No Easter radio silence for 2GB’s broadcast big guns Jones, Hadley, Fordham, Knight, Stanley
When virtually every media employer is telling its staff to take extra holidays to save money, talk radio stations such as 2GB are doing the reverse.
Top-rating broadcasters normally take off on the Monday before Easter for a fortnight’s break, as the ratings season pauses.
But in the twilight zone of 2020, things are very different. At 2GB, its entire weekday line-up — including Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Deb Knight, Ben Fordham and John Stanley — will stay on air from Monday for the entire Easter fortnight, coinciding with an absolutely critical ratings survey to be unveiled next week.
Talk radio stations including 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and ABC Local Radio around Australia are expected to register record ratings figures, amid unprecedented interest in COVID-19. Alternatively, the performance of some FM stations is expected not to be so hot.
Anecdotally, the interest in talk radio has been extraordinary in recent weeks. One top radio jock tells us: “Normally, I can get 50 per cent of talkback callers to air, and 50 per cent don’t make it. But in the last few weeks, I’ve been lucky to get 5 per cent of callers to air, such has been the volume of calls.”
Next week’s radio survey takes on an added dimension, after collection of radio ratings data was last week suspended for three months. That means whoever tops next week’s ratings will stay on top well into the winter.
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Eddie: We’re still mates
Many Melbourne TV viewers thought the coronavirus had abruptly ended the decades-long friendship between Eddie McGuire and Nine sports anchor Tony Jones last Wednesday, after one of the fiercest exchanges seen on an Australian TV news bulletin.
But McGuire assures Diary that’s definitely not the case: “Tony and I are still mates, totally.”
The issue in the explosive exchange was whether the country’s most famous football club, Collingwood, of which McGuire is president, would refund members’ money because of the season being cancelled. In full attack dog mode, Jones repeatedly demanded of McGuire: “Will they get their money back?”
This finally cracked an incensed McGuire, who, live to air, accused Jones of being a “smart arse” who was trying to make a “fool” of him.
“Don’t make this into taking money out of people’s pockets,” he told Jones. “Don’t wind me up with the smart arse last line, OK? This is desperate stakes. And don’t try and make a headline or make a fool out of me.”
MUST WATCH INTERVIEW:
— Nine News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) April 1, 2020
Should @AFL members be refunded?
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire and Tony Jones thrash it out. @TJch9 #9News pic.twitter.com/YgsJftga0H
McGuire tells Diary that the angry exchange was a product of desperation at AFL clubs.
“When Tony was trying to have a dig, and be the moral ombudsman of the game, I reacted.
“My point was: ‘Now’s not the time for cheap gotcha journalism and trying for clickbait.’
“People don’t need to go to bed thinking they’re being robbed by their footy clubs.
“This is every club’s hour of need. If we’re one of the strongest clubs, it’s an issue for every club. And we can’t have a run on membership — it’ll be like a run on the bank.”
McGuire reveals to Diary that he later made up with a slightly worried Jones.
“There’s not a problem between us. But Tony did joke that he was looking for a black Lexus in his rear vision mirror when he went home.”
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Boris-speak takes off
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
So Boris Johnson, still waiting out his period of self-quarantine, must have felt very flattered indeed last week by the fact that all the way down under in Australia, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ COVID-19 media messaging had taken on his own pivotal rallying cry.
The coronavirus-positive UK PM’s address to the British nation back on March 23 had ended with a message that has since become the key slogan of the entire UK response to COVID-19: “I urge you at this moment of national emergency to: Stay at home. Protect our NHS (National Health Service). And save lives.” Johnson closed a follow-up letter to every British household with the very same slogan.
Perhaps understandably, the spinners in Andrews’s office must have thought it was foolish not to parrot such a simple but powerful message.
The closing line of Andrews’s announcement to all Victorians last Monday of Stage 3 restrictions on activity? “So please: Stay home. Protect our health system. Save lives.”
And by Thursday, Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton was delivering the same slogan.
Even on his sick bed, Boris must have had a good chuckle.
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ABC cuts not until 2021
The new global financial crisis last week forced Australia’s three commercial free-to-air networks, Seven, Nine and Ten, to variously make unprecedented announcements about redundancies, the slashing of staff wages and forced leave to cope with a near-immediate collapse in advertising.
Over at the ABC, there’s no such ad revenue worries. But given that staff at commercial media groups are sharing the pain with their employers, are there any similar plans for ABC staff to share the burden with the government, and ultimately, the taxpayer?
That moment could still be as much as two years away, according to ABC managing director David Anderson.
Anderson confided in an interview with one of his own staff, ABC Radio Melbourne’s morning host, Virginia Trioli, last Thursday that the broadcaster’s $1bn a year budget would ensure there were no staff cuts this year — or for that matter, it seems, in the year to June 2021.
While other media companies are battening down the hatches just to survive the coming weeks, Anderson told Trioli he was “worried” he would have to cut jobs in the futuristic world of the 2021-22 financial year. That’s because of what he described as “$100m of savings” that he needs to find that year after the government’s well-publicised pre-coronavirus freeze on ABC funding. “For this year, I think in budget terms, we’ll be alright. This is year one of the triennium. I do worry about year three (2021-22) though …. I don’t know how we are going to hit that amount of money by year three without there being a reduction in staff.”
Anderson said now was “not the right time” to be focused on downsizing. “Now is the right time to be focused on making sure we continue our essential services into Australia.” So that particular ABC cost-cutting can has been firmly kicked down the road.
Meanwhile, there’s another piece of good news for all ABC staff. Before the world blew up, they managed to negotiate a 2 per cent pay rise from July 1 this year. Wonder how that’ll go down among essential service workers taking pay cuts at other media companies.
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Mad: Swan’s man flu national news
It’s not often that the runny nose of a health reporter leads news bulletins, but that was precisely the case last Monday after the ABC’s Norman Swan attracted live, ahem, blow-by-blow coverage of his trip to his GP in Sydney’s Bondi Junction to find out whether he had the coronavirus.
Even Swan confesses to being shocked when he heard ABC radio’s 10am news headlined by his coronavirus test, just minutes after he took it last week.
As he tells Diary: “I thought the world had gone mad.”
It all started when an ABC local radio listener in Sydney had picked up that Swan sounded “a bit congested”, right at the end of his regular segment about 9.30am last Monday on the Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck-hosted morning radio show.
Since the Saturday night prior, he had a runny nose, then a sore throat and fever.
By the time he was due to go to air on Monday, his GP had told him his symptoms were sufficient to force him to schedule a test.
Swan, at that point already self-isolating in his inner-city home, hadn’t intended to publicly reveal he was being screened for COVID-19 at all.
But he tells Diary that when the ABC caller asked the question live to air, it was a “nanosecond moment where you’ve got to be straight”.
He admitted on air to having symptoms and said he was taking a test “straight after” the segment.
When the unofficial head of the ABC’s coronavirus coverage arrived at his GP’s totally deserted underground car park (a scene he compares to “Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat”), his GP greeted him in the full regalia of a mask, apron and gloves: “You’ve got to do the swab yourself,” he was bluntly told.
Swan threw his head back, and, eye-waveringly, stuck a swab up his own nose.
As we all know now (after yet more news headlines), Swan tested negative for COVID-19.
He did, however, test positive for an “enterovirus”. In plain English, Swan says that’s code for “man flu”.
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Rugby drops the ball
November 2019. If battling Rugby Australia chief executive Raelene Castle had an opportunity to travel back to that exact moment in time, Diary imagines she would grab it in a heartbeat.
It was back then, in the weeks after the Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and England, that Castle knocked back what we’re told was a $US25m a year, five-year deal for Fox Sports to hang on to the rights to broadcast the sport, including Wallabies tests and Super Rugby.
In terms of US dollars, the standard currency of these rugby rights deals, the offer was the same amount that Fox had paid back in 2015 for the same suite of content.
Now, with 20/20 hindsight, it’s easy now to say that $US125m in cash would have been a lifesaver for rugby last week as it took a machete to its operations.
But back in the innocent, pre-coronavirus world, Castle and her then-chairman, Cameron Clyne, were bullish that RA had clear interest from other parties and Super Rugby needed to be on Free TV. So they decided the smart move was to take the rights to market.
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POO ready to roll
Seven seems to have run up the white flag in relation to its marquee cooking program, the Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan-hosted Plate of Origin (POO), after Diary’s item about the show last week.
If you recall, we published texts showing several staff were asking whether it was “safe” to have at least 70 POO cast and crew in close proximity on its Dural set in northwestern Sydney in a COVID-19 world, when the rest of society is forbidden from holding a barbecue. And not even a free case of beer generously given by Seven to each POO staff member was enough to appease their concerns.
The good news for Seven is the show is now in the can, with good buzz on the quality of cooking. But last week’s item in this column forced a dramatic cut to its production schedule, meant to last several more weeks.
In fact, Diary is reliably informed that POO’s grand final was quietly filmed in Dural on Sunday, after an intense weekend of production.
Definitely a smart move. Questions were starting to be asked on set about whether the full season could be made, given growing NSW government restrictions.
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Going too Farr
The Guardian’s political editor, Katharine “Murpharoo” Murphy, has taken some time off to write a Quarterly Essay about Scott Morrison and, inevitably, COVID-19.
Given Murphy’s side project and the absence of her deputy, Sarah Martin, on maternity leave, Malcolm Farr, news.com.au’s former political editor, has made the unusual migration from News Corp to the very different political waters of The Guardian.
Farr, 68, who had retired from his news.com.au role at the end of 2019, claims his move is near-unprecedented. “I do believe it’s the first direct political transition ever from News Corp to the Guardian,” he quips to Diary. “I’m delighted to be here.”
Farr says he will initially be with The Guardian as a “locum” for the four weeks it takes Murphy to write her essay, although, interestingly, he doesn’t rule out further Guardian forays. However, he has already copped ribbing from former press gallery colleagues. Shane Wright, senior economics correspondent for the SMH and The Age, last week asked at a press conference of him: “Who’s the work experience kid?”
Meanwhile, on Thursday, news.com.au will fill Farr’s former role with a familiar face: Samantha Maiden, the former political editor of News Corp’s Sunday papers and author of Party Animals.
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