It’s been nearly six months since the ABC’s seven government-appointed directors were reduced to just five with the departures of its deputy chair Kirstin Ferguson and fellow director Donnie Walford — but the government hasn’t been in any rush to replace them.
In recent weeks, numbers have reached new lows with the quiet exit of another ABC director, Vanessa Guthrie.
That reduces the stocks of government-appointed directors to just four for an organisation with an annual budget of $1bn a year, yet still no announcement. Spare a thought for Ita Buttrose as she tries to scramble a quorum for her latest board meetings at Ultimo.
The ball is now in Communications Minister Paul Fletcher’s court to fill three vacant board positions. Under the ABC Act, up to seven directors are appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the government.
Finally, we’re told, a decision may be getting closer.
Names like former Foxtel chief Peter Tonagh, ex-Howard minister and The Drum regular Amanda Vanstone and gun producer Anita Jacoby are all said to have been interviewed months ago.
Diary now hears a pre-Budget decision is likely — but don’t expect an announcement this week.
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Samantha Maiden on Brittany Higgins, politics and sex
The name Brittany Higgins, and the issue of alleged sexual misconduct in Parliament House, have been dominating the national agenda and news headlines for two months.
Now they are about to invade the literary sphere as well. Diary can reveal that Samantha Maiden, news.com.au’s political editor — who of course started a national conversation when she broke the story of Higgins’s alleged rape in February — has committed to writing a book on the issue.
Maiden’s new book will present a new headache for the government, given that we hear it is likely to be released for maximum book sales in the midst of next year’s election campaign.
But Diary is told Maiden won’t solely be focusing on Higgins. Instead, she will take a much broader look at the grand sweep of sexual assault allegations that have rocked Parliament House in Canberra, and the demonstrations they have prompted across the country.
And Maiden’s upcoming tome may not be the only one coming out in the highly charged lead-up to the election.
Diary understands that none other than Higgins herself has been in talks with various publishers, and is giving strong consideration to offers to write a book about her difficult experiences as a staffer in Canberra. As The Australian noted last month, Higgins has registered the company name Brittany Higgins Pty Ltd, just as her name has become a household name, so a book seems a logical next step.
But for the moment, it’s the plans for Maiden’s book that seem more advanced. Among other issues, the news.com.au political editor will look at how the sexual misconduct issue exploded and whether it will have a lasting impact on the national political landscape.
Diary has learnt Maiden has hired gun literary agent Jeanne Ryckmans, who is apparently engaging in a hotly contested auction for the rights as we go to print. Maiden’s previous book, last year’s Party Animals, was a searing post-mortem on what caused Labor’s stunning defeat in the May 2019 federal election.
Whoever wins Maiden’s book will no doubt look to capitalise on the always-large appetite for political tomes before a federal election. The next poll is due by May next year — plenty of time for Maiden to write and release her book.
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PvO book hints at ScoMo retirement date
Still on books, The Sunday Project co-host Peter van Onselen’s latest effort, How Good is Scott Morrison? — due out this week — is likely to cause intrigue with one passage about ScoMo’s plans after the next federal election.
The passage — obtained by Diary — quotes an unnamed male member of the PM’s inner circle as saying that he “plans to handover power after the next election, retiring before completing another full term”.
PvO and his co-author, Wayne Errington, go on to write that the close ScoMo confidant claims he got this juicy piece of gossip from a good source: the PM himself. The book notes: “Why does he think that? A conversation with Morrison. Doing so would be in the Menzian tradition — going out a winner.”
Diary predicts a question or two for ScoMo on that very subject from the press gallery this week.
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Insiders moves outside of the political bubble
The ABC’s Insiders on Sunday embarked on the first step of what is expected to be a national roadshow in the lead-up to the next federal election.
David Speers and his Sunday panel of the ABC’s Andrew Probyn, Nine’s David Crowe and The Guardian’s Sarah Martin journeyed to chilly Launceston in the ultra-marginal Coalition seat of Bass.
There, the show’s outside broadcast was filmed on the banks of the Tamar River.
And ABC bosses have clearly deemed that a bit of a bump up in the budget of the Melbourne-based Insiders is in order, with Diary told that at least two more marginal seats will be visited by the show by the end of the year.
The next one will probably be in Queensland, we hear, with others in western Sydney or Victoria also possibly on the menu, budget permitting.
When Diary caught Speers last week, he confirmed that more marginal seat site visits were planned.
“There’s a lot of noise in the daily political debate — but talking to swinging voters in a marginal seat who are busy living their own lives, you quickly realise not a lot of that noise is cutting through,” Speers told us.
Meanwhile, the next federal election is unlikely to spell the end of trips outside of the Insiders political bubble.
The plan moving forward is for three road trips a year to become a permanent fixture of the show.
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Big TV names scramble for Prince Philip
Following Prince Philip’s death on Friday at the age of 99, British authorities enacted Operation Forth Bridge — which has apparently been in intricate planning for years — to outline the procedures that will be required in its aftermath.
And Buckingham Palace hasn’t been alone in its long-term preparations. Diary is told by Australian TV newsrooms and newspapers that they have also planned for the grim event for several years, with the plans accelerated when Philip underwent a long hospital stint in February.
The Friday night timing of Philip’s death meant a working weekend for many of Australian TV’s biggest names, as coverage went virtually 24/7.
The main Sydney newsreaders for Nine and Seven, Peter Overton and Mark Ferguson, both did Saturday and Sunday night shifts.
Sky’s chief news anchor, Kieran Gilbert, made a special appearance to front the network’s coverage on Saturday morning, as did ABC News Breakfast co-host Michael Rowland and The Drum’s Julia Baird, who anchored the ABC national coverage in Sydney from the morning into the afternoon (after Rowland cut short his Easter holidays).
Showing just how long the networks had prepared for Prince Philip’s possible death, there was even a piece by Lisa Millar from when she still headed the ABC’s London bureau (Millar returned to Australia way back in 2018). Meanwhile, on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes on Nine, even Ray Martin made a special return to his former home, fronting a re-cut of his interview with Philip from 40 years ago.
As always, the networks will run the microscope over their individual performances over the weekend, in preparation for no doubt more big royal stories in the months and years ahead.
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Nine goes old school after hack attack
It’s hard enough covering a royal death at the best of times. So spare a thought for Nine as it faced the additional considerable challenge of continuing to deal with the largest hack attack ever on an Australian media company.
Diary has learnt that about half of Nine’s production staff for the Today show and its various newsrooms heroically co-ordinated virtual round-the-clock coverage of Prince Philip’s death remotely from Melbourne over the weekend, despite most of its big-name presenters, including Bec Maddern, Richard ‘Dickie’ Wilkins, Leila McKinnon and Peter Overton, broadcasting from its Sydney studios.
That’s because Nine’s control room in Melbourne — based on an older computer system — escaped the hack attack entirely, and has now become the beating heart of Nine’s news operations nationally. This has meant Nine’s newsrooms around the country relied heavily on Nine’s GTV Melbourne to get them through one of the year’s biggest news stories.
Sure, there’s a place for state-of-the-art gadgets — but sometimes there’s no substitute for the combination of reliable older technology and human beings.
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Ballard promotes Bolt’s ‘barbarian’ sledge
He’s the comedian who has now been cancelled twice by the ABC, and last week was even dubbed by Andrew Bolt as a “true Barbarian” in his Herald Sun column.
But for Tom Ballard, all publicity is clearly good publicity. As soon as Bolt rolled out the “true Barbarian” line, Ballard was enthusiastically tweeting it out as promotion for his latest show.
Everything is going according to plan at #MICF. Come and join in the fun! https://t.co/y36APzFwhYpic.twitter.com/robcm52meT
— Tom Ballard #80aday (@TomCBallard) April 8, 2021
Bolt had used the “Barbarian” sledge in the column as part of a scathing review of Ballard’s now-infamous stand-up routine at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Bolt’s column came soon after the ABC had quickly decided to edit the Ballard routine entirely out of its telecast from the Festival last Wednesday night.
In his stand-up set, Ballard had said that COVID-19 had “killed a lot of people in nursing homes, but I checked and they were all Liberal voters”. He also riffed that Liberal voters were “not people. They’re cold-blooded lizards ruining the country.”
It was the second time in three years that Ballard had run foul of the ABC for insulting conservatives, after his weekly show Tonightly was cancelled in 2018, soon after he upset then-ABC chair Justin Milne and the ABC board for calling Australian Conservatives candidate Kevin Bailey a “c…”.
That remark prompted David Anderson, then the ABC’s head of entertainment (and now, of course, the ABC’s managing director), to make a personal apology to Bailey.
Bolt had a furious response after Ballard’s latest banning in his Herald Sun column last week: “People of the Left tend to flatter themselves as kinder. But then along comes comedian Tom Ballard, a true barbarian.”
But within hours, an unperturbed Ballard went to the lengths of turning Bolt’s critique into the centrepiece of a full-blown Twitter ad campaign for his Comedy Festival show.
Juxtaposed against two four-and-a-half star reviews for his show, including one from The Age, Ballard proudly featured Bolt’s comment next to a large photo of himself: “A TRUE BARBARIAN” – ANDREW BOLT, HERALD SUN, 2021.
Let’s face it: being dubbed a “barbarian” is hard to beat for publicity value.
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MasterChef launch takes on MAFS finale
Commercial TV networks are gearing up for the biggest ratings battle of the season so far, with Diary hearing next week’s final instalment of Nine’s Married at First Sight is set to go up directly against the 2021 launch of MasterChef Australia.
Making the head-to-head competition next Tuesday even spicier is the fact that both shows are made by production house Endemol Shine Australia, which will have to sit on the fence while its two biggest shows go head to head.
As things stand, the final MAFS commitment ceremonies revealing which couples are staying together (at least until their next Instagram post!) will take place next Monday night. The next night, MAFS screens its couples’ final reunion, featuring their final status and, no doubt, a final blast of its ratings-generating confrontations.
But Tuesday’s MAFS last hurrah will be directly up against the season launch of MasterChef, featuring the return of judges Melissa Leong, Jock Zonfrillo and Andy Allen.
Later in the same week, Seven will also award its Mirrorball Trophy for its All-Stars edition of Dancing with the Stars, featuring the already much-discussed return of Daryl Somers to the small screen.
Diary hears Nine will springboard off the MAFS finales by launching a new season of Travel Guides a night later, followed by the return of the Hamish Blake-hosted Lego Masters on Sunday week. Meanwhile, MasterChef will dominate Ten’s schedule for the next three months with a five-night-a-week, Sunday to Thursday run.
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Nas shatters glass ceiling for the blind
Amid little fanfare, the ABC’s national disability affairs correspondent Nas Campanella last week quietly burst through the glass ceiling for the vision-impaired in the Australia media.
In what Diary hears is a first for capital city radio in this country, Campanella, who is blind, fronted live on air to host the ABC’s 10AM interview show, Focus, both on ABC 702 in Sydney and throughout NSW.
Campanella, standing in for regular host Cassie McCullagh, started the show with an explanation of the feats, technological and otherwise, which allowed it to even happen.
“You might know I am the ABC’s disability affairs reporters, and you might also know I am totally blind,” she began.
“So I can’t see the desk or the screens or the buttons in front of me. And you might be thinking: ‘How on earth are you going to do this program?’
“Well, I’ve got my trusty producer Oscar sitting in the booth next to me and he will be giving me some brilliant directions, I hope, into my headphones. And I’ve also got some nifty software.
“It’s a robotic kind of Americanised voice called Jaws, and it’s been loaded onto the screen on the computer in front of me, and it’s going to read everything out aloud into my headphones. I will listen and repeat what I hear.”
Campanella might be giving all the credit to the technology — but we think she’s underplaying her own role.
It’s no mean feat to broadcast at the same time you have a robotic voice going non-stop reading a script in your ear — but Campanella carried it off with aplomb.
BBC apologises to staff over Russell Brand sex complaints
Some employees had stayed silent about the behaviour of the comedian and actor because they believed he ‘would always get his way’, a BBC director said.
Questions about ABC platforming ‘radical fringe Jewish voice’
Jewish groups have questioned why the national broadcaster has chosen to platform and ‘mainstream’ a Jewish ‘radical fringe voice’, in its coverage of anti-Semitic events in Sydney.