Ford takes trolling to new levels
Clementine Ford’s very public resignation last month has clearly left her feeling a new freedom in attacking Nine shows and talent.
With the federal election campaign now in full swing, one of its big stories is the TV and radio programs that Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten will not go on.
For ScoMo, there are at least two big no-go zones: the ABC’s Q&A and Kiis-FM’s dynamic duo, Kyle & Jackie O.
Diary’s research reveals the PM has not appeared on Q&A for seven long years since 2012.
Morrison has given a rare and candid glimpse into the depth of his antipathy towards Q&A in an interview with 2GB’s Ben Fordham.
When Fordham said he had been “watching Q&A at the start of the week”, the PM twice interjected to ask the stunned 2GB drive host: “Why?”
That tells you all you need to know about ScoMo’s attitude to Q&A. It also suggests there is little chance he will partner up with Tony Jones for a special one-on-one Q&A edition during the campaign, despite the show’s repeated requests.
Canberra insiders tell Diary ScoMo’s Q&A ban goes all the way back to when he became immigration minister in 2013, and felt harshly treated by the ABC over his tough stance on asylum seekers. As one insider puts it: “Scott took it deeply personally how some areas of the media treated him back then. He felt he couldn’t win.”
Since becoming PM, ScoMo has re-engaged with some areas of the media once on his shit-list, most notably the Nine-owned SMH and The Age. Diary hears that in recent months, senior editors at those papers have made big overtures to ScoMo and assurances of a fair go, which he has accepted.
But Q&A is a different story. As he made crystal clear in the Fordham interview, the show remains very firmly on the outer with the PM’s inner-sanctum.
Kyle in hot pursuit
Meanwhile, Kyle Sandilands has fruitlessly pursued not one, but two Liberal PMs — Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull — for three long years since the 2016 election.
Sandilands’ personal manager, Bruno Bouchet, told Diary last week: “From day dot, we never existed to them. They have had zero interest in coming on — not that our show’s really suffered.”
In recent months, Sandilands has become progressively more frustrated with Morrison as he has continuously been knocked back. A couple of weeks back, he gave Morrison a deadline to come on the high-rating show’s “Burying Hatchets” segment, with an offer of $30,000 to the charity of his choice if he agreed. But even with that incentive, Morrison still knocked Sandilands back. Bouchet warns Morrison through Diary that his reluctance to come on the show will cost him votes.
“I would counsel him that we are the show with the largest number of swing voters,” he says. “They’ve pretty well made up their mind at 2GB and the ABC. But if you want to sway things, you do appearances with Kyle and Jack.”
Shorten’s 2GB snub
Labor leader Bill Shorten also has a list of shows he has been ducking, having religiously avoided 2GB’s “big four”, Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Chris Smith and Ben Fordham, along with 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, for some time.
Jones has confirmed that Shorten has not been on the show since May 2017. The 2GB breakfast king said Shorten had a “standing invitation” to appear on the show, and his staff have been “repeatedly told that”. Diary also hears Hadley has not interviewed Shorten in his six years as Labor leader, despite back-channel conversations between the pair. It is a similar tale for Fordham, while Shorten has only had one fleeting chat with Mitchell a fortnight ago after a three-year hiatus.
Why the snub? Diary is told by Canberra sources that Shorten, the bookies’ hot favourite to be PM after May 18, sees little gain in going on 2GB, in particular, which has been particularly critical of him. He is also said to be wary of “gotcha” moments that could themselves become news. “He has the view that listeners to those shows are not going to vote for him anyway,” one source said last week.
But one radio show that Shorten has conspicuously chosen to court is — you guessed it — Kyle & Jackie O.
In recent months, Shorten’s relationship with Kyle Sandilands has become something of a bromance.
Perhaps to rub ScoMo’s nose in it, Sandilands has made a big point of being effusive in his praise of the Labor leader, repeatedly calling him the “next PM of Australia”. Shorten has returned the favour, sometimes even turning up unannounced for friendly on-air chats at Sandilands’ Sydney studios.
On familiar turf
While Shorten is conspicuously avoiding Alan Jones, ScoMo put his relationship with 2GB’s breakfast king on very public display at racing legend Winx’s last race in the Longines Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick on Saturday.
As Diary’s exclusive snap shows, ScoMo (with beer in hand) had a relaxed but lengthy chat with Jones at the Australian Turf Club’s packed main VIP function for Winx. Morrison and Jones swapped notes on how the campaign was going so far for the PM, who seemed pleased with the outcome of early battles with Shorten.
ScoMo then moved on to another of 2GB’s big four, Chris Smith. The PM even spent some time with reformed broadcaster and now One Nation NSW upper house MP, Mark Latham.
ScoMo and his wife Jenny also happily mingled with many in a media-heavy VIP room for Winx’s swansong.
Other than the PM and 2GB stars, big names present included billionaire ex-media mogul Gina Rinehart, Seven’s 6PM Sydney news reader Mark Ferguson, sports presenter Mel McLaughlin and former ABC boss Russell Balding.
KAK back on track
Meanwhile, at a separate Longines function next door to the main racecourse ballroom, top Aussie acting export (and director of the upcoming Michelle Payne biopic, Ride Like A Girl), Rachel Griffiths, headlined the guest list.
But it was Logies Hall of Famer Kerri-Anne Kennerley who stole the show, as she bravely stepped out six weeks after the death of her beloved husband John.
When Diary asked how she was bearing up, Kennerley showed her trademark stiff upper lip.
“You’ve got no choice but to keep going,” she told us.
“You get up each day, and put one foot in front of the other.”
The C-Model Ford
The very public resignation on Twitter of columnist Clementine Ford from the Nine-owned SMH and The Age a couple of months back has clearly left her feeling a new freedom in attacking Nine shows and talent.
You might recall that Ford’s very public resignation tweets attacked the takeover of Fairfax by Nine.
Last Monday, Nine was in the high-profile feminist’s sights on social media once more, during the finale of the country’s biggest show, Married At First Sight.
Ford’s target on Instagram was controversial MAFS character Mike, who was paired with radio host Heidi on the show. It would be a major understatement to say Ford doesn’t like Mike and as a now ex-Nine employee, she felt free to go nuclear on him.
What set her off was Mike’s widely-slammed claim in the finale that “groups of women under pressure don’t cope as well as groups of men under pressure”.
Ford’s three-word response in block letters to Mike’s comment brought trolling to new levels: “THIS F..KING C…”.
The three words were run in full, and were just one of a litany of savage putdowns of Mike by Ford on social media last week.
Ford’s blue Instagram post attracted 4000 likes and hundreds of comments.
One was from Gold Logie-winning Nova broadcaster Chrissie Swan, who stood firmly with Ford, claiming Mike had “the most dangerous views about women and relationships that we’ve seen on television in a very long time”.
Finding it hard to Lego
Still on MAFS, exactly how many viewers is it worth to Nine? Wait for it — an extraordinary 1.4 million viewers in five capital cities.
That’s the difference between Nine’s ratings last Monday (1.96m viewers), when MAFS finally finished, and on Tuesday, when a Big Bang Theory double episode rated 520,000.
Now Diary is being slightly mischievous. That comparison flatters MAFS, because it is based on its finale, the highest-rated program of the season so far. The reality show really averaged about 1.4 million viewers — but that’s still 900,000 more than Big Bang’s Tuesday figures.
By last Wednesday’s Sydney launch of Hamish Blake’s new family show Lego Masters, which will screen in the MAFS timeslot post-Easter, MAFS’ shadow still loomed large for Nine bosses: “The sugar hit’s gone,” one told Diary sadly.
Meanwhile, Nine’s knockabout production boss Adrian Swift could not resist pointing to the extreme contrast between the raunchy MAFS and the squeaky-clean Lego Masters, joking that Nine was moving on from “corrupting the morals of a nation”.
But Blake has the last word, with a wry nod to MAFS in a tongue-in-cheek description of Lego Masters: “I do have sex with some of the contestants. But only when it gets dull, just to spice it up.”
Big men fly higher
Remember Diary’s item in which we first revealed a month ago that AFL boss Gillon McLachlan had privately been approached by global streaming players, including Amazon and Facebook, about the next AFL media rights deal from 2023?
The AFL boss has not wasted any time exploring his options, four years before the next media deal is even due to commence. Last week, McLachlan and an AFL entourage made a flying visit to the US west coast to visit Amazon, Facebook and Google on the issue.
McLachlan’s scouting mission sends an unmistakable message to sports fans: that one of the global giants could well become a major player in the next AFL rights deal.
Jones deadline passes
A critical deadline in the negotiations between Macquarie Media and Alan Jones has been and gone. But that does not mean the talks are over.
Jones had given Macquarie until last Wednesday to make him an offer.
Otherwise he would be free to hold talks with other parties about working elsewhere beyond June 30.
Australia’s highest-paid broadcaster wants a two-year deal with Macquarie worth up to $9m in total to see him past his 80th birthday in 2021.
As Diary said last week, no piece of paper matching Jones’s expectations has yet been forthcoming.
But we hear his current preference remains to stay at 2GB, despite the deadline’s expiry.
And Macquarie’s ultimate boss, Nine CEO Hugh Marks, continues to want a deal done with Jones.
Insiders have stressed one key point: while Jones can now negotiate with other radio stations, he can’t work for anyone else before July 1.
Heat in the kitchen
Seven is turning to radical measures to save My Kitchen Rules, after its demolition by Nine’s Married At First Sight ratings juggernaut.
Diary is now very reliably informed that the original version of MKR, hosted by Pete Evans and Manu Feildel, will next year be moved far away from going head-to-head against MAFS — possibly to as late as the second half of 2020.
After losing this year’s ratings battle to MAFS by an average of about 600,000 viewers on most nights, MKR was thrashed by more than a million capital city viewers during the MAFS finale last Monday.
Those big ratings defeats have panicked Seven bosses, who want to avoid another bloodbath in 2020 at all costs to preserve its most successful local and international brand.
Production of the original version of the show — which takes six months — has been shifted back to November this year.
But that’s not all. Seven is also super-sizing a second version of the show, nicknamed MKR 2.0: which is being hosted by another celebrity chef, Colin Fassnidge, who is being styled as a swearing Gordon Ramsay-type figure.
“Cocktail parties” and character-based tensions will apparently feature much more prominently in this version of the show, which will now be shot for 10 weeks from July.
Contestants could even be made to bunk in together in a mansion-like set up.
Does that all sound like another drama-filled program just finished on Nine?
Maybe that’s the point. MKR 2.0 was originally scheduled for the end of this year as part of the show’s 10th anniversary celebrations.
But word around Seven now is that if MKR 2.0 generates the kind of drama and buzz Seven are looking for, it could even compete head-to-head with MAFS at the start of 2020.
Stay tuned.
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