Bec Maddern’s shock move to newsreading

Rebecca Maddern. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

For some lucky TV personalities who suddenly depart a network, it doesn’t take long to find another job.

Now it’s looking like Bec Maddern, former co-host of Nine’s Weekend Today and Ninja Warrior, may just be one of those lucky personalities.

Only a week ago, it was revealed Maddern was walking away from Nine after they failed to agree terms on a new contract.

But for Maddern, it’s starting to look like a case of no Nine, no worries. Diary’s spies say Maddern may be on the verge of signing a deal with arch rival Seven – where she has spent the bulk of her TV career – in coming days.

And what would make Maddern’s possible resurrection on Seven even more interesting is we’re told she could be promoted to a new role: as newsreader.

The most likely outcome is for Maddern to read Seven’s Melbourne 6pm weekend news as a team with current newsreader Mike Amor. It would be the same “male/female” formula deployed by Seven in Sydney a year ago when Angela Cox last year joined Michael Usher as 6pm weekend newsreader there.

Seven’s Amor has been trailing Nine’s popular weekend newsreader Alicia Loxley in the Melbourne ratings, and Seven is said to believe inserting the popular Maddern into Melbourne’s weekend news will give viewers more of a female-friendly alternative in 2022.

There could also be the possibility for Maddern to become involved in both current affairs and sport programs with Seven.

Back at Nine, it’s understood Nine offered for Maddern to keep two of her three big hosting gigs, as anchor for the Australian Open tennis and as co-host of Ninja Warrior. But with the loss of her role on Weekend Today, Maddern’s camp believed this would have involved her taking too much of a haircut on her pay for 2022 and beyond.

There were both cost and chemistry considerations behind Nine’s decision to take Maddern off Weekend Today, largely because of the fact Maddern was in a different city from her former co-host Richard ‘Dickie’ Wilkins.

Maddern was beamed into the Sydney-based show by videolink from locked-down Melbourne, which Diary is told effectively doubled the studio costs of producing Today.

More importantly, because Maddern was unable to physically sit in the same studio as Wilkins, there was a belief among Nine management this affected the chemistry on the show.

As a result, Weekend Today will next year be more of an ensemble cast, headlined by the Sydney-based hosting pair of Charles Croucher and Belinda Russell, alongside the inimitable Wilkins and the show’s current newsreader Jayne Azzopardi.

-

Adele interviewer Doran won’t stand in for Koch

The breakfast TV silly season is starting in earnest this week, as Sunrise’s David Koch takes a well-earned break and Michael Usher stands in for him.

That has left just one question on the lips of keen viewers: where’s Matt Doran?

Weekend Sunrise host Matt Doran and 7 crew in London on November 4 as seen on Instagram.

Diary is told the Weekend Sunrise host will not feature on the weekday edition of the show over the Christmas/New Year period, unlike last year, with Usher and Matt Shirvington standing in for Koch this time.

David Koch. Picture: Julian Andrews.

Matt Shirvington. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Does Doran’s absence from Sunrise over the summer represent a loss of confidence in him by Seven bosses, after his headline-making botched interview with pop superstar Adele?

Seven insiders insist that’s not the case. They say he is instead filming a crime series and has “no gap” in his schedule.

–

‘You’re too tough on me’, PM tells Nine boss

Last Monday, Nine CEO Mike Sneesby made his first trip to Canberra since securing the role and, in a packed schedulist, even

le, elbow-tapped with everyone from Labor’s Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and Tony Burke to the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young.

But for sheer entertainment value, we hear it was Sneesby’s audience with Scott Morrison in the Prime Minister’s office that stole the show.

The meeting between the PM and the media boss may have only lasted 20 minutes or so. But it was certainly meaningful.

Diary has learnt Sneesby – joined for the meeting with ScoMo by his publishing boss James Chessell, along with two prime ministerial advisers including the PM’s media chief Andrew Cars­well – was offered a full and frank opinion by Morrison about Nine’s columnists at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The PM allegedly told Sneesby his columnists were too “tough” on him. The Nine camp is adamant “no concessions” were made in response.

Nine CEO Mike Sneesby. Picture: James Brickwood

It is understood the PM has no problem with the political reporting of the Canberra bureaus of Nine’s TV operations, plus The SMH, The Age and The Australian Financial Review. In the meeting, he even singled out A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw for particular praise, after a tough but fair interview in the wake of the Brittany Higgins allegations earlier this year.

But the PM has a different view on how he is treated by the political columnists at the Nine papers, particularly The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – and he wanted to put it on the record in his meeting with the Nine CEO.

Diary is told the PM’s tone was “grumpy, not furious”.

On one version out of the Nine camp, Morrison told Sneesby: “You’re too tough on me.” On another slightly more heightened version of events, the PM told him: “You smash me every single day.”

While Morrison didn’t name names, a number of Nine columnists have sharpened the knives for the PM in recent weeks, including Sean Kelly, a former adviser to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Peter Hartcher, the SMH and Age political and international editor, AFR columnist Laura Tingle, and Nine papers’ Thursday political columnist, Niki Savva.

The critical commentary intensified since French President Emmanuel Macron’s allegation at the G20 meeting in Rome that Morrison had lied to him – a claim eagerly amplified by Malcolm Turnbull. The columnists also ­focused on a parliamentary grilling Morrison copped over what he said in text messages to Anthony Albanese about his fateful trip to Hawaii during the bushfires.

Kelly, who has just written a tough book about Morrison, titled The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, and whose past three columns have included searing critiques of the PM, even took to Twitter for another pointed shot. There, he posted an excerpt from The Game that said of Morrison: “He never feels, in himself, insincere or untruthful, because he always means exactly what he says; it is just that he means it only in the moment he is saying it.”

Hartcher has written that Morrison is acting more like a “tribal chief” than a “national leader”, while a recent Tingle column claimed the “government’s own spectacular backflips had caught the PM – almost daily now it seems – being smacked in the face by his own previous utterances”.

Meanwhile, Savva gave a typically blunt assessment of Morrison a fortnight ago, writing the PM had shredded “his own credibility on the floor of parliament not once, not twice, but thrice” last month about exactly what he had texted Albanese just before his fateful Hawaii trip in December 2019. Savva concluded: “He left himself open to the charge of lying about lying.”

A Nine source has strongly defended its columnists, telling Diary: “We’re very happy with our columnists. As always, no concessions were made to either side of politics. All editorial decisions at the mastheads are made by the senior editors, anyway.”

Meanwhile, spicing things up even further at Nine ahead of the federal election is the fact Bevan Shields – the reporter who started it all when he asked Macron about whether Morrison had “lied” to him – was last week named as SMH editor.

It all points to more intriguing backroom conversations involving the PM’s office, Nine executives and their columnists, as next year’s federal election looms.

–

Mr Sneesby goes to Canberra

There was more Mike Sneesby-spotting than you could poke a stick at during his whirlwind trip to Canberra last Monday, highlighted by his meeting with Morrison. Apart from a standard meet-the-troops visit to Nine’s Canberra ­bureau in Parliament House, Sneesby was also spotted intriguingly crossing the corridor to News Corp-owned Sky’s state-of-the-art studio in the nation’s ­capital.

Sky sources tell us Nine’s TV news boss Darren Wick dragged Sneesby on an impromptu guided tour of the pay-TV network’s Canberra studio built in 2019 (where, coincidentally, Sky CEO Paul Whittaker also happened to be in residence on Monday).

Phil Coorey.

There are even whispers Sneesby is a fan of the Sky set-up, and may want to knock down the walls and merge the various Nine TV and print Canberra bureaus to create one Nine super-facility.

But that wasn’t the end of the Nine CEOs travels. Later that night, Diary’s spies say Sneesby was seen out at dinner at trendy Asian eatery XO with his big two editorial executives, publishing chief James Chessell and TV news boss Darren Wick, as well as his big three political journos: the SMH and the Age’s David Crowe, the AFR’s Phil Coorey and Nine TV’s Chris Uhlmann.

Given it came in the hours after Sneesby’s meeting with the PM, we’d love to have been a fly on the wall for that one.

–

Peter Hitchener becomes the news

It’s not often that newsreaders become the news. But changes are afoot in Nine’s Melbourne newsroom, with news legendary Melbourne newsreader Peter Hitchener, at 75, has finally embraced the flexible working week.

Diary can reveal Hitchener will cut back to four days a week, Monday to Thursday, in 2022. That means Nine’s Melbourne weekend newsreader, Alicia Loxley, will take Hitchener’s Friday shift while continuing to read on Saturday and Sunday, in a clear sign she has been anointed Hitchener’s heir apparent.

Peter Hitchener.

Hitchener has read the news in some capacity since 1973, and has read the 6pm Melbourne bulletin for Nine since 1998.

But none of this should be seen as a sign that Hitchener is easing down to retirement anytime soon. As one key Nine insider put it: “He’s won the ratings 10 years in a row. This is a way of extending his career, not shortening it. We want him to do it forever.”

Loxley moving to three days a week is a clear sign she has beaten other candidates to become Hitchener’s heir apparent. It would be fair to say there’s been no shortage of possible long-term successors under discussion, with ABC News Breakfast host ­Michael Rowland and Nine sports reader Tony ‘TJ’ Jones coming up at various times.

Jones is said to be philosophical about Loxley’s clear favoured status as Hitchener’s eventual successor, given he has plenty of other gigs to keep him occupied. Apart from Nine news sports anchor, he also has hosting roles on the Australian Open tennis and the Sunday Footy Show, and is also the stand-in for 3AW morning radio king Neil Mitchell when he’s on leave.

–

Oakes’s big payday from the ABC

Did Laurie Oakes come out of four years of retirement to work for the ABC? Well, sort of.

Diary has learnt that the public broadcaster paid Oakes, Nine’s legendary long-term political editor, “between $10,000 and $50,000” as part of a special project.

The information has been released by the ABC, in response to a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Public Affairs.

The document shows Oakes and Alan Sunderland, the ABC’s ex-boss of editorial policy, were each given the $10,000-$50,000 payment as part of a project to analyse the public broadcaster’s coverage of last year’s US election debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Laurie Oakes says he can’t remember what the ABC paid him.

The payments to Oakes and Sunderland were a part of the $943,058 spent on consultancies by the ABC during the 2020-21 financial year.

What is perhaps most interesting is that the information wasn’t disclosed in the ABC’s annual report a few weeks back. In previous annual reports, the ABC has included a precise breakdown of what all consultants are paid in any given year. But Diary is told disclosure requirements were less stringent for the last financial year on any government-owned corporations, including the ABC.

That has meant that, even with the IPA’s FOI, the ABC wasn’t obliged to disclose the exact amounts that Oakes or Sunderland were paid. Those amounts were blanked out in the FOI document under the terms of Section 47 of the FOI Act, which deals with “documents disclosing trade secrets or commercially valuable information”.

Oakes couldn’t recall what he’d been paid for the report. “It certainly wasn’t $50,000,” he told Diary. It was closer to $10,000 than $50,000.”

The report by Oakes and Sunderland found the ABC’s overall coverage of the US debates “was clearly accurate, impartial and met the ABC’s editorial standards. There are no grounds we could see for complaints of systematic lapses or biased reporting and analysis”.

However, their report did contain some criticism of 7.30’s coverage of the first presidential debate. The report described 7.30’s debate debrief as “the weak link”, “the disappointment of the day”, and providing “sparse” and “token” coverage.

Overall, Oakes now says he found judging the editorial performance of the ABC illuminating. “It was quite an interesting exercise,” he said. “It would depend on the issue, but I’d do it again.”

–

Fran Kelly’s new project at the ABC

Fran Kelly has completed her last day on Radio National’s breakfast program, with her great friend ­Patricia Karvelas to take over the shift in 2022, as Diary foreshadowed last week.

There was plenty of valedictory coverage of Kelly last week, with even an episode of One Plus One on ABC TV timed to coincide with her last day. But don’t mistake Kelly’s “retirement” from the RN breakfast slot after 17 years as a sign she’s stepping away from the ABC.

Fran Kelly and Patricia Karvelas.

The rumblings around Aunty last week were she’s already working on a new project for 2022. The early talk is that it’s a TV project and may have a political bent – which could be potentially significant in an election year.

Kelly and Karvelas will continue to host their popular RN political podcast, The Party Room, in 2022. But Karvelas’s move to replace Kelly in the breakfast slot does still leave one major gap in the RN schedule: Karvelas’s drive shift.

RN Breakfast Friday host Sally Sara is an early favourite to win that slot after being pipped to take over Kelly’s role. But it isn’t a done deal.

–

Making the news