2GB’s own goal over Alan Jones
How 2GB’s online team kicked Alan Jones’ “shove a sock down her throat” comment into the outrage stratosphere.
2GB own goal in Jones sock drama
A very public final warning by Macquarie Media chairman Russell Tate to 2GB’s Alan Jones over his “shove a sock down her throat” comments about Jacinda Ardern was a clear attempt to head off a widespread advertiser backlash.
But Jones won’t be the only one to be reprimanded.
The comments on the NZ PM were broadcast just after 6am on Thursday. They would most likely have disappeared into the early morning ether but for one factor: a few hours later, the geniuses at 2GB’s online team decided, in their wisdom, to heavily promote Jones’s remarks. In a story posted at 10am, they ran his comments in full as the lead story to top the entire 2GB website. The headline? ‘Shove a sock down her throat’: Alan Jones slams ‘complete clown’ Jacinda Ardern.
With that subtle headline, the story on the 2GB site was rapidly picked up elsewhere. It all started on Twitter, where a trickle of references soon turned into a flood, given the 2GB story made the comments conveniently available, in writing, for re-tweeting.
Then, the New Daily’s Sam Maiden picked up on Jones’s comments in a story posted at 12.50pm on Thursday.
The New Daily story started a trans-Tasman frenzy. By Friday, an advertiser bushfire had started, after social media activist group Sleeping Giants Oz lobbied individual 2GB sponsors such as Snooze, Bing Lee and ME Bank, who promptly withdrew support. Sleeping Giants even tweeted the postal address of Peter Costello, the chairman of 2GB’s owner, Nine, asking people to send him socks.
Not surprisingly, the offending story on the 2GB site had been quickly deleted on Thursday.
But the fallout continued. Jones unconditionally apologised for the comments on Ben Fordham’s 2GB show late on Friday. But that was before Tate’s stern warning on Saturday, which Jones subsequently said he was “comfortable“ with.
And so the post-mortems will begin this week about exactly who was responsible for the 2GB online team’s colossal own goal.
ToJo’s pitch to ScoMo
Scott Morrison’s edict to his ministers to “keep politics off the front page” has had a big impact on Coalition appearances on the show that the PM has dodged for seven years: the ABC’s Q&A.
It’s three months (or 14 Q&As) since the federal election, and in that period just two Coalition ministers have appeared on the ABC’s flagship panel show: Population Minister Alan Tudge and Education Minister Dan Tehan. By contrast, nine Labor shadow ministers have bombarded Q&A since the election, with talent including heavyweights such as opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers, foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong and legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus.
Q&A host Tony “ToJo” Jones concedes to Diary that the program has had “difficulties” in getting Coalition ministers on the show since the election. He puts this down to them avoiding “unnecessary risks” and “limiting the issues around public debates involving their senior colleagues”.
But Jones would like more Coalition frontbenchers to come back on to Q&A — hopefully before he heads to China at year’s end with his wife, Sarah Ferguson. But he cuts the government some slack: “It’s not hugely surprising that a new government feeling its way is trying to control the agenda very cautiously, and I hope over time they have the confidence to participate in a public debate.”
Meanwhile, Jones keeps aiming high. He has renewed the quest for his own personal Holy Grail: getting ScoMo on Q&A. His pitch is seductive: “He (Morrison) has had the most extraordinary success in the election campaign and it’s largely down to his own efforts. With his ability to carry an argument, he would do very well in (the Q&A) forum. It will give the people a better chance to know their PM.”
Jones says Q&A has put in bids for the PM since the election and will “continue to do so”.
Will ToJo win over ScoMo? We wish him luck.
Mystery TV vacancy
It doesn’t take much for whispers to become roars among Australia’s gossipy TV bosses. So it’s no surprise some allegedly confidential phone calls made last week by a Melbourne headhunter to highly placed media types now have the entire industry talking.
Diary hears that the intriguing brief for the headhunters’ fishing expedition was pretty specific: they were looking for a “head of programming” for a “major broadcaster”.
No network was named but the headhunters clarified that the role was “Sydney-based”. That makes sense given all the top programming roles are based in the Harbour City.
But which network’s head of programming role is in play?
If it’s not Seven’s, we hear there’s this bloke named Tim Worner who’s just come on the market and may be available.
Bridges unburnt
Al Pacino, in his guise as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, once uttered the famous line: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”
That quote best sums up James Warburton’s eight-year journey from despised Ten defector to returned prodigal son of the Seven family as its new chief executive.
Remember the nasty court battle and duelling affidavits throughout 2011 involving Warburton, legendary former Seven CEO David Leckie (who famously taunted him as “Mr Ambitious”) and Kerry Stokes?
That’s water under the bridge. Sources close to Warburton say he rebuilt his relationship with Seven over time, first as the boss of V8 Supercars (when Seven still screened motorsport) and then at APN Outdoor (where Seven advertised).
Seven sources also claim the fact they fought so tenaciously to hang on to Warburton eight years ago “shows how much we valued him”. Well, that’s one way of looking at it!
The other telltale sign of a much warmer relationship has been lunchtime sightings of Warburton with various Seven bosses.
He’s even been spotted several times recently at Sydney’s China Doll restaurant with — of all people — Leckie! Amazing what a difference eight years makes.
Worner blindsided
One piece of evidence unequivocally shows that departed Seven boss Tim Worner was blindsided by last week’s events.
Diary can reveal that mere days ago Worner was still happily scheduling business lunches well into October.
That’s surely not the behaviour of someone who has any idea his time is about to be up — even though the official Seven line has been that the parties mutually arrived at the decision to part. And don’t forget the allegedly “mutual” decision for Worner to leave Seven was actually decided very swiftly, late on Thursday.
Seven’s old-school ties
Will new Seven boss James Warburton introduce a mandatory tie policy among the network’s male executives?
That was the question nagging at those who remember Warburton’s tenure as Ten chief executive back in 2012-13.
Back then, Warburton decided compulsory tie-wearing would bring professionalism to Ten, which until then had seen itself as the “young, cool, hip” network with no need for dress codes.
Warburton’s tie policy extended to all men in management, from his personal reports to program executive producers and sales bosses. Floral and paisley ties suddenly became a Ten executive floor staple.
Perhaps Warburton can now start a tie renaissance at Seven — where the humble accessory is out of fashion with Seven’s millennial male staff.
ABC’s unusual choice
Did the ABC not get the memo on who won the federal election?
It certainly seems like someone at Aunty hasn’t heard about the Coalition victory — given its appointment of a new ABC director of public affairs, very much from the Labor side of politics.
Diary can reveal that in recent days Mark Tapley, the former chief of staff for ex-Labor communications minister Stephen Conroy, has quietly assumed the plum ABC public affairs top role. He takes over from his longstanding predecessor, Mick Millett, who now moves on to a senior advisory position in the office of ABC managing director David Anderson.
Tapley has also been elevated to a position on the ABC’s 10-member senior leadership team (although as of yesterday the ABC website hadn’t yet been updated to reflect his promotion).
But while by most accounts Tapley has been well-regarded at the ABC in other positions, the optics of a former senior Labor staffer taking up an ABC leadership role under a Coalition government seem unusual.
After all, ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose has until now been making all the right noises about keeping ScoMo’s re-elected government onside.
Ita upsets union
Ita Buttrose’s cheeky claim last Monday that staff at Aunty are “very sensitive people” who need to be “patted a bit and reassured that all is well” drew guffaws in the commercial media. But it went down like a lead balloon with the ABC’s pivotal union delegate, Sinddy Ealy, at a time Aunty doesn’t need it.
That’s because the ABC has been in protracted and tense pay negotiations with Ealy in her capacity as the Community and Public Sector Union’s ABC section secretary. Last week the ABC put its offer of a 1.7 per cent pay rise to a vote of Ealy’s union members — and Buttrose’s comments only seem to have picked a fight with the woman who could make or break the deal.
Ealy made a point of directly contradicting and calling out Buttrose’s comments, tweeting: “ABC staff are strong, caring, resilient people who take great pride in serving the Australian people. @ItaButtrose.”
Ealy pointedly disagreed with Ita and the ABC gang on other fronts. She told staff she would “not recommend” the ABC’s one-year 1.7 per cent offer, which was short of the 2 per cent deal she put to management.
Ealy saved her most scathing criticism for proposed changes to redundancy rights under the new offer, given the ABC is set to make staff cuts over the next three years. She claimed the ABC was trying to create a new environment where bosses could “run whatever redundancy process they want, including … the notorious ‘Hunger Games’ process fiercely rejected by ABC staff in 2014”.
Is Ealy right? ABC staff have until next Monday to decide.
Chunder-gate update
Meanwhile, here’s a quick update on Diary’s item last week about the technicolour mess in the ABC green room created by a party after an episode of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell.
Word is that Micallef, a teetotaller, personally phoned the now-departed ABC News Breakfast host Virginia Trioli, who we now hear was the unlucky one to discover the mess in the early hours of Wednesday morning the week before last.
Diary hears that Trioli graciously accepted Micallef’s mortified apology.
But on another front, the search for the culprit has narrowed. The latest word is that he or she may not have worked for the production house that makes Mad as Hell, ITV Studios — but for the ABC itself.
Ten’s off and racing
MasterChef at the Melbourne Cup and The Bachelor in the Birdcage.
Diary can reveal that’s the sort of programming mix Ten will give viewers to make the most of its record five-year, $100 million splurge on the Victoria Racing Club’s jewel in the crown, the Melbourne Cup carnival.
VRC CEO Neil Wilson boasts that Ten’s media deal is “one of the biggest in racing globally”. Now Ten’s head of sport, Matt White — who will also anchor the Melbourne Cup coverage with Roz Kelly and the incomparable Francesca Cumani (poached this year from Seven) — has revealed exactly why Ten thinks four days of racing is worth $100m.
In short, White says Ten will embark on the biggest product placement in programming ever seen on an Australian commercial network — as it flogs its shiny new toy as much as it can.
The great race, along with the VRC Derby and Oaks days, will be promoted in virtually every Australian-made program in the Ten schedule, from The Project to The Living Room, MasterChef, The Bachelor, Ten News, Studio 10, I’m a Celebrity, Survivor and even Neighbours.
White says to expect the Cup to play a role in Ten’s major shows for plot lines and promotions alike. As he tells Diary: “Our job is to take a four-day sporting coverage and make it a 12-month story.”
That’s no mean feat. Essentially, it will mean Cup Day will be taken over by Ten’s most important franchises, from dates on The Bachelor to epic MasterChef cooking challenges and plot twists on Neighbours. But media buyers only want to know one thing: will it rate?
Soft run for premier?
Palaszczuk granted rare TV interviews last week; so why wasn’t she asked about Jackie Trad?
Mad as Hell’s mayhem
It’s the whodunnit gripping the ABC: who turned Aunty’s green room a distinct shade of technicolour?