally direct people to an ad for the ABC’s streaming service, iview. But hilariously, the ABC doesn’t think its viewers can spell. Among the ABC’s 1289 Google search terms are a large and glorious array of misspellings of iview at a few cents per ad click: specifically calculated to ensure ABC ads can still capture grammatically challenged viewers.
The most amusing include: ivew, i vew, iveiw, abbc iview, uview, oview, ibiew, iviiew, iviw, ivewi, ivoew, and many, many others. There’s also a bid to attract fans of the misspelt “abc sjop”, a steal at 4c a click.
But the secret list also shows ABC tech-heads have targeted the names — and yes, misspellings — of rival content owned by SBS, Nine and Ten.
The search terms include “abs on demand” (at 7c a click, a misspelling of SBS on Demand); “tenpaly” (6c a click, to catch Google misspellings of Ten’s streaming service, 10play); and “abs iview”. Oddly, there’s even a search for “Dance Moms”, a US reality show owned by Nine.
To be fair, the ABC’s spending on Google-boosting is low, at least relative to its $1bn-a-year budget. We’re told ABC’s Google spend is about $500,000 a year, in line with its 2018 guidance to Senate Estimates.
But the document’s stats show that perhaps the ABC shouldn’t underestimate its viewers’ spelling after all.
Nearly 70 per cent of ABC Googlers clicked through from the top two paid search terms: the correctly spelt “iview” and “abciview”.
The Age’s ‘source’
Who was the “senior government source” in Dan Andrews’s Victorian regime quoted by Nine’s The Age newspaper on Friday in its front-page splash about the weekend’s Black Lives Matter protests?
The main criticism of the protests, of course, has been about their breaches of social distancing rules. But The Age suggested in its Friday newspaper splash (headlined “Police ‘threatened’ ahead of protest”) that this mysterious “senior government source” was blowing the whistle on another issue: alleged threats from protesters of “physical abuse”, “spitting” and “inflammatory chanting”.
Before the day was out, however, a hurried “clarification” by The Age — reading more as a grovel to protesters than an apology — threw the entire story under a bus: “The story fell short of The Age’s editorial values and standards and caused understandable offence to many members of the community.”
And the “senior government source” wasn’t faring much better: “The claim that some activists had threatened police with spitting and abuse was not backed up beyond one unnamed senior government source. The story put undue emphasis on these claims. The main organisers of the rally, the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, clearly stated that they had no knowledge of any threats to police. The Age apologises.”
Let’s just hope The Age’s “senior government source” wasn’t anyone from Andrews’s battered media team, after our revelations last week about their strained relations of the Premier’s office with much of the Victorian press gallery.
Grumpy Gill vs ‘Rooty Hill’
This week’s return of the AFL to our TV screens can’t come soon enough for AFL boss Gill McLachlan. Those who know him have noticed a darkening of McLachlan’s mood as the code has struggled to finalise a media rights deal with Seven and Foxtel before the AFL restarts.
One well-placed source claims he is struggling to confront his new coronavirus-driven realities: “He’s a great fellow, and he’s great for the game. But if he doesn’t get his way pretty quick, he gets the shits. He’s surprised the broadcasters aren’t charging in with bucketloads of money. Until now, he’s been bulletproof.
But COVID’s done a lot of things, and for the AFL, it’s changed the world a bit.”
Another notes: “He’s always felt the AFL is a superior product. But it’s not a master/servant relationship any more: it’s a partnership. He’s right: the AFL may be the better sport for dropping ads in. But he’s got to get rid of the superiority complex.”
The competitive McLachlan has been forced to become a spectator as NRL boss Peter V’landys gets a jump on the AFL for everything from return dates, rights deals and new TV-friendly innovations (on Friday, the NRL even announced a limited return of crowds).
McLachlan’s private mood wouldn’t be improved by networks pushing for $150m in reductions on their 2020 payments, and more discounts in 2021 and 2022.
He also wouldn’t be impressed by another brutal comparison made between himself and V’landys by one AFL source, who suggests McLachlan needs to take a leaf out of the NRL boss’s reputation as a street-fighter.
“Gill is something out of the Melbourne Club; V’landys is Rooty Hill RSL. He (McLachlan) needs to drop the attitude and understand who his customers are: the broadcasters.”
The AFL media unit couldn’t be reached for comment.
TV chiefs attack union
There has been a falling-out between the peak media union, the MEAA, and major networks over a tough letter from the union to TV bosses about dangers facing Australian crews during the current US mass protests.
Last week saw separate US attacks on Seven’s Amelia Brace and Tim Myers, and Nine’s Tim Arvier.
For TV networks, covering the mass protests that followed the death of George Floyd was always going to present big challenges.
Now they face another. Diary has obtained a letter written by MEAA media president Marcus Strom, in which he grills the cream of Australian news bosses on their protests’ coverage. His key question? Whether working for an Australian TV network in the US is now “a safe posting for journalists”.
Those sent Strom’s letter include ABC news supremo Gaven Morris, ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie, Ten news bosses Ross Dagan and Anthony Murdoch, and the news bosses for Nine and Seven, Darren Wick and Craig McPherson.
Strom tells them: “We would appreciate a briefing from your news directors regarding the measures in place to ensure the safety of our members and your staff.”
This follows some helpful free advice from the union: “The Australian media must act urgently to ensure foreign correspondents are provided with the same standards of training and equipment … as is required for journalists reporting from natural disasters or war zones.”
But that advice has gone down like a lead balloon. News bosses are grumbling that they’ve already got their hands full trying to help their correspondents through a highly challenging news event, without also responding to union demands.
As one boss puts it: “It’s all very well for the union to tell us what to do, sitting in their comfortable office in Redfern or wherever it is.”
For the record, the TV executives say they are already offering dedicated security teams to protect their US crews. Some are now even ordering crews not to film any US protests at night.
Shorten nemesis back
Bill Shorten, look out! Jonathan Lea, the journalist Shorten once promised to black ban after becoming prime minister, has made a long-awaited return to the Canberra press gallery, nearly a year after he left Channel 10.
Lea unwittingly played a key role in Shorten’s defeat to Scott Morrison in the 2019 federal election campaign, after he blew a big hole in the costings of Labor’s climate change policies during a viral press conference early in the campaign. Now Lea has returned to the political fold with Sky News, as a senior reporter to support the network’s political editor, Andrew Clennell, in Canberra.
Lea tells Diary that he had returned to reporting “to cover the breaking news that shapes history and defines society” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Colleagues say the feisty Lea has never baulked from being a stone in the shoe of either side of politics.
But his most memorable run-ins in the press gallery were with Shorten.
Five times during last year’s viral campaign press briefing, Shorten failed to answer a question from Lea about how much his emissions reduction target would cost the economy, with Lea saying repeatedly: “You’re not answering the question, Mr Shorten.”
Niki Savva’s book Plots and Prayers reveals that Shorten once asked a senior Ten executive, in relation to Lea, “when he was going to get rid of that dickhead”.
At another point, Savva noted: “Shorten unwisely whispered in the ear of another journalist that Lea was a ‘c..t’.”
The Shorten camp also told gallery journalists before the election: “We’re probably going to win, and if we do, we won’t be speaking to Jon Lea.”
No magic million for 7
The magical ratings figure considered to make prime time shows a success for commercial networks is one million viewers in the five capital cities.
In 2020, Ten’s MasterChef, and Nine’s Married at First Sight and The Voice, have all routinely burst through what is dubbed the “Magic Million”.
But for Seven, it’s proving much harder to hit the magic million for anything other than its news bulletins.
Diary can reveal that presentations made in May by Seven’s sales team to advertisers have predicted ratings below the million mark for three of its biggest remaining shows of the year: the Sonia Kruger-hosted Big Brother (which starts on Monday night), new cooking show Plate of Origin (affectionately known as POO), and the reheated Farmer Wants a Wife.
Big Brother’s ratings are projected to average 640,000 viewers, according to Seven’s May pitch. Meanwhile, Farmer Wants a Wife is projected to average 700,000 viewers.
So that leaves the show that Seven is seemingly most confident about: the Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and Manu Feildel-hosted POO.
There is slightly more optimism here, with Seven seeming to think the stardust of MasterChef could at least partly rub off on POO.
Seven projects that POO’s 10-episode run will cook up an average of 850,000 viewers when it runs later this year.
Not quite the magic million, but still a big improvement on Seven’s previous 7.30 shows this year, House Rules and MKR, both of which had big ratings drops and registered sub-500,000 figures at times.
Needless to say, there’s a lot riding on Big Brother outperforming Seven’s own estimates when it starts its new incarnation this week.
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