Media Diary: ABC starts to get personal as star personnel quit

Another week, another round of key staff members heading for the exit door at Ultimo as ABC managing director David Anderson makes a candid confession in Canberra.

ABC Managing Director David Anderson fronted the Environment and Communications Senate estimates in Canberra last week where he made some startling confessions. Picture: Martin Ollman

Diary’s ears pricked up during ABC managing director David Anderson’s appearance at a bruising Senate estimates hearing this week, when he insisted former ­federal political editor Andrew Probyn’s recent redundancy was not personal.

“Personally, I have always got on well with Andrew Probyn. I have no problem with Andrew Probyn whatsoever,” Anderson said.

Probyn, initially “flabbergasted” by the ABC’s decision to cut him loose, has joined Nine as the network’s national affairs editor, starting next month.

Senator Sarah Henderson, a former ABC presenter, certainly had Probyn’s back, describing him as “one of the best journos in the game” before asking Anderson whether he had instead been ­replaced by “some TikTok journalists”.

Anderson said the savings made from dumping Probyn were yet to be “reinvested”.

“It’s not just for a TikTok platform but certainly what we can see is where audiences are heading for their news is primarily digital consumption over time and away from broadcast,” Anderson said.

“We’re all looking at third-party platforms, where audiences are increasingly TikTok, [it] is but one where that consumption of news exists.”

The ABC also announced that the “Editor Politics” in the public broadcaster’s Canberra press gallery bureau, Michelle Ainsworth, was moving to the newly created role of “News Knowledge and Skills Lead”.

Ainsworth was in Canberra for fewer than 18 months, but long enough to abolish the bureau’s beer fridge and recommend the federal political editor’s job be made redundant.

Deputy news director Gavin Fang wrote to staff saying ­Ainsworth would be “critical in ­developing and implementing the skills and knowledge training we need to meet those challenges. She will also oversee our cadet and entry level programs.”

It was a busy week at the broadcaster, with another high-profile presenter, Tracey Holmes, announcing her resignation on social media on Saturday night. The host of The Ticket is married to former ABC presenter Stan Grant, who famously quit this year.

Holmes, who first worked at the ABC in 1989, has clocked up almost a decade this time around and will finish up on November 30. She thanked colleagues and “critics” for celebrating sports and discussing “the ways of turning the negatives into the positives”.

She will still cover the Paris Olympics next year, just not for the ABC.

“To channel a former governor of California in his former life as The Terminator, ‘I’ll be back’, that’s a promise,” Holmes said.

Paris 2024 beckons. It will be my 14th Olympic Games as a journalist/reporter/broadcaster. This coming Olympics though, it will not be for the ABC since I have resigned and will finish on November 30.

Thanks to colleagues, listeners, viewers, readers, critics and most… pic.twitter.com/dBYKf7Eaxw

— Tracey Holmes (@TraceyLeeHolmes) October 28, 2023

Holmes, Grant and Probyn are just a handful of star presenters to leave the ABC this year. ABC Sydney’s news reader Helen Tzarimas hung up her headphones on Friday and ABC News Breakfast finance presenter ­Madeleine Morris left the organisation earlier this month.

V’landys to pull a swifty

Diary can confirm that as well as the historic broadcast agreement the NRL and US pay TV channel Fox Sports 1 have brokered to showcase the 2024 season’s opening games in Las Vegas in March – to the largest audience in the league’s history – there will also be an Australian sports summit in Vegas, and more partnerships with other US sports are in the works.

“Australian sports are entering a new era and levelling up. This will be the first type of project, but it won’t be the last,” Fox Sports executive director Steve Crawley said of the broadcast deal.

Australian Rugby League Commission chair Peter V’landys is on a mission to expose the American audience to NRL – even to leader of the free world US President Joe Biden, who he rubbed shoulders with last week at the White House state dinner, as a guest of mad Rabbitohs fan Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The footy boss with more front than Myer also used the week’s US sojourn to further aggravate AFL-mad Victorians, kicking off a fresh advertising campaign in the US with billboards plastered around major cities calling the NRL “Australia’s biggest sport”.

Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys is hoping to launch the game into the US while also continuing to needle AFL fans back home.

V’landys’ pitch for new audiences – potentially more than 72.4m – sees him going the full “Taylor Swift”, with Swift credited with helping the US National Football League tap into a broader demographic after turning up to watch her rumoured boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travic Kelce, last month.

“Well, she may be better dressed,” Crawley conceded. “But if anyone can do it, Peter can. Look at The Everest horse race. It didn’t exist seven years ago. Now we have more than 50,000 people – people 25-years-old and younger – all singing Sweet Caroline in a chorus before the main race at Royal Randwick.”

The broadcast of this NRL production – the first premiership games to be played outside Australia and New Zealand – will be a joint effort between the Fox Sport Australia team and its US mates, who recently worked together for their stellar coverage of the Women’s World Cup earlier this year.

When the Manly Sea Eagles take on the Rabbitohs and the Roosters face off against the Brisbane Broncos at Allegiant Stadium in Vegas over the March 2-3 weekend, both Nine and Fox Sports will carry the games here.

Rabbitohs owner Russell Crowe will be there, as will Hugh Jackman (who recently attended an NFL match with Swift).

There are no negotiations to get Swift along, but discussions are progressing well for former quarterback Tom Brady to be a part of the NRL 2024 season kick-off broadcast. Brady is practically family: he will be on the books with the Fox Sports 1 broadcast team from next year after signing a 10-year contract worth a reported $545m.

Plans to get him excited about the NRL could continue in person when he visits Australia for a Crown Melbourne event in February.

Spinning around

Annastacia Palaszczuk has pledged to campaign for more than a year in her bid to be re-elected Premier of Queensland and it all started with a new “please like me” video she dropped last week.

It appears to all be part of a charm offensive – minus the charm.

After the launch of the vignette spruiking the Queensland government’s achievements and asking voters to give her a historic fourth term, the Premier was slated for sit-down interviews with the press to pump up her own tyres and start the clock on the 2024 state election campaign.

Spies have told Diary that for reporters from various outlets, ­including The Australian, the “sit downs” were more like speed dates as journalists were given only five minutes with the Premier.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is working to be re-elected for a fourth term next year. Picture: Dan Peled

It’s considered a coup on ­George St to cop any face-time with the usually camera and criticism shy Premier, but a chat with Brisbane’s only paper, The Courier-Mail, failed to materialise.

The reason?

Palaszczuk’s chief spinner and former Nine TV political reporter, Lane Calcutt, pulled the plug after learning the masthead’s new political editor, Hayden Johnson, would be conducting the interview in place of young gun ­reporter Madura McCormack.

In correspondence that fell off the back of a truck on the Bruce Highway and found its way to Diary, Palaszczuk reportedly nixed the interview when she learned Johnson, not McCormack, would be the one asking the questions.

“In good faith, we had hoped to honour that commitment to ­Madura. I understand you have now made the decision to not proceed with the interview,” Calcutt wrote to editor Chris Jones.

So that’s why the only paper in town missed the yarn?

“Not true,” Jones told Diary.

“This is not a reflection on ­Madura, who is one of the finest political reporters I have seen in my 25 years with The Courier-Mail. Instead, this request is ­because Hayden’s appointment had not been made at the time we asked for the interview – and it is a longstanding convention that The Courier-Mail’s state political editor conducts sit-downs with party leaders.”

To say Jones is none too pleased with the conduct of the Premier and her henchmen is an understatement.

“What has happened here is that the Premier … has refused to do an interview with The Courier-Mail unless it is with a certain ­reporter,” Jones said.

After a number of phone calls and emails, Jones has now asked Queensland Press Gallery president, Seven’s Marlina Whop, to lodge an official “please explain” with the Premier’s office.

“It is a dangerous precedent of interest to all press gallery journalists,” Jones said.

Diary approached both Calcutt and Whop for comment.

Reunited

Power lunches are few and far ­between in this economy so Diary was pleasantly surprised to see a gathering of some of the most influential blokes in the media and justice breaking bread and other carbs last week at unassuming Darlinghurst institution, Verde.

This was no regular Friday lunch, this was The Teacher’s Pet team reuniting.

From left: Former NSW Police media boss Grant Williams, former NSW Police Commission Mick Fuller, The Australian’s Hedley Thomas and 2GB’s Ben Fordham, reunited for the first time since Chris Dawson was found guilty last week. They originally met at the same restaurant five years ago in a meeting which helped The Teacher’s Pet cold case be reopened. Picture: Britta Campion

The Australian’s Hedley Thomas, radio 2GB’s Ben Fordham, former NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller and his former head of media Grant Williams (now Peter V’landys’ right-hand man) reunited for the first time since Lyn Simms’ killer, Chris Dawson, was found guilty and sentenced for her murder.

More than two years ago, the four of them got together at the behest of Fordham over some pasta and a bottle of red to discuss how Thomas’s work on Simms’ cold case could help NSW Police.

Thomas wrote about the original lunch in his new book, The Teacher’s Pet, and outlined the frosty relationship between him and Fuller before Fordham, stepped in.

The 2GB host was in the audience of a subscriber event in 2018 when Thomas was in conversation with then editor-in-chief of The Australian, Paul Whittaker, about his then new podcast.

Fordham was so floored by the stonewalling Thomas and Simms’ family were copping from the NSW cops that he set up the introduction. The lunch back then ended with all parties agreeing to work collaboratively.

Fuller and Thomas are now regularly in touch just sharing punting tips.

PM’s travelling ‘circus act’

Controlling the media appears to be Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s favourite pastime at home and abroad.

“One question each, no shouting” is the rule for pressers with Albanese these days, so you can imagine his shock during last week’s official visit to the US when the White House press corps asked follow-up questions.

During a joint press conference with President Joe Biden, instead of being keen to engage with foreign press, the PM told a US ­reporter about to ask a second question: “We in Australia have managed to get it so we get one question each. So …”

“Hey, I figure I’d try ask a sec….” the journalist said before being cut off: “Yeah, good try,” ­Albanese replied before moving on to another question from Network 10.

Albanese discussed the behaviour of the media during his final meetings in Washington, saying how he was bemused that a robust free press didn’t tolerate his ­“orderly conduct policy”.

“The circus began, they just started screaming, it was very strange,” he said.

The U.S.-Australia Alliance is more critical than ever.

This week, we made important progress ensuring tomorrow will be better than today.

And it’ll be more free, more fair, and for all people, because we have the power to make it so. pic.twitter.com/82f8JBr2s0

— President Biden (@POTUS) October 28, 2023

Albanese has recent form on this. During the last sitting week before heading overseas again he hosted a joint press conference with visiting Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and called the ABC’s foreign affairs reporter, ­Stephen Dziedzic, “cheeky” for daring to ask about breaking news out of Gaza about potential Australian casualties.

A confused looking Rabuka later asked for permission from Albanese to “answer a question from the gallery”.

“You can,” the PM replied. “Well, we’ll see if you get some questions from them. The parliamentarians are less cheeky than the journalists who try to sneak in follow-up questions, but we will see. But feel free to intervene, Prime Minister in the process.”

Albanese will travel to Beijing in the coming days, Diary wouldn’t be shocked if he also schools President Xi Jinping in media management.

Cross words?

The Sunday Age's crossword that was published with all the answers. Source: The Age.

Readers of The Age looking forward to their weekly brain exercise were disappointed at the weekend when the paper printed its “Giant Crossword” – with the answers filled in.

Diary admits it took us longer than we care to admit to notice the filled squares.

The printing mistake was not a deliberate brain teaser, but a subediting stuff-up.

Most papers outsource the handling of their games these days and The Age is investigating what went wrong. Don’t expect a repeat of this puzzling development in its pages again.

Nick Tabakoff is on leave