Watch out Ita Buttrose – you’re no longer the only high-profile journalist on the ABC board. Monday marks the official start of what promises to be a fascinating five-year term for 7.30’s chief political correspondent, Laura Tingle, as a director of the ABC.
In March, Tingle won her first and only election campaign outside of the ones she has covered as a journalist, when she narrowly trumped ABC financial reporter Dan Ziffer by 30 votes, 889 votes to 859, in a full vote of the public broadcaster’s employees. The election saw Tingle win the fiercely-contested position as Aunty’s official staff-elected director for the next five years, after a campaign almost as frenetic as a state or federal election. Some candidates like Ziffer even paid for their own flights up and down the east coast to hand out flyers to as many ABC staff as possible.
Despite receiving the endorsement of one of the ABC’s two key unions, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), Tingle assured this column she would be “no union flog” on the ABC board.
With her victory, Monday will see Tingle in the unique position of being one of the ABC’s key powerbrokers on two fronts, at both an administrative and editorial level.
When Diary approached Tingle last week to ask her plans for the ABC board, she seemed slightly awed by the task ahead. “I’m just getting my head around it all,” she said. “I’m getting the lie of the land. I’d rather not say anything more at this stage if that’s okay.”
But Tingle has told close confidantes she is concerned about the massive “structural change” coming to the ABC through its long-term transition to digital streaming. In particular, she is said to be concerned about changing audience patterns – in particular, the trend towards “anywhere, anytime” viewing and listening – and what this will mean for journalists.
In a recent email to some of the staff she works with day-to-day, Tingle strongly hinted she would be pushing for greater resourcing for content-makers, amid the challenges of the digital media world.
“We now live in a world of video and audio streaming accessed on demand on your device,” she wrote. “To survive as part of Australia’s robust media sector, the ABC needs the resources and staff creativity to continue its great work. The organisation’s Charter and purpose are more important now than ever before in this world of disruption.”
Tingle also hinted at the value of having a working journalist on the ABC board – noting that her experiences at the editorial coalface would “inform my contributions to the board’s deliberations”, as the ABC proceeded towards a digital future.
It all promises to represent a fascinating collision of cultures, as Tingle strives to apply her grassroots media experience to the lofty ABC boardroom.
‘White Ban’: Lidia Thorpe confronts media
Broadcasters are being forced to adopt unorthodox methods to try to persuade Australia’s newest human headline, former Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe, to come on their shows for interviews,
The Indigenous senator has seemingly dodged what we’re assured have been continued requests for her to appear on radio and TV shows in recent weeks.
But Thorpe herself has presented a very different version of events through her own channels, suggesting on Twitter last month her non-appearance in the mainstream media was due to racism. “The media seemed to white ban me,” she tweeted.
But it turns out Thorpe’s incendiary claim was immediately challenged. Melbourne’s top-rating host Neil Mitchell braved Thorpe’s Twitter handle to contradict her claim she had been “white-banned” by the media.
“This media man did not ban you,” Mitchell responded. “Your office has either declined or not called back. You personally ignore my DMs. Happy to interview you next week. It is in your hands.”
Mitchell got an instant result. “Sweet Neil, your invitation is accepted,” Thorpe pronounced.
“Great. When? And how do I get your office to agree?” Mitchell asked.
She replied: “You have my number old mate.”
The senator was as good as her word. A fortnight after Mitchell’s public contradiction of her claim, Thorpe appeared on his 3AW show last week, in an interview packed with quotable quotes frequently playing into her racism claims.
Most notably, she directly shirtfronted PM Anthony Albanese’s apparent questioning of her mental health.
“If Albo wants to know about my health, then I’ve been diagnosed with an allergy to racists,” she told Mitchell.
“I think about it in the parliament each day, where I’ve had senators cry to me because of their guilt of what white people did to black people. I wonder about those people’s mental health.”
She also challenged the claims by her own non-Indigenous father, Roy Illingworth – who we talked to in last week’s Diary — that she was herself “racist” towards white people.
She told Mitchell: “We cannot be racist to white people. White people don’t fall into that category.”
Mitchell said turning to Twitter had helped to cut through her “white ban” mentality. “Twitter is usually a sewer but, used properly, it can be useful,” he said.
He also emerged a fan of the controversial senator: “Perhaps it’s the old leftie in me, but I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Lidia Thorpe. She’s refreshingly direct in an era of sanitised and overly-mindered politicians. I’m happy to have her back on whenever.”
How long did ‘DJ Albo’ stay at Sandilands’ wedding?
Anthony Albanese wasn’t spooked by all the media attention on his attendance at Kyle Sandilands’ $1m wedding to Tegan Kynaston.
Diary’s spies present for Sandilands’ big day tell us the Prime Minister stayed for about seven hours, taking in most of Saturday’s festivities in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Albanese turned up to Swifts, a ritzy Darling Point gothic mansion, at 2.30pm – half-an-hour before the wedding began. The PM stayed right through the reception and half-an-hour into the event’s after-party, before leaving with his partner, Jodie Haydon, at around 9.30pm.
In defending his decision to attend the nuptials with the likes of noted Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim, Albanese said last week: “A bloke who at one stage was homeless living on the streets of Sydney and has grown into someone who is a significant public figure is part of what is an Australian success story.”
The after-party saw the venue’s chapel, where the wedding had taken place, converted into a nightclub – which led many present to speculate whether the Albanese would man the DJ deck. The PM did, after all, pledge to Sandilands on air last year he would break out “DJ Albo” for the wedding if he scored an invitation.
But alas, that delicious prospect didn’t eventuate. “He was just a guest,” one of our spies said.
Meanwhile, NSW Premier Chris Minns initially left straight after the ceremony at around 4pm, but then he returned for the reception at 6pm and left with the PM about 9.30pm.
The after-party, we’re told, wrapped up at around midnight.
Lisa Wilkinson a ‘no show’ for King’s coronation
What a difference eight months makes. When Queen Elizabeth died in September last year, Ten rapidly dispatched Lisa Wilkinson – the wife of perhaps Australia’s most vocal republican, Peter FitzSimons – to the UK to spearhead Ten and The Project’s coverage of the former monarch’s funeral.
Despite the FitzSimons connection, Wilkinson’s dispatch to the Queen’s funeral made sense to the network, as she was joined by fellow Ten identities Sandra Sully and Angela Bishop. Ever since her magazine days, Wilkinson has become something of a specialist at royal events, having also covered, in person, the weddings of both Prince William and Kate Middleton for Nine’s Today show in 2011, and of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for The Project.
But Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III will be a Wilkinson-free event. Six months after she walked away from The Project citing “targeted toxicity from the media”, Wilkinson will be nowhere to be seen at the big event for Ten.
Instead, Diary is told Ten’s national affairs editor Hugh Riminton will be the network’s sole big-name reporter sent to the UK to cover the coronation.
Wilkinson is in the midst of her longest break at Ten since she joined the network more than five years ago. She is said to still be weighing up her next, ahem, “project” with the network. Sources close to The Project say her most likely next move will involve some form of interview special for Ten.
While she is sitting out the coronation, there’s still some good news for the network star. She continues to collect a rumoured seven-figure salary under the watertight multi-year contract renewal she signed with Ten back in 2021.
Charles cops it from TV beancounters
Lisa Wilkinson won’t be the only big name Australian media absentee from our screens for the coronation of King Charles.
With Australian free-to-air TV outlets having pulled out all stops to cover the Queen’s funeral last year, networks generally appear to have been tightening their belts on this week’s coronation.
The general talk around the networks is that beancounters have decided with two huge royal events to cover in one financial year, the popular late Queen’s funeral warranted a bigger contingent than the crowning of the less-popular Charles.
From the perspective of both the ABC and Nine, that spells a much more pared-back coverage. The ABC will largely cover the coronation from Sydney, with the help of the BBC’s live feed of the coronation ceremony and reports from the public broadcaster’s three London-based European correspondents.
By comparison, last year, the ABC dispatched the likes of ABC News Breakfast hosts Michael Rowland and Lisa Millar, reporters including James Glenday, and radio hosts Raf Epstein, Virginia Trioli and Richard Glover to cover the Queen’s funeral.
Nine are also cutting right back compared with last year’s event, which saw Tracy Grimshaw, Peter Overton, Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon all sent to London to pay tribute to the Queen. This time, no Australian-based staff will hit the UK, with a BBC feed of the ceremony to be the focus of coverage anchored by Langdon and Overton from Nine’s North Sydney studios. On the ground opinion will be provided by Nine’s European correspondents, along with London Daily Telegraph royal watcher Camilla Tominey and the late Queen’s former spokesman, Dickie Arbiter.
However, one network has spared no expense in sending local talent to cover the ceremony as it tries to get a jump on its free-to-air rivals.
Diary hears Seven will dispatch Sunrise host David Koch to London on Monday, along with The Latest host Michael Usher, the network’s chief reporter Chris Reason, Sunrise reporter Mylee Hogan and Seven’s Adelaide news anchor Rosanna Mangiarelli.
The network has also hired Angela Rippon, the former long-time BBC royal correspondent; Robert Jobson, the so-called “Godfather of Royal Reporting”; and royal insider Victoria Arbiter for its blanket coverage of the event.
Annastacia’s low-key VIP appearance
Since she returned to work this year, Annastacia Palaszczuk has allegedly been making a conscientious effort to dial back her appearances at VIP events.
Her much more low-key approach in 2023 has come amid consistent polling in Brisbane’s Courier Mail newspaper, and private political research, which suggests her popularity has taken a pounding from her perceived love of the high life.
But Diary hears Palaszczuk embarked on a top-secret mission to attend Byron Bay’s Bluesfest over the Easter long weekend.
Just a year ago, Palaszczuk openly flaunted her attendance in Byron, along with that of her partner, Reza Adib, at the famously mud-riddled 2022 instalment of Bluesfest, happily snapping selfies with the hip generation that attends the event as she sported a pair of $8 Target sneakers.
But we’re told the 2023 version of Palaszczuk went to great lengths to avoid people knowing she was in Byron this time around, with zero photographic evidence available and, reputedly, back door entrances to events.
Diary’s spies assure us her itinerary this time included a covert nosh-up with Bluesfest’s owner Peter Noble – which has got some tongues wagging. Could the Queensland Premier have been planning an attempt to pinch Byron’s major musical event to her home state, from where about half of the visitors make the pilgrimage to Bluesfest each year?
We’re assured that’s not the case, with Noble – a proud Byron Bay native – not intending to move Bluesfest any time soon.
Dr Chris Brown’s first project on Seven?
Sunday night’s finale of I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! effectively brought an end to Chris Brown’s marathon 15-year tenure with Ten, which started all the way back in 2008 when Dr Brown first burst onto our screens with breakout hit show Bondi Vet.
While the TV vet’s contract with Ten doesn’t officially end yet, Brown’s farewell to his I’m a Celebrity co-host Julia Morris and crew on Sunday night signalled the start of two months of gardening leave for him until he starts with his new employer Seven on July 1.
But already there’s speculation about what Brown will do at Seven on his new $1m a year deal with the network. The early word to Diary from the African jungle is Brown’s first project with Seven looks set to be about as far removed as possible from his roots as a TV vet.
The whisper is Brown will be the front man behind plans by Seven to make a big return to home improvement TV, in a new show which will apparently be made by EndemolShine. That show is unlikely to make it to our screens until early next year, given the time taken to produce these types of shows.
Seven’s last attempt to compete with Nine’s home improvement juggernaut The Block was House Rules, which was officially “rested” three years ago, shortly after the start of the Covid pandemic, amid dwindling ratings.
Brown does have some experience in lifestyle TV, having been one of the hosts of Ten’s now-shelved The Living Room.
Seven will be hoping the former TV vet’s star power will help the network to build a decent match for The Block.
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