Media Diary: Liz Hurley brushes journalists at the Melbourne Cup
When Elizabeth Hurley arrived in Melbourne alongside her 22-year-old son Damian, she stole the show. But she barely said a word.
When English actor and model Elizabeth Hurley arrived in Melbourne alongside her 22-year-old son Damian, she stole the show, with the media following her every move at Flemington.
But it didn’t amount to much valuable content for the fourth estate.
Hurley, in an elegant yellow dress, turned up in a chopper, and was quickly whisked into The Birdcage to pose alongside the giant photo wall. But between her and Damian, nary a word was said.
Why the silence?
One female reporter bravely sought to break the stupid “no questions” rule, even if there was little chance the Austin Powers star would respond.
“Elizabeth we know no questions, but how special is it to share this day with your son?” was the virtually rhetorical inquiry.
And just like that, the vow of silence was lifted.
“It’s lovely together, it’s great,” Hurley cooed.
The unidentified reporter was now on a roll.
“Do you like being in Melbourne?”
Hurley: “We do.”
Pushing her luck, the scribe pushed for the trifecta.
Asking about Hurley’s dress, the reporter pleaded: “Who are you wearing?”
No dice this time. Hurley had used more than enough words for one overpaid visit to a racetrack at the bottom of the world, thank you very much.
So, exactly who issued the press with strict instructions not to pepper the Hurleys with questions at the racetrack?
Diary is reliably told it wasn’t the decision of the Victoria Racing Club, which invited the mother-and-son pair to Melbourne for the Spring Carnival, so it appears that their management made the call to demand space from the press pack.
As is the way with these events, Hurley made time for a brief one-on-one interview with host broadcaster Channel 9’s presenter Sylvia Jeffreys, describing her time at Flemington as “amazing”.
“This is the first time that I’ve ever been to the Melbourne Cup. I’ve been to Oaks Day, 12 years ago, so it was really exciting to see (Cup Day),” she said.
The Hurleys returned on Thursday to judge the fashions on the field event, and Elizabeth Hurley graciously revealed who she was wearing: Australian fashioner designer Rebecca Vallance.
“She’s one of my favourite actually, I wear a lot of her stuff, she’s brilliant,” Hurley said.
Oh, and she offered some race day advice to punters – keep your shoes and hats on at all times!
Truly excruciating.
Kim holds hand out after big bucks splashed on ABC ‘rebrand’
Kim Williams has again called for an increase in government funding for the ABC, this time during an interview with the chief executive of Screen Producers Australia, Matthew Deaner.
“There is no shortcut if you want Australia and Australian stories and Australian narratives and Australian imaginations and Australian accents and Australian settings and Australian history to populate the audio and video screens of Australia and elsewhere. You have to invest, and you have to create an environment that captures investment,” Chairman Kim told Deaner last Wednesday.
Unfortunately for Williams, his timing was a bit off.
On the previous day Williams’ chief lieutenants, the ABC’s acting managing director and chief financial officer Melanie Kleyn and news director Justin Stevens, were busy telling a Senate estimates hearing about how much the publicly funded broadcaster had wasted – oops, we mean spent – on a “rebrand” in August that constituted a redesigned ABC logo (which looks a lot like the old one) and a “remix” of Aunty’s old news theme (previously in use from 1986 to 2005).
For those taxpayers who don’t want to know how much cash we dropped on the rebrand, look away now. For those taxpayers who are in the mood to be flabbergasted – or worse – take a deep breath.
Here goes.
Eight hundred thousand dollars! Yep – as in, just a little bit less than one million dollarbucks, as Bluey would say.
The confession was meekly surrendered by Kleyn during last Tuesday’s Senate hearing, on questioning by Liberal senator Dave Sharma.
“The rebrand exercise was approximately $800,000, I believe,” Kleyn said.
Sharma: “Was that spent internally or did you bring in external consultants and graphics people and designers?’
Kleyn: “It was primarily external.”
Perhaps sensing the dropped jaws of numerous senators across the table from her, Kleyn did her best to salvage something from the wreckage.
“Can I say, just to get in a plug for the ABC … ABC News is the top news website in the country in digital news, (and) audio rankings across the total digital news market. This was in the latest Ipsos rankings,” she said.
“So we count that as a win, I think, of our rebrand.”
Erm, does anyone out there honestly believe that a reheated logo and a rehashed news theme would lure one single listener or viewer across from wherever else they were?
Clearly, Senator Sharma’s BS detector was triggered, and he asked if there had been an “uptick” in audience numbers since the rebrand.
“Is there a correlation there? I’m genuinely interested,” Sharma offered.
Kleyn’s response was less than convincing.
“I would like to say ‘absolutely there is a correlation’,” she began.
“It’s one of those things – we track the … story activity, we track that week-in week-out, we have absolutely seen an uptick. I would, I would, say that there is a correlation, yes.”
And is there any audience research data to back this claim up? “It’s ongoing. We’re constantly seeking feedback from our audiences on the usability.”
Stevens then weighed in, describing the project as a “more ambitious rebrand”, as it was rolled out across all of the ABC’s platforms.
He said the ABC had received both positive and negative audience feedback about the rebrand, citing the example of viewer concern about the “opacity” of the ticker that ran across the bottom of the screen on the news channel.
Stevens said the ABC had since made the ticker darker and thus more readable, “because we respect the audience. They’re our bosses.”
Q+A question
The future of Q+A – the ABC show everyone used to watch when Kevin Rudd was prime minister – still hangs in the balance.
In May, ABC managing director David Anderson told a Senate estimates hearing he was “keen to explore if there’s another way to do that format”.
“The world of screen production is that generally, nothing is forever,” Anderson said at the time. “You should be examining the programs you’ve got, the impact they have and whether they resonate for the audience. I don’t shy away from needing to explore new ideas for things.”
Fast forward six months, and it seems the “new ideas” are still percolating at the top echelons of the public broadcaster. On Tuesday, acting managing director Kleyn said she was unsure about the future of the show, hosted by Patricia Karvelas.
But news director Stevens was more upbeat, telling the Senate: “The (Q+A) team is certainly planning to return (next year) given its an election year.
“The team is committed to evolving and making sure they’re connected to the community as much as possible.”
Stevens said all would be revealed on November 21 at the ABC’s 2025 Upfronts event.
Airport snub
Meanwhile, ABC investigative journalist Mark Willacy was on the Sydney to Brisbane Qantas flight that made an emergency landing last Friday because of engine failure soon after takeoff.
Thankfully, all passengers and crew were unharmed, though they were understandably shaken by the experience.
Willacy gave an interview to an ABC reporter at Sydney airport, telling Aunty’s newshound: “We were taxiing out to the runway, and the pilot had turned on to the runway and given it full thrust, and we were at the end of the runway … the wheels were taking off the ground, and there was a large bang and a really jolting shudder went through the plane.”
Scary stuff indeed.
But after concluding his interview with his ABC TV colleague, Willacy suddenly wasn’t in the mood to talk about the near-disaster when approached by one of The Australian’s friendly reporters at the scene.
“Hey Mark, my name’s Liam Mendes, I’m a journalist with The Australian. Were you on the flight?” asked our man. Now, Mendes has some form at airports, having been needlessly shoulder barged to the floor at Canberra airport in June by then Nine Entertainment chairman Peter Costello. But surely that’s no reason for Willacy to brush Mendes?
“I don’t talk to The Australian,” Willacy told Mendes. “Why would I? Seriously! Liam, I love journalism, I love journalists, but … thanks again.”
And with that, Willacy headed for the exit.
We get it. The poor guy had just been on a flight that at one point looked like it was going to ditch into the ocean. Fair to say that he wasn’t having a good day.
But for a journo who claims to love journalism and journalists, Willacy has a strange way of showing it.
We’re prepared to hazard a guess that Willacy hasn’t enjoyed The Australian’s recent coverage of the discovery of horrendous errors in the ABC’s reporting of an Australian military operation in Afghanistan in 2012 – an investigation that he led.
The central error of Willacy’s story was that audio of additional gunshots had been added to the final cut of the program – a fact first uncovered by the Seven Network’s Spotlight program in September – which gave the false impression that Australian commandos in a chopper were peppering unarmed Afghan civilians with bullets.
Last week, the ABC apologised for the inaccurate use of gunshots in the series of stories but announced that an “independent review” conducted by the broadcaster’s former editorial director Alan Sunderland had found no evidence of a deliberate attempt to distort material in order to mislead audiences.
Of course, no one is any the wiser as to how the additional gunshot audio actually made it to air.
Mendes no doubt would have asked Willacy about it had the celebrated investigative journalist granted him a chat at the airport.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be.
Mike drop
Nine Entertainment’s Matt Stanton has been busy lifting his internal profile recently, firing off plenty of all-staff emails and holding office town hall meetings, not to mention addressing shareholders over the ongoing woes at the company.
But Nine’s Melbourne masthead The Age appears to be paying little, if any, attention. When you put the boss of your company on the front page of the paper, surely that’s the time to make sure you don’t stuff up his name, right?
But that’s exactly what happened at The Age newspaper last week.
Under the page one headline, “Nine’s new boss at critical point”, the story by senior correspondent Anne Hyland began: “Just over two years ago, Mike Stanton had been chief executive of a private-equity owned dairy company …”
Mike Stanton? Perhaps The Age had former Nine boss Mike Sneesby on the brain because the error wasn’t noticed by anyone in the production chain until it was way too late.
In Monday’s paper the publication ran a correction that read: “On page one of yesterday’s Sunday Age, acting Nine Entertainment Company chief executive Matt Stanton was incorrectly referred to as Mike Stanton.
“The error was added in production.”
Ah, a production error. What a fantastic catch-all newspaper term that is.
The slip-up was quickly wiped from the publication’s online channels.
Licence to thrill
Nine chairwoman Catherine West spent much of the company’s annual general meeting last week batting away questions about the ongoing workplace woes at the media business.
First off, she dodged a few curveballs from anti-gambling campaigner Tim Costello, to whom she played a straight bat.
Then came some curly questions about Nine’s lack of movie content, courtesy of investor Kevin, who took to the microphone at the AGM to reveal his disdain for Nine’s failure to screen enough blockbusters.
“How come we don’t have any movies any more, there doesn’t seem to be a movie on Channel 9 at 8.30, one has to go to other stations, unfortunately to Nickelodeon or the Movie Channel,” Kevin asked.
But West was having none of it, confirming that she sat down on the weekend before the AGM with a bucket of popcorn to watch a three-hour-long James Bond film, No Time to Die, starring Daniel Craig, on Channel 9.
“I did actually watch a James Bond on Nine on Saturday night. I’m afraid to say that’s my Saturday night, that’s how exciting my life is … a good James Bond,” she told investors. West even managed to get a plug in for Nine’s streaming service and directed Kevin to check out Stan’s catalogue. “There are some good movies on Stan as well,” West said.
But after telling Kevin how great Nine was, she did concede there was a problem on the film front.
“We would love to get more movies on free-to-air,” West said.
Sharp shift
Sydney celebrity columnist Annette Sharp is moving to news.com.au after 16 years with The Daily Telegraph and the Saturday and Sunday Telegraphs.
Sharp’s in-house transfer at News Corp will see her sticking to her bread and butter – commenting on celebs and the movers and shakers at the top end of town – but she’ll also be assigned to “some new projects”.
“After 16 years with The Daily Telegraph and its weekend sister papers The Saturday and The Sunday Telegraphs, I have decided the time has come for a new challenge,” Sharp told Diary.
“I’m delighted to be moving to the nation’s leading online news site news.com.au, where I look forward to celebrating and exploding the latest celebrity and socialite-related sagas while trying my hand at some exciting new projects.”
Nick Tabakoff is on leave.
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