Nine’s woes amid radio host’s secret deal and a troubled brekkie trio
Nine Radio’s commercial deals saga continues with 4BC afternoons host Sofie Formica the latest presenter to get caught up in the huge mess, while the Brisbane station’s flagship breakfast program could be nearing its end after its worst performance yet.
Nine Radio’s commercial radio deals saga has dogged the station for more than a year and 4BC afternoons host Sofie Formica is the latest presenter to get caught up in the almighty mess.
While 2GB’s Ben Fordham and 3AW’s freebie queen Jacqui Felgate were rapped over the knuckles last week by the media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, for promoting brands – including Uber and BMW – on-air without disclosing they had paid partnerships with the companies, Formica left her bosses in the dark about her own deals.
She has a long-running deal with the Brisbane Economic Development Agency but Formica didn’t bother to tell Nine Radio bosses about it until September last year, when The Australian exposed that Nine Radio’s stations 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and 6PR had a long list of presenters with paid deals that weren’t declared.
The ACMA investigation, released last week, found Formica’s deal with BEDA had been running for 710 days – nearly two years – but her bosses didn’t have a clue about it, despite the presenter having undergone “compliance training” in 2021.
So what happened? Well, nothing.
ACMA said despite 4BC not declaring Formica’s BEDA deal it was not actually a breach of the commercial standard.
As for Felgate, to date she holds 10 paid partnerships, including her notorious union with BMW that got her into hot water for boasting on air about how wonderful the luxury German cars are. At the time, she neglected to tell listeners about her commercial deal with the company.
But it’s fair to say Felgate hasn’t been at all deterred by this “oversight” in failing to declare a never-ending list of paid partnerships.
She also got into strife last week over another paid deal she held with supermarket giant Coles.
Last year Felgate was busy spruiking Coles’s items, including on Instagram, about how “your FlyBuys can take you and three others from the supermarket to Hollywood”, but she hadn’t disclosed the deal on the 3AW register when she and the station were meant to do so.
In recent weeks Felgate’s social media has been littered with a stream of paid plugs including with Chemist Warehouse, skincare brand La Roche-Posay and Scanlan Theodore.
Perhaps she should instead turn her focus to her diminishing radio audience – since taking over from drive host Tom Elliott this year she has shed 30 per cent of listeners and plummeted from second to sixth spot in the drive timeslot.
4BC’s brekkie woes
While we’re on the topic of Nine Radio, its Brisbane station 4BC’s flagship breakfast program, led by Laurel Edwards, Mark Hine and Gary Clare, could come to an end sooner rather than later after the trio’s worst performance yet in the year’s fifth radio ratings poll released last week.
The trio jumped ship from 4KQ in 2022 after taking over from Neil Breen and have seen their ratings gradually slide ever since, falling from an audience share of 10.1 per cent to just 4.3 per cent last survey.
So will Nine Radio boss Tom Malone rip up their contracts before things get any worse?
If their latest on-air comments are anything to go by, they have a fair inkling that they might be on the way out.
On Thursday Hine told listeners: “It’s tough getting up and doing this show consistently for how many years now, Laurel?”
She replied: “Oh, 32?”
Clare joked: “Yeah, especially for those who get up and have to listen to it.”
Clare said when Edwards was running late that morning they all got a bit concerned.
Then Hine said he’d even missed his turn-off on the way to the studio and he’d never done that before, adding: “There was something weird going on in the universe.” Well, perhaps there is.
The trio’s contract was extended in April but is up at the year’s end and the drums are already beating loudly. There is some speculation that they could even be gone before the upcoming Queensland state election late next month. Edwards, Hine and Clare are scheduled to take one week off during the non-ratings period from September 15 but will they even return?
Names being bandied around to take over the breakfast mic include Nine News weather reporter Luke Bradnam, and Peter‘I can read a room’ Fegan who, according to Diary’s spies, is “desperate” to get the gig after he had a stint filling in earlier this year alongside Formica.
Other names also in the mix to replace the troubled trio are mornings’ host Bill McDonald or drive host Peter Gleeson.
Since mid-2022, 4BC’s older listeners have turned off in droves. The station has lost nearly half of its audience aged 65 and older, plunging from a market share of 25.1 per cent to 13.8 per cent. Brisbane listeners aged 65 and older have switched to 4BH 1116, which has an audience share in this age group of 28.2 per cent (up from 16.4), while ABC Brisbane has climbed from 8.7 to 16.6 per cent.
Leunig ‘stunned’ by editor’s email after axing
Legendary cartoonist Michael Leunig says he’s embarrassed to be associated with The Age newspaper after his 55-year career at the Melbourne masthead was terminated last week.
In what he described as a “throat-cutting exercise”, the 79-year-old said he was left gobsmacked after reading Age editor Patrick Elligett’s subscriber email newsletter on Friday night that said the cartoonist had “filed his last editorial illustration for The Age”.
Although Leunig had received a call from Elligett days earlier to tell him his time was up, the cartoonist was stunned when the editor’s note failed to reference the circumstances of his departure.
“There was no mention of the fact that he (Elligett) gave me the axe,” Leunig told Diary.
“I was expecting it, as I have parted ways with The Age philosophically (and) culturally. I don’t read it really, I just scan it. It’s a sad story because I began there when it was a substantial newspaper.
“It’s almost embarrassing now to say that I worked for The Age, it’s become like a tacky tabloid.”
Leunig, who lives in regional Victoria, filed his first illustration for The Age in 1969 but said the relationship between him and the Nine Entertainment-owned newspaper became strained under former editor Gay Alcorn when the paper took a firm editorial position in favour of Covid-19 lockdowns.
“I just had to raise questions, as did a lot of people, about the severity of the Covid measures and this was intolerable, these things kept getting not published without any explanation or discussion,” he said.
“It was kind of like being sent to Coventry, you don’t exist.
“It was almost a lonely kind of position, there was never any contact from anyone … I was just left out on a rock.”
In 2020 Leunig submitted numerous cartoons about former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews’ extreme lockdown measures that were pulled amid speculation senior editors were concerned it could upset The Age’s largely left-leaning readership base, which was broadly in favour of lockdowns. Another one of Leunig’s cartoons that drew the ire of The Age’s management portrayed a lone protester standing in front of a loaded syringe, referencing the iconic image of a protester in front of a tank at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
It was a pointed message of resistance to Covid vaccinations but the illustration, submitted in 2021, also was never published.
Not long after, Leunig was dumped from the news pages of The Age, and shunted to the masthead’s Spectrum weekend section, for which he filed one weekly cartoon.
Leunig said the sudden conclusion to his tenure at The Age was a “blunt and unfortunate way to end it”.
“I’ve had so many emails and comments coming in, it’s astonishing and overwhelming, I didn’t realise how much the work had meant to so many people,” he said.
Despite his professional prowess, Leunig said he never entered any journalism awards but in 1999 he was recognised as one of 100 Australian National Living Treasures.
Reflecting on his six decades in the media industry, Leunig told Diary that the work of cartoonists had changed for the worse.
“I feel cartooning is just not as free, it’s as if the editors are under very strict instructions from above or something,” Leunig said.
“It’s oppressive.”
In a scathing piece that he published on his own website last week, Leunig said mainstream cartoonists were damaged goods.
“It’s all so sanctimonious now,” he wrote.
Leunig said The Age had “become a cold, imperious and humourless culture which seemed smug and unwell”, and he accused the masthead of censorship, via “a message relayed to him from above to not mention Gaza”.
Leunig added that the “institution which most needed to be questioned, shaken and satirised was the mainstream media – but of course, this was out of bounds”.
“Australian mainstream cartoonists can’t be so funny, spirited and naughty anymore; they are not free enough, they don’t have as much ink on their hands as they once did,” he mused.
“They are mostly over-educated, they don’t end up in court on charges of offensive publishing like they used to, they clamour too much after neat punch lines and the self-congratulations of cosy, dubious media awards.
“They don’t have the support and encouragement of courageous or adventurous editors. In the face of the new authoritarian groupthink and a more sinister crazy world, most of them are too much under the thumb and can’t or won’t see it.”
On Sunday night former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett took to X to voice his outrage over the sacking of Leunig.
Kennett said the move was “beyond comprehension” and “the paper has lost any claim to relevance.”
“Leunig had a touch with the community the Age never had. Hopefully Michael’s work will appear elsewhere. For now sack the Editor.”
Beyond comprehension!
— Jeff Kennett (@jeff_kennett) September 1, 2024
The Age sacks one of Australia's greatest ever cartoonists
Michael Leunig!
The paper has lost any claim to relevance.
Leunig had a touch with the community the Age never had
Hopefully Michael's work will appear elsewhere
For now sack the Editor
Doran speaks out
Seven Network presenter Matt Doran opted to talk frankly about his mental health battles while co-hosting The Morning Show with Kylie Gillies on Friday.
The pair interviewed psychologist and author Mark Cross, who was spruiking his latest book, Mental State, when Doran bravely admitted to viewers he too had battled his own demons.
“Are we getting better, do you think, Doctor, at putting our hand up like you did and saying, ‘I’ve got a problem with anxiety’?” Doran said.
“I’ve had huge problems with depression over the last couple of years, too, but people, I think, are still frightened to come forward and say that.”
Dr Cross congratulated Doran for speaking up about his mental health issues while live on air.
“It’s amazing you say that … the more we talk about it the better it is,” Dr Cross said.
Doran has made headlines – sometimes globally – through the years for a couple of workplace mishaps.
In 2021 he notoriously failed to do his prep work for an interview with British singer Adele, prompting her to can their sit-down chat and walk out on the Channel 7 broadcaster.
Doran apologised and was taken off air for two weeks following the incident.
To film or not to film?
The filming of Anthony Albanese last week chewing the fat with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell certainly caused a stir.
New Zealand-based journalist Lydia Lewis opted to film the duo in a friendly chat outside the Pacific leaders summit when Albo made an off-the-cuff remark that quickly made headlines.
The PM said to Campbell, in apparent jest, that he should consider going “halvies” on the regional policy initiative.
“Well we had a cracker today getting the Pacific Policing Initiative through,†@AlboMP tells @kurtcampbel on sidelines of @piflm53@RNZPacific@kelvinfijipic.twitter.com/sP9YNqhlSR
— Lydia Lewis (@LydiaLewisRNZ) August 28, 2024
So did Lewis do the wrong thing by filming Albo and posting the exchange on social media?
According to the Insiders’ crew on Sunday, including ABC’s Laura Tingle and David Speers and former journo turned professor Mark Kenny, the covert filming was above board.
But there was one lone ranger on the political chatfest program who said what Lewis did was uncool – enter The Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s political correspondent Paul Sakkal.
“I think the Prime Minister by the way was right to be a bit frustrated with that journalist,” Sakkal said on Sunday morning.
“I don’t think you should film if it’s not a time when it’s known that people are filming,”
But Tingle was quick to chime in and disagree, taking Lewis’s side. “Really? It’s open access. It’s a bit more relaxed at the Pacific Islands Forum maybe, but journos are allowed in there. She was standing there going like this,” said Tingle, pretending to hold a phone and record.
Speers added: “People with a phone are now able to post anything.”
Kenny agreed. “Precisely. If it had been taking a photo there probably wouldn’t have been an issue right, but the fact is it is sort of recording.”
Speers wrapped up with a pat on the back for Sakkal.
“I like your ethics though, that’s commendable,” Speers said.
Slater lets fly
Football Australia signed a new broadcast deal with Paramount Australia and Network Ten last week, ensuring all matches involving the Socceroos and the Matildas – except for the next men’s FIFA World Cup – will be shown on Ten or the Paramount+ streaming service.
The price tag of the five-year agreement was not disclosed, and probably for good reason – the bidding process was a shambles, so there’s a fair chance Paramount got the contract for a song.
But while Paramount was happy, and Football Australia chief executive James Johnson said the code “was reaching new heights in terms of investment”, a certain former Socceroo columnist by the name of Robbie Slater couldn’t hide his disgust.
“I am pissed off that we have now got ourselves in this position that after everything the game has endured, we should go and pat everyone on the back about getting a new TV deal and thank Channel 10 for how they’ve treated football in this country by rewarding it with the Socceroos and Matildas. It makes me sick to my stomach,” he railed in the pages of News Corp (publisher of The Australian).
Please Robbie, don’t mind us, continue!
“It is a risk climbing back into bed with Ten and Paramount given all stories of the financial struggles at Ten and the massive cuts globally at Paramount who are trying to wipe $3bn off their business,” he thundered.
“Was there even a thought given that the mere existence of Ten could be under threat in the coming years?
“Don’t forget this is the same broadcaster that didn’t foresee the Matildas mania for a home World Cup – how dumb are they?”
He shoots, he scores!
Nick Tabakoff is on leave
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