Triple J’s Hottest 100 political playlist

The ABC board approved the Hottest 100 broadcast date change in the face of political pressure from Mitch Fifield.

Former News Corporation head of corporate affairs Stephen Browning with Kiss.

Apathy is not the best way to start the media year but to be honest, Diary couldn’t give two hoots when Triple J broadcasts its Hottest 100. However, we do feel very strongly about Australia Day remaining on January 26. It has been a very long time since Diary listened to the Triple J countdown. Mine is more an iHeart80s household. If listeners want a best songs poll on January 26 there are commercial alternatives available. But heck, if Chris Mitchell can weigh in, as he did last month, so can we. It’s a mess, the strategy to broadcast on the nearest Saturday means the poll goes out on January 27, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which might upset some people, which the ABC seems to be acutely sensitive about. And broadcasting on the nearest Saturday falls apart next year, as Australia Day 2019 just happens to be on a Saturday. Diary hears the change divided many in the ABC, to the extent that the ABC board stepped in and approved the new policy, which sounds like extraordinary interference in a management decision. Do you think if I lobby Justin Milne, the ABC chair might put The Goodies and Doctor Who back on before the 7pm news? But it turns out that the ABC board approved the change in the face of political pressure from Mitch Fifield. An ABC spokesman told Diary: “After extensive consultations, research, and discussions, the Triple J team and ABC management made the final decision to move the Hottest 100 to the weekend, January 27 and 28. The Minister for Communications wrote to the ABC board asking for the decision to be reviewed. The ABC board considered this request and decided not to overturn management’s scheduling decision.” What else was it going to do?

‘Joyless Division’: Johannes Leak

What’s the McGeough?

Paul McGeough is chief foreign correspondent for Fairfax Media. Or is he? McGeough, who once edited The Sydney Morning Herald and reported from war zones, lives in the US, but hasn’t filed since September. He’s even been off Twitter since November. Mid last year McGeough, who survived a Taliban attack in 2001 and was awarded a Walkley Award for journalistic leadership, had clashed with Fairfax national editor James Chessell, who told (we are summarising here) the chief foreign correspondent to do some actual reporting on US President Donald Trump at the expense of pontificating. Diary hears at some point McGeough requested a voluntary redundancy, which would have been hefty by any measure, but was knocked back by management as the redundo round was oversubscribed. Now McGeough is on extended leave due to a personal matter — Diary hears he is unwell — while gossip of a legal dispute appears off the mark at this moment. Fairfax declined to comment.

Dog of a holiday

Media is back after the break. How was it for you? Byron Bay. Did you see how much weight Gynge has lost? Do you reckon he will be running Seven West Media soon? Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries. OMG she is my 2018 spirit animal. Do you remember when journalism was fun? Anyway, back on to me. There Diary was, going for some morning cardio near the Khao Yai National Park in central Thailand, when I turned the corner to find a pair of malevolent brown dogs guarding an inconsequential stretch of rural laneway. My strategic retreat was interrupted when a third hound with crazed brown eyes bounded out of the bushes before it sank its jaws into my gym-honed calf. Fair cop, I thought to myself grimly: it’s not even a Monday, my column is on hiatus, the industry PRs are on leave, yet I am still copping a mauling from a pack of ferals. I got through the ordeal with the help of $1500 of vaccinations, but having injections directly into a gently suppurating wound toughens you up, as did this follow text exchange with mum: First text: “Poor Steve — hope it’s not too bad Xx Mum”. Second text: “You look OK.” Final text: “Is the dog alright?”.

Seven lifer stays put

The Victoria Racing Club last week announced that Neil Wilson would be its new chief executive. But Wilson, the VRC’s interim chief, wasn’t chair Amanda Elliott’s first choice. Diary hears that Elliott wanted a media exec and put her weight behind Seven’s man in Melbourne, Lewis Martin, to take over the top job. Martin is a lifer at the Seven Network, having joined the sales department in 1994 and worked his way up, becoming managing director of the Melbourne operation 10 years ago and firmly rejecting entreaties he move to head office in Sydney. At Seven, Martin plays a key role in negotiating all-important AFL, tennis and racing rights. Martin is a racing enthusiast and a board member of racing.com the 24-hour digital racing channel joint venture between Seven West Media and Racing Victoria. So he would have been a good fit, but ­either the money wasn’t right, some of the other directors were not keen or Martin was too busy enjoying the tennis.

A Crinkling shame

There are two ways to react to the demise of Crinkling News, the noble effort to interest school kids in news via a weekly newspaper. One is to be sad. The other is to be mad. How could the founders raise $212,000 last May, via a crowd funding campaign thanks in part to blitzing a Senate hearing, where Sam Dastyari announced during proceedings that he had just donated via his mobile phone. Saffron Howden, who founded the newspaper along with her partner Remi Bianchi from Fairfax redundancy money commented at the time she had “tears of joy” and that the $212,000 would go “a very long way”. Just how long we all found out last week, when Howden announced she was shutting up shop and subscribers would get a refund. Howden tells Diary there was no mismanagement of money “no one out there could have achieved what we did with the money we had”. Well, having spent an hour with her last week, Diary guesses someone more revenue-savvy like Mia Freedman might have. Some are mightily annoyed at the Crinkling closure and it is hard to escape the fact that the business was under resourced from the beginning. The crowd funding raised $212,000 but the funding platform creamed off nearly $20,000 and Crinkling had agreed to give a further $53,000 in perks to donors. That left them with just shy of $140,000. Diary hears that Australia Post distribution costs were hefty. In retrospect, Crinkling’s inaugural media literacy conference for kids, which attracted sponsorship well in excess of $50,000 from Google, Facebook and others, sounded like a giant distraction for a newspaper struggling for revenues. Since the closure there has been some interest from buyers, Howden says. “We would like to see it continue in some form. We have given it our all.”

ABC making news

9pm is the key timeslot for the ABC News Channel this year, with the channel’s biggest shake-up in history seeing Stan Grant’s Matter of Fact running Monday to Thursday, Planet America running Fridays and RN Drive presenter Patricia Karvelas launching National Wrap in the Sunday timeslot. “People are entitled when they turn on the ABC to have their country explained to them simply with the facts and without bias,” Karvelas, who used to be political correspondent for The Australian. She promises a different emphasis on Canberra. “Hello, I love it, but the game is really inaccessible and repetitive and why would you care about the ins and outs of that at a micro level?” Good point. With Karvelas gone and Kristina Keneally back as a politician, Sky News will be a very different beast this year.

Greste goes academic

Comings and goings. Peter Greste, the foreign correspondent and press freedom campaigner who spent 400 days in an Egyptian prison, has joined the University of Queensland as a professor of journalism and communication. And it’s a big Diary welcome back to that old smoothie Stephen Browning, former News Corporation head of corporate affairs, who is working with Seven West Media as a consultant. Media editor Darren Davidson’sstory last week prompted much speculation if Browning is in effect the new Simon Francis. Diary’s fun fact about Browning is that he used to be a publicist for legendary rockers Kiss and a photo exists of Browning surrounded by Kiss in full regalia with Gene Simmons preparing to lick Browning’s head.