It might be Nine’s highest-rating regular show – but at its heart, The Block is essentially a game of real estate jeopardy for the TV giant.
Ratings are one thing, but The Block equation is simple: Nine has to be able to at least break even or make money on the properties they purchase for The Block by the time they are sold at auction.
During the boom times of 2021, everyone was a winner, with the network more than making its money back, and contestants making between $300,000 and $750,000 in Melbourne’s hot real estate market of the time. But things can be trickier when the market isn’t as hot.
In New Zealand’s version of The Block this year, for example, the sales weren’t exactly a money-spinner, with the winning couple netting $NZ4000 and the runners-up just $100, which they jokingly described as “petrol money”.
Meanwhile, in last night’s auction of the five “tree-change” properties in Gisborne in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, while the runaway winners Omar and Oz achieved a record auction result, two of the five properties were passed in without achieving a sale on the day.
But Diary hears that despite the mixed auction outcomes, Nine will actually make a windfall profit on the 2022 version of The Block.
"The Block winners 2022, baby!" ðŸ‘#TheBlock | Watch on @Channel9 and @9Nowpic.twitter.com/vvgn83ZQxk
— The Block (@TheBlock) November 6, 2022
Sources say that Nine paid around $11m in 2021 for the original 28ha McGeorge Rd, Gisborne, property that formed the basis of this year’s season. It subsequently subdivided the property into seven 4ha lots: five of which were given over to this year’s contestants, one given to host Scott Cam to do his own build, and one which remains undeveloped.
With reserves in excess of $4m for the contestants’ properties, those five properties will fetch Nine in excess of $20m.
Meanwhile, Nine is likely to sell off Cam’s development at a later date, along with the other undeveloped property – leaving it with a windfall of close to $30m on a parcel it paid $11m for.
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Catherine Andrews’ sandwich diplomacy
During a gruelling term of parliament that has seen pandemics, personal accidents and government scandals, the wife of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has been among her husband’s staunchest defenders.
So seriously has Catherine Andrews taken her job of defending the Premier, that she has become directly involved in sending messages to the media – famously blocking an array of high-profile journalists on Twitter who she felt didn’t give her husband a fair go.
There were obvious targets for Ms Andrews’ spree of Twitter blocking, like 3AW morning host and the Premier’s loudest critic, Neil Mitchell, and less obvious types who were also blocked, like former 7.30 presenter Leigh Sales, who at times used the show to openly criticise the Premier’s reluctance to appear on the ABC nightly current affairs flagship.
Even Seven’s high-profile Victorian political editor Sharnelle Vella went through a lengthy period in the Twitter freezer during the dark days of Covid, before she was more recently unblocked by the Premier’s wife.
So imagine the surprise of some of those she has banished on the very first day of the campaign when who should pop up bearing gifts but Ms Andrews. As the Melbourne press gallery prepared for their first day on her husband’s campaign bus (emblazoned with the words: ‘DOING WHAT MATTERS’) Ms Andrews first handed out cakes and pastries, and then sandwiches, even to journalists who to this day remain blocked by her on Twitter.
It isn’t the first time the Premier has tried to use sandwich diplomacy with family members as a way to the media’s heart.
Four years ago, the Andrews bus visited the home of his mother in Wangaratta, where she laid on club sandwiches, rolls, fruit and scones for the assembled media. The Premier certainly seemed happy to have his not-so-secret campaign weapon in his wife this time around, tweeting a photo of Ms Andrews looking lovingly at him, with the caption: “Campaign day one – with my number one.”
But 24 hours after his latest sandwich extravaganza, journalists were asking questions about where she had disappeared to, after the subject of a January 2013 crash involving a cyclist and the family car – which was being driven at the time by Ms Andrews – came up.
The Premier was asked why Ms Andrews wasn’t present at the press conference. Andrews replied of his wife: “She’s got a day job. She’s working. She won’t be on the bus every day.”
With his wife absent on Thursday, the Premier also shut down 17 consecutive questions about the car crash.
But by Friday, the Premier’s “number one” was back on the campaign trail, fielding tough questions about the 2013 car crash from some who she’d previously blocked on Twitter: “Daniel has spoken about this, I’ve spoken about this, and I’m going to leave it there,” she said.
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‘The wheel turns’: Bill Shorten’s reunion
Last week’s Melbourne Cup festivities saw a fascinating political reunion that went all but unnoticed by the who’s who of politics and the media that descended on the southern capital for the big race. Avid readers of Diary will remember that your columnist personally witnessed one of the most entertaining political exchanges in recent memory on Melbourne Cup day 2019, which until last week had been the most recent instalment of the great race attended in person.
Recently-defeated Opposition Leader Bill Shorten had just run into his political nemesis, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s then-principal private secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, at the Tabcorp marquee in the Birdcage.
Diary had been having a quiet drink with Finkelstein when Shorten approached the-then PM’s right-hand man, seemingly spoiling for a fight over some unsettled grievances from his recent election loss.
Finkelstein had been perceived as one of the key backroom players behind Morrison’s shock May 2019 election win, and Shorten was out for revenge. At that point, it was time to break out the popcorn.
“Yeah, f..k you,” a gesticulating Shorten told Finkelstein, right in front of your astonished diarist. “Just remember: the wheel always turns!”
In no mood to back down, Finkelstein replied at the time: “Then let’s hope it’s a big wheel!”
Three years later at the Australian Hotels Association’s traditional pre-Melbourne Cup lunch at the city’s Royal Botanic Gardens last Monday, Shorten and Finkelstein (whose new job starting Monday is to help Dominic Perrottet’s bid for re-election as NSW Premier) were spied catching up for their first meeting since the extraordinary 2019 catch-up.
This time around, Diary’s spies couldn’t decipher the exact words, but it wouldn’t take an Einstein to work out that the subject of “wheels turning” might have come up.
It’s just a pity for Bill that once the Australian political wheel did eventually turn, it was Anthony Albanese who was the lucky beneficiary – and not Shorten, the man who did the hard yards of six futile years and two election losses as Opposition Leader.
It would no doubt have rubbed salt in the wound for the former leader when Albanese told the AHA audience last Monday that because he was too busy to attend Flemington for the Cup the next day, he was leaving local MP Shorten “in charge” of festivities from a government standpoint.
Politics, as they say, can be a brutal game.
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Ita hits back at ABC’s Coalition critics
Ita Buttrose has made it clear she won’t be changing how she runs the ABC, despite recent complaints from senior figures on the right of politics.
But in a wide-ranging interview with Stellar magazine published on Sunday – in which she spoke about everything from Cleo centrefolds to marrying again – Buttrose hit back at those who claim that she is unfair to the conservative side of politics.
“I’m not there as chair to be friendly to any political party,” she told Stellar. “I don’t think it’s necessary to badmouth me because I haven’t been friendly to a particular side of politics – I’m not supposed to be friendly to anyone in politics. I can be respectful. But I’ve always thought journalists need to be apolitical.”
Buttrose said she was duty-bound to defend the public broadcaster against a long tradition of friction with both sides of politics.
“It’s not easy for the ABC under any government because we seem to have the knack of upsetting governments quite heavily. Sir Robert Menzies complained about the ABC. I think John Howard complained about it at one stage. Paul Keating did; Bob Hawke did – I mean, you name it.”
But Buttrose said the ABC and its journalists simply had to shut out the noise.
“We’re the national broadcaster and you can’t be hampered by any political persuasions on how you might cover a story,” she told Stellar. “You just have to cover it … We’re meant to be able to deliver both sides of the story and let the public decide.
“We’re meant to be able to deal with facts and not opinions. The moment we started dishing out bylines as though everyone had an entitlement to an opinion, we opened the floodgates to opinion journalists.”
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Strange bedfellows: Neil Mitchell and Raf Epstein
He may have been boycotted by Dan Andrews for five years – but, undeterred, 3AW morning radio king Neil Mitchell was last week still trying to get a piece of the action for any debate that happens ahead of the Victorian election.
Diary hears that so determined had Mitchell been to become involved, he even joined forces with one of his chief talk radio rivals, ABC Radio Melbourne drive host Raf Epstein, for a rare ABC/3AW nexus.
The pair had proposed a radio debate between Andrews and Opposition Leader Matthew Guy.
Word out of the ABC’s Southbank studios suggests that given Mitchell’s unpopularity with Andrews’ office, it was Epstein who became the frontman for the pair’s radio debate proposal given his better relationship with the Premier. Under Epstein’s proposed format, he and Mitchell would alternate in posing questions to the two leaders.
But we’re told that at this point, Andrews won’t be accepting the Epstein/Mitchell debate proposal, because of his longstanding cold war with the 3AW host.
Mitchell, meanwhile, is angry about his inability to get a look in from Andrews on any campaign debate – claiming last week that he was taken out of a separate proposal for a debate by Nine/The Age/3AW because of the Premier’s refusal to deal with him.
“The government rejected me,” he told his listeners. “They banned me. They said Daniel wouldn’t turn up if I turned up. That’s what Channel 9 tells me. My name was put forward to the government, and rejected.”
Mitchell said that Nine had no choice but to instead propose 3AW drive host Tom Elliott in its debate submission. But he couldn’t resist a bitter parting shot at Andrews for rejecting him. “Very, very brave Premier, very brave,” he said sarcastically. “Daniel said: ‘Debate? Nup. Neil’s there, I’m not.’”
Mitchell’s mood, and the general mood at Nine, didn’t improve on Friday after it was revealed – as Diary predicted last week – that Sky and the Herald Sun had won the only debate confirmed so far between Andrews and Guy in the last week of the campaign on November 22.
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Richo’s private lunch meeting with Peter Dutton
What exactly was Labor royalty and latter day media commentator Graham ‘Richo’ Richardson doing when he met with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton last Wednesday at the
Sydney CBD dining institution, Bambini Trust Wine Room?
In recent weeks, Richo has been playing the loyal Labor man, praising PM Anthony Albanese’s leadership to the heavens.
“I think he has really shown everybody in the last few days why he is where he is,” Richardson told Sky News last month.
But Richo, perhaps more than anyone, knows that politics is a long game, and given it was Melbourne Cup week, when better to have a bet each way?
Remember, Richo also built a cosy association with Scott Morrison when he was PM, which frequently saw the pair seated together at public functions.
We’re told Richardson and Dutton have long had a friendship that bridges the political divide, and predates the latter’s rise to Opposition Leader.
Dutton has other friendships on the Labor side of politics, including his long-time bromance with Today Show sparring partner and replacement as Defence Minister, Richard Marles.
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Jock reveals a ‘shorter’ MasterChef
Ten is wasting no time in reacting to critics who claimed this year’s version of MasterChef Australia ran too long. Diary bailed up MasterChef judge Jock Zonfrillo at Ten’s Flemington marquee on Melbourne Cup day, and he revealed the 2023 version of the show would start filming this week – with some significant changes.
The biggest of those changes will see contestant numbers reduced from 24 to 18, with the show launching straight into the competition without preliminaries.
Also gone will be the formula of recent years in which the show brought back many of its past faces, including the 2022 version, ‘Fans vs Favourites’, that featured alumni like Julie Goodwin and eventual winner Billie McKay.
Zonfrillo – who co-hosts MasterChef with Melissa Leong and Andy Allen – told Diary all but one of the cooks in the 2023 version of the show will be “newbies”, without spilling on the story behind why one contestant will be returning.
He has also hinted at a big name international chef to kick off the show’s filming this week. No, it won’t be Nigella Lawson, given that she joined Seven’s My Kitchen Rules this year. But it would be a fair guess that someone of the ilk of a Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal or Jamie Oliver could help launch a refreshed version of the show.
Diary is betting the guest judge could be Ramsay, given that his daughter, Tilly, appeared on an Australian celebrity version of MasterChef last year.
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