Media Diary: Alan Jones close to new radio contract
With a political foe defeated and a new $4.5-million contract looming, Alan Jones has two big reasons to smile this morning.
Radio’s $4.5-million-a-year man, Alan Jones, is a giant step closer to renewing his lucrative Macquarie Media contract, with the radio network’s two biggest shareholders, Nine and adman John “Singo” Singleton, finally on the same page about getting the deal done.
Diary is reliably informed the Nine board, led by chairman Peter Costello, has decided enough is enough, and started a concerted push to make sure Jones signs on the dotted line.
All of a sudden, negotiations between Jones and Macquarie have advanced significantly in the past week. Macquarie CEO Adam Lang has now been made fully aware of the importance of retaining Jones by Nine boss Hugh Marks, the Nine board and Singo. A fresh offer of $4.5m a year including bonuses is believed to be imminent.
The reasons are obvious: Costello, Marks, and the rest of the Nine board are nervous about the financial cost of Jones not continuing on 2GB and 4BC breakfast going forward.
As we explained this month, Nine’s top brass have been spooked by a slump in the ratings of the Today show this year, following the axing of Karl Stefanovic and a number of senior team members.
Meanwhile, Singo had a well-chronicled falling out with Jones last year.
But the ad mogul has since moved to patch up the relationship, after privately acknowledging that Jones was pivotal to his ability to get the Nine deal over the line at the price he wants.
Jones is believed to want a two-year contract to see him through to his 80th birthday.
He could now get it, given his signature makes a big difference to what Singo ultimately pockets from Macquarie.
There has been media speculation he wants up to $100m from Nine to buy out his 32 per cent Macquarie stake.
But it is clear Jones will only take a new contract on his terms, amid suggestions he wouldn’t accept either onerous conditions or a short-term contract. Transition plans are also a concern.
Meanwhile, Sydney’s top-rating morning broadcaster Ray Hadley is said to be “comfortable” if Jones does decide to return to breakfast, having himself just signed a lucrative long-term deal with Macquarie late last year.
Rating the ratings
Still on radio, Diary is hearing Nine and Macquarie are both putting under the microscope the ratings performance of some shows at the network’s Brisbane station, 4BC.
Bosses stress they are happy with the performance of 4BC’s breakfast (Jones) and morning (Hadley) shows, which have consistently performed well and effectively cost the station nothing in extra production costs because they are simulcast from Sydney.
But we are told that other timeslots that have recorded ratings drops in recent months are now under review.
He who laughs last …
Jones could not resist giving defeated NSW Labor leader Michael Daley an epic send-off as the results became clear during Sky’s Saturday night election coverage.
If you recall, Daley told Jones during a fiery campaign interview on his 2GB and 4BC show (about stadiums) that he would remove the entire board of the SCG trust, including Jones himself, if he won the NSW election.
“The board will go, it will be sacked,” he told Jones, adding a sarcastic “Thanks for your service.”
But Jones had the last laugh on Sky on Saturday, turning Daley’s zinger right back on him: “To you, Michael Daley, I just have one observation: thank you for your service!”
Jones continued the serve on his radio program this morning, pointing to Daley’s failure to get across the details of his own policies — laid bare in the Sky News/Daily Telegraph People’s Forum last week — as a turning point for Gladys Berejiklian.
“The only service Mr Daley provided in his campaign was towards the election of his opponents,” Jones said.
“The Labor party can’t wait to see the back of Mr Daley and head office is briefing the media that he has to go.”
Jones also criticised Daley for failing to appear on program after their initial explosive interview.
“I would imagine Mr Daley’s political epitaph was written by himself, for himself in his truculent interview with me when he ended by saying ‘Thank you for your service’.”
Jones ended the segment with a clear message to Mr Daley: “Mr Daley to you, I offer your own epitaph. Thank you for your service. Good luck in your next job.”
Cassidy gets a hopalong
With the NSW election now out of the way, ABC bosses have already turned their minds to the federal poll.
Fresh from news Barrie Cassidy will retire from Insiders in June, the ABC is squeezing every last drop from him before he does.
Cassidy will even work a rare Easter Sunday next month, with Insiders skipping its normal Easter week off because of the federal election.
With the poll most likely to fall on May 11 or 18, and Easter Sunday on April 21, the ABC management view is that the Easter week will be a critical juncture in the campaign.
They have decided the show must go on.
Cassidy is fully supportive of the decision. But it does mean he may have to skip his regular Easter break at his enviable Bawley Point beachside bolthole, bought back in the 1980s as part of a syndicate of high-profile media players.
His co-owners in Bawley Point include Cassidy’s wife and ABC Back Roads host, Heather Ewart; ex-CEO of the now-defunct Fairfax Media, Greg Hywood, and The Australian’s Kate Legge.
Cassidy will surely have more time post-June to share beachy holiday snaps on social media from the holiday town.
But he might find it hard to escape the Canberra set in the long term, with Bawley Point a favoured holiday season destination for Bill Shorten, the bookies’ tip to become PM in May, and his right hand man, Chris Bowen.
Thank God for Clive
Still on elections, it’s not easy to appreciate Clive Palmer and his earworm TV ad barrage (all together now: “Australians ain’t gonna cop it”). But weary Sydney-based network executives were last week quietly and begrudgingly thanking their lucky stars for them after the lead-up to the weekend’s NSW election proved a bit of a fizzer.
The executives told Diary that spending by Gladys Berejiklian’sre-elected government on “how-to-vote” ads — long a reliable campaign staple for TV networks — fell dramatically compared with previous campaigns, with many of these ads switched to online.
It is increasingly evident Palmer’s relentless advertising is pretty well single-handedly holding up a patchy TV ad market at present, with his spending extravaganza now estimated to go north of $50 million by the May federal election.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank God for Clive Palmer,” one TV boss muttered to Diary last week.
Papers find new home
After 12 years in the same building, Nine’s papers, the SMH and AFR, are on the move.
Diary can reveal that some of the country’s best-known print journalists, under the stewardship of Nine publishing boss Chris Janz, will head to a temporary new home before the end of the year. The move will bring to an end the newspapers’ long stint at One Darling Island, the former national corporate HQ of the now-defunct Fairfax Media in Sydney’s inner-city Pyrmont, which began back in 2007.
The ex-Fairfax papers are currently “house-sharing” in the Pyrmont building with tech giant Google, which will eventually take over the whole premises.
But where are the papers going? Why, to yet another Google building in Pyrmont, of course.
It’s sadly symbolic that the global internet giant that is cutting the local media’s lunch will now be the landlord to some of Australia’s most venerable newspapers, in the very same Pyrmont building that until last year was Channel 7’s national corporate HQ.
Google bought the building (which had been an empty shell since Channel 7 departed) in mid-2018.
But the papers’ new Pyrmont home will only be temporary. Diary is informed the SMH and AFR will stay there for a year or so before finally uniting with their new parent, Nine, around the end of 2020 in the enlarged group’s flash new corporate HQ in North Sydney.
Stranger than fiction
Sunday Night, as we know it, is dead.
The show, that is. The Melissa Doyle-hosted current affairs competitor to Nine’s 60 Minutes has been quietly rebranded as Sunday Night: True Stories.
True Stories? If they need to spell that out, makes you wonder what they were running before.
The rebranding appears to be the show’s response to being routed by 60 Minutes recently. Its $150,000 Barnaby Joyce/Vikki Campion interview last year appearing to start a ratings rot, and the gap between the shows has only widened in 2019. The rebranded show is averaging 471,000 viewers this year, compared with 778,000 for 60 Minutes.
A week ago, it attracted 417,000.
On those figures, it might take more than a new name for Sunday Night: True Stories to revive its fortunes.
Christchurch off limits
Some traditional media companies have been secretly hoping ACCC boss Rod Sims would include the much-criticised online coverage by Facebook and Google of the Christchurch terrorist attacks in his blockbuster investigation into the internet giants.
They will be disappointed. Sims tells Diary unequivocally that the Christchurch online coverage will not be part of his inquiry.
“Hate speech is a ‘what should be on the internet?’ issue, which is not really what we’re about,” he says. “We’re focused on the effect of Google and Facebook on journalism and advertising.”
The internet giants have been hammered for failing to swiftly take down videos streaming the full horror of the attacks.
Facebook Live showed the carnage, with versions of the video only flagged after it streamed live. Meanwhile, on Google’s YouTube, videos were easily found for many hours after the attack.
This has prompted stern words from world leaders. NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wants “further questions to be answered” about the role of the online platforms.
Meanwhile, our own leader Scott Morrison is making even bigger noises about regulating Google and Facebook. Yesterday, the Sunday papers proposed plans for potential future $100 million-plus penalties for the internet giants, if they repeatedly fail to shut-out videos like the Christchurch attack. He is adamant they need to “write an algorithm to screen out hate content”.
But questions were still being asked yesterday about whether any government can really police Google and Facebook, given that they have become past masters at slipping through the cracks of global regulation.
Questions for Karl
He’s the man who’s held everyone from Kevin Rudd to Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison to account.
But Diary is reliably informed a planned comeback video interview of Karl Stefanovic by Nine’s online Lifestyle arm, 9Honey, dramatically fell over during the recent filming of his remaining show, This Time Next Year.
Stefanovic had originally agreed to do the in-house interview, which was to have been the first time he had been interviewed on camera since he was sacked from Today in the firestorm that engulfed Nine at the end of 2018.
The interview was to have been streamed on 9Honey later in the year. But apparently it all fell apart at the last minute when Stefanovic was forwarded 9Honey’s proposed list of questions, which apparently included queries about his epic Mexican wedding, wife Jasmine Yarbrough’s dress, leaving Today, and the like.
We are told Stefanovic, the one-time interrogator of PMs and presidents alike, baulked at 9Honey’s areas of inquiry, and threatened to pull the pin unless some of the questions were taken out.
Now, Diary must confess to having wrongly had 9Honey pegged previously as not so much a Rottweiler as killer Chihuahua in its interview style. Clearly, in the wake of the Stefanovic episode, we will have to review that misconception.
To its credit, 9Honey exercised its editorial independence by sticking to its guns on the questions, and as a result, the interview never proceeded.
Out to lunch
Still on Stefanovic, Nine bosses seem to be still adopting a policy of “don’t call us, we’ll call you” with their restless star.
Ten days ago, on the day of the Christchurch mosque attacks — a news event he would have once been automatically dispatched by Nine to cover — Stefanovic was instead snapped 2000km or so away, having a slap-up lunch at Matt Moran’s Aria Restaurant at Sydney’s Circular Quay.
Stefanovic was joined by a stable of top media stars from across the networks, including Seven’s Sunrise newsreader Natalie Barr and Nine sports presenter Cameron William s.
But they were also accompanied by racing royalty: Chris Waller and Debbie Kepitis, respectively the trainer and co-owner of what many believe is Australia’s greatest-ever racehorse, Winx, who triumphed yet again at Rosehill on Saturday in the penultimate race start of her legendary career.
For media junkies, the mingling of Seven and Nine network stars in their time off was interesting. The common link between Stefanovic, Barr and Williams is uber-talent manager Sharon Finnigan, who manages all three of the TV personalities.
Finnigan posted the photo of the three to her Instagram account, with the tagline: “Friday funday”.
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