Paul Barry signs on to top Media Watch record

ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry.

Media Watch host Paul Barry will in 2023 finally surpass the show’s founder, Stuart Littlemore, by officially claiming the longest unbroken stint on the ABC media watchdog.

Barry has confirmed to Diary that he will take charge of Media Watch yet again next year, after agreeing terms on a fresh one-year deal.

He has told your columnist: “I think about retiring every year. But I’m still enjoying it.”

Barry is likely to formally announce his return to Media Watch on Monday night’s final instalment for the year (although coincidentally, the show’s story editor, Jason Whittaker, has just announced his departure on LinkedIn).

Littlemore, now famously a top QC in media and criminal law, fronted Media Watch for its first nine years from 1989 onwards.

Stuart Littlemore during his Media Watch days.

But at nearly 71, Barry will become the first host of the show to hit an unbroken decade hosting Media Watch next July.

He returned to the ABC media watchdog in July 2013 after a year-long stint hosting the show in 2000 and a three-month run in 2010.

“I’ve sorted it,” he told Diary. “We’ll do another year and see how we go.”

Apart from his normal scrutiny of other Australian media organisations, Barry hasn’t been afraid to put the ABC itself under the microscope this year, in his position of being able to hold Aunty to account from within.

But his fearlessness in scrutinising even his own employer hasn’t been without its internal tensions.

Some of Barry’s toughest segments on the ABC this year have involved the public broadcaster’s actions in the diversity space.

In August, Barry raised issues about the ABC’s apparent decision to largely ignore a move by UK health authorities to close down the high-profile Tavistock transgender clinic, after it was found to be unsafe for children.

Barry argued on Media Watch that the ABC was “in danger” of being seen as “one-sided” in its coverage of the issue. But the ABC strongly defended itself, saying that it didn’t cover the issue because “Australian practices differ significantly” from those at Tavistock.

Two months later, there was possibly an even stronger reaction when Barry criticised the ABC’s relationship with ACON, a lobby group that supports people of “diverse sexualities and genders”.

Barry expressed strong reservations about the arrangement, which sees the ABC pay to be a participant in ACON’s Australian Workplace Equality Index, which measures the performance of companies in workplace diversity and “positive programming”.

The ABC has won a number of awards surrounding its performance in the index, but Barry claimed that “having them scored by a lobby group raises questions about ABC impartiality”. He added that he thought “the ABC should review the arrangement”.

The morning after the segment appeared, ABC Pride, Aunty’s staff-led group for those who identify as LGBTQIA+, held an extraordinary meeting to air their grievances with the Media Watch segment.

The ABC was upset with the criticism, but Barry later doubled down by commenting: “To say this (issue) isn’t worthy of 10 minutes (on Media Watch) is nonsense.”

So how many more years will Barry be around to deal with such battles, both internally at the ABC and with the broader media?

Deadpan, the Media Watch host told Diary: “No more than 20.” Diary thinks he was joking.

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Virginia Trioli gazumped by ABC colleague

ABC Radio Melbourne’s principal host Virginia Trioli was confronted last week with not one, but two brutal reality checks about her apparent lack of power over Victorian Premier Dan Andrews.

The first came on the Wednesday edition of her radio show, courtesy of top Melbourne spin doctor Simon Pristel, who bluntly told Trioli that Andrews and his team no longer think they “need” radio broadcasters like her.

The second came later on the same day, when Trioli was notably snubbed by none other than Andrews himself. The Premier chose to make his post-election ABC radio debut not on Trioli’s show – but instead with her ABC Radio Melbourne drive time colleague Raf Epstein.

The gazumping of Trioli by her ABC colleague for the Andrews interview has been read in some quarters as payback for a perceived on-air ambush by her during an interview with the Premier on her show back in October.

Trioli’s tough day on Wednesday started on her show’s ‘Spin Doctors’ segment, during which Pristel delivered the ABC host a tough truth bomb on-air to her face about why Andrews didn’t feel the need to appear on her show.

Stammering slightly over his words, Pristel told Trioli: “There was a lot of talk about, er, you and your rivals not being able to get, um, Dan on their show in the lead-up to the election. Now, as frustrating as that is for you and your listeners and that goes against the grain of all the journalistic fibre of my body, that’s clearly a strategy. They don’t think they need mainstream media in terms of radio in particular to win. And the proof is there for all to see.”

The problems between Trioli and the Premier in the October interview involved suggestions of an on-air “ambush” by her – after Diary subsequently received word out of the ABC’s Southbank studios at the time that there had been some very lively backroom interplay with his 1 Treasury Place HQ.

Raf Epstein. Picture: ABC

Trioli had struck a deal with the Premier to appear on her show, with the deal struck on the proviso that the interview was to solely be about the emergency situation with the Victorian floods at the time.

But late in the interview, Trioli suddenly took the conversation away from floods and adopted a stern tone with the Premier about his failure to appear on her show “for almost a year”.

“Now look, Premier, you’ve requested not to be asked about policy or politics today, you say, out of respect to those who are dealing with the floods,” she began.

“But it has been, I just checked, almost a year to the day when you were last in this studio or on this show for an interview.

“Can you give an assurance to the listeners that you will be back here for a proper, in-depth interview within a couple of weeks?”

An audibly irritated Andrews paused for several seconds, before clearly not committing to a campaign interview with Trioli. Notably, he didn’t appear on her show throughout the campaign, despite repeated requests, following his apparent annoyance over the perceived ambush.

Despite Pristel’s blunt words on Wednesday, Trioli’s toughest moment was still to come later that day – when Andrews fronted up in its Southbank studios in person at 5pm to star on Epstein’s drive show.

The interview was enthusiastically pre-promoted on the ABC’s social channels, and an unusually relaxed Premier even stuck around to take talkback calls for more than half an hour from a number of Epstein’s listeners.

As a statement of who Andrews regards as important, there was no better example than the fact that Trioli was gazumped for an interview, despite her best efforts to embarrass Andrews into going on her show.

With Trioli now on an extended three-month summer holiday, she may well be hoping Andrews will forgive and forget by the time she eventually returns to the ABC’s airwaves in March next year.

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Fitzy and Lisa to join Pauline cartoon

Pauline Hanson’s wacky South Park-style cartoon series, Please Explain – which has lampooned everyone from Greta Thunberg to Malcolm Turnbull – will make a shock return next year.

And Diary can reveal that Lisa Wilkinson and Peter FitzSimons are about to become characters.

Lisa Wilkinson. Picture: Channel 10

The satirical series – featuring Hanson as the teacher of an unruly class of politicians and other wannabe influencers in Canberra – was originally launched as a six-episode series ahead of the May federal election to boost the One Nation leader’s campaign.

But Please Explain became an unlikely social media hit, regularly luring a combined one million viewers a week across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in Australia and overseas.

And there is plenty for the new series – produced by Melbourne animation house Stepmates – to play with.

Diary hears the smartly produced two-minute cartoons will take full advantage of the radically altered cast of politicians in Canberra.

A new breed of progressives have invaded Canberra since the election, including Teals, Greens and Labor MPs, along with left-leaning media types.

Diary hears that mocking the more woke side of politics will be a key plank of the series.

The most prominent new cast members be Wilkinson, her equally high-profile husband FitzSimons (apparently featuring as a pirate with his trademark red bandana) and Magda Szubanski.

Pauline Hanson’s character in Please Explain.

The new member for Kooyong, Monique Ryan, will also feature prominently, still tormenting her predecessor Josh Frydenberg, while the alleged champagne-socialist teal traits are also likely to cop the Please Explain treatment.

And yes, the Greens will be back in a big way. But while Bandt is set to figure prominently, he is likely to be surpassed in airtime by Greens deputy Senate leader Lidia Thorpe, who we’re told will repeatedly feature depicted with some of her bikie mates.

Meanwhile, from Labor, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will now be a lead characters, while Qantas boss Alan Joyce and Twitter supremo Elon Musk will star in dedicated episodes, we hear.

The new series is expected to cost about $500,000 to produce. To raise money for its latest run, Hanson is producing 20,000 bottles of a new limited-edition Please Explain Queensland Rum, featuring on its label everyone from Ryan pursuing Frydenberg, Bob Katter in his broad-brimmed hat, and even Scott Morrison as the latest ‘ghost’ of PMs past.

If the 20,000 bottles can be sold by February, the cartoon’s new run will start early in the parliamentary year. Could be epic.

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Is shrunken Studio 10 on its last legs?

It’s one of Ten’s lowest rating daytime shows that in the last fortnight lost both its main host and has had its running time nearly cut in half.

So the question has to be asked: is the much-maligned Studio 10 – which in recent years has seen numerous premature reports of its imminent demise – finally in its death throes?

To be frank, it’s not looking great for the 10-year old scrapper among Australia’s morning talk show ranks.

Sarah Harris. Picture: Richard Dobson

Studio 10 routinely attracts a paltry 30,000 viewers a day. So, few media pundits were overly surprised last week when it was announced the show had been cut back from three-and-a-half hours to just two hours a day – particularly after the departure of its best asset, and the only person still remaining from its original cast, Sarah Harris, to try to rescue another flagging Ten panel show, The Project.

The show first launched almost exactly 10 years ago as a morning TV upstart, and in its heyday saw a high-profile cast of characters that included Ita Buttrose, Denise Drysdale, Jessica Rowe, Denise Scott, Joe Hildebrand, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, and of course new Project host Harris. But last week, the show was reduced to a pale shadow of its former self by Ten, which announced that its original 8.30am starting time was being pushed back to 10am.

Word out of Ten is that Studio 10 has been struggling most in its first hour after 8.30am, where it is still up against the much-higher rating Sunrise, the Today show and ABC News Breakfast.

By comparison, the post-10am dead zone of daytime TV is a less competitive affair.

Still, the decision to cut back Studio 10 to just two hours could be interpreted as a sign that Ten’s US masters at media giant Paramount are starting to take a keener interest on the Australian network’s costs.

That’s perhaps not surprising, given that in 2023 Ten will still be paying former The Project host Lisa Wilkinson to apparently sit on the sidelines while it searches for something for its highly paid star to do.

We’re told that Studio 10, previously fronted by Tristan MacManus and Harris, will now morph into an ‘ensemble’ of hosts, led by MacManus, Ten’s entertainment editor Angela Bishop, newsreader Narelda Jacobs and roving reporter Daniel Doody.

Ten insists that it is committed to Studio 10 for its 11th year in 2023 – but it remains to be seen whether the show will last much longer than that in an increasingly cost-conscious TV environment.

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2GB’s record 18-year reign under threat

For nearly two decades, 2GB – helmed by big names like Ray Hadley, Alan Jones and Ben Fordham – has dominated the Sydney airwaves.

But last month, 2GB’s once-unassailable leadership position came under its greatest threat since Jones and Hadley moved to the station in the early 2000s, as it squeaked home in the overall No.1 spot with 11.6 per cent of the audience, just 0.3 per cent ahead of Kyle & Jackie O’s FM upstart, KIIS.

While a close run thing, the result represented 2GB’s 145th consecutive Sydney survey win over 18 years. But is it the beginning of the end of 2GB’s ratings dominance of the Sydney airwaves?

When the last radio survey of the year is released on Tuesday, we’ll know if last month’s shock numbers merely represented a rogue survey, or part of a larger shift of listeners.

Insiders at 2GB have claimed to Diary that they are sanguine about the possibility of 2GB losing its ratings crown after 18 years.

Nine claims to have made a conscious decision to sacrifice some of 2GB’s historical ratings dominance for ad revenue in recent years, after the station was the subject of advertiser boycotts over controversial comments made by Alan Jones in the lead-up to his departure from the station in May 2020.

Nine Radio boss Tom Malone alluded to the fact that making money was more important than ratings, telling Diary that year: “Audience is very important, but profitability is our ultimate measure of success.”

Word out of Nine Radio last week was that 2GB is now more profitable than when Nine bought the business three years ago.

But 2GB types are adamant that more profits are definitely not the result of any dumbing down of the station. As one insider told Diary on Sunday: “We don’t shy away from controversy at all. It’s simply about knowing where to draw the line.”