Andrew Bolt leaves Macquarie, will Alan Jones bolt too?
As Andrew Bolt leaves Macquarie Media, the company faces the prospect of a future without two of our best-known conservative commentators.
Nine’s newly acquired radio giant, Macquarie Media, is facing the very real prospect of a future without two of Australia’s best-known conservative commentators.
There is, of course, the seemingly endless speculation on whether Alan Jones will walk away from 2GB.
But another equally big name has already left the building.
Diary can confirm that Andrew Bolt, whose on-air partnership with Steve Price has turned Macquarie’s evening show into an east coast ratings machine, has ended his nine-year stint.
Two months of back-and-forth negotiations between Bolt and Macquarie’s bosses finally broke down 11 days ago.
Bolt has told Diary: “We agreed to disagree. We couldn’t agree to money, hours and duties. But I want to stress: we parted on good terms.”
Bolt’s departure will also end his weekly segments with Ben Fordham and Chris Smith on 2GB. But his Herald Sun and Sky News gigs will continue unchanged.
Fellow Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi stood in for Bolt during the negotiations, and will now be Price’s new partner-in-crime. Tomorrow’s first 2019 radio ratings survey will provide the new combination’s first test. In the last survey of 2018, Price and Bolt dominated in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, rating a whopping 21.4, 16.3 and 18.3 respectively.
Along with uncertainty about Jones’s future, Bolt’s departure begs a broader question: are Nine and Macquarie signalling conservative commentators are now out of favour?
Diary is assured that is not the case. Rather, a new frugality is sweeping Macquarie. The “pay top dollar” mentality once prevalent at the company under John Singleton is on the wane.
Macquarie bosses seem to be pruning costs ahead of a possible sale to Nine of the remaining 45.5 per cent of the radio network it does not own.
Bolt’s departure ends his long stretch with Macquarie and Price, which began on the short-lived Melbourne Talk Radio back in 2010.
Keeping up with Jones
Meanwhile, a critical deadline in the negotiations between Macquarie and Alan Jones is just 48 hours away.
Macquarie chief executive Adam Lang has to reveal by Wednesday whether he wants to at least negotiate further with Jones — or else release him to become a free agent.
As Diary revealed last week, Jones’s people sent Lang a letter mid-last month, registering his willingness to negotiate with Macquarie. Under his present $4.5 million a year contract (which officially expires on June 27), this triggered a four-week deadline for Macquarie to respond.
That period expires this Wednesday, by which time Macquarie needs to confirm its interest. That buys it more time to make Jones a full offer.
Diary hears Jones is concerned about possible onerous conditions imposed on any new deal. He is ready for all possible scenarios, including walking away.
Meanwhile, Jones has been chatting with other media groups. One future option said to be in the mix is a cross-platform deal with News Corp, publisher of this paper, possibly spread across Sky News, newspapers and radio/podcasting.
Avoiding the heat
As we all know, there has been a significant boardroom renovation project going on at the ABC in the past fortnight, after the sensational events at its highest levels last year.
Not only has Ita Buttrose been drafted in as its new chair but the ABC is also hoping a $730,000 settlement paid to former managing director Michelle Guthrie to drop her lawsuit will draw a line under her sacking.
But amid little fanfare, another massive repair job has just got under way at the broadcaster’s Sydney HQ.
The ABC has put aside $30m to remove faulty cladding from its Ultimo bunker (built in two stages in the 80s and 90s), which was assessed as having potential fire safety issues.
The activity is directly related to the horrendous Grenfell Tower fire in London two years ago, after which several buildings around Australia were branded as potential fire traps.
In recent days, hoardings have been erected throughout the ABC HQ’s multi-storey, open-plan lobby to protect staff. Diary is told the project won’t be completed until spring 2020.
An email sent to staff last year advised it would be “safe to stay in the building while we resolve this”. But it also noted: “We will be implementing additional safety measures based on the advice of … experts.”
Indeed, Aunty is taking no chances. Diary understands one of those “safety measures” is the exhaustive testing of microwaves, kettles and toasters at the Ultimo HQ for electrical faults.
On the inoffensive
The corridors of Seven’s Sydney news bunker have been abuzz with talk about the alleged behaviour of a producer in a social setting last month.
The Martin Place chatter has been that a complaint was made by a news producer to both Seven’s news and current affairs supremo, Craig McPherson, and Sydney news director Jason Morrison, days after an informal staff function at a nearby bar.
Diary directly contacted the rumoured complainant to ask if this was true.
The news producer replied: “I did have a conversation with Jason and Craig because it had become gossip in the newsroom. I felt they should hear it from me that I wasn’t offended. I made no complaint … All I can assume is that someone thought they saw something that may have offended them, that didn’t offend me.”
Time ticking for Karl
The odds are firming that former Today host Karl Stefanovic will make his long-awaited news and current affairs comeback at Nine on a resurgent 60 Minutes.
Just don’t expect that comeback to happen until next year.
Production wrapped on Stefanovic’s only remaining star vehicle, This Time Next Year, last week — but it will be eight months before that show actually airs.
Diary can reveal that This Time Next Year will only be shown after The Block finale. That means Nine’s screens will be a Karl-free zone until early November.
Nine hopes this cautious “cold turkey” approach to rehabilitating Stefanovic, now TV’s most expensive reserve, will give viewers time to rediscover their love of Karl.
Insiders insist there are absolutely no plans to end Stefanovic’s contract early. Indeed, Nine bosses are hoping This Time Next Year will give Stefanovic the launching pad for a bigger comeback, most likely through his return to 60 Minutes.
Nine CEO Hugh Marks has apparently listened to the advice of his legendary predecessor, David Leckie, that 60 Minutes was the critical show Stefanovic needed to rehabilitate his image.
Pete’s Lawyer X brief
Happily, at least one Stefanovic will be back on air within weeks.
Karl’s brother, Peter Stefanovic, has been gig-free since not being renewed as host of Weekend Today in December, in the midst of the Stefanovic-led firestorm that engulfed Nine at the time. But the self-described “Hack in a Flak Jacket” (the title of his 2016 autobiography) is back on the horse, landing a prime gig at Sky News.
Diary can reveal that Stefanovic will front a documentary on the “Lawyer X” affair, which saw Nicola Gobbo sensationally exposed 10 days ago as the lawyer who turned informant on some of Melbourne’s most notorious crime figures.
Stefanovic the Younger was spotted in Melbourne in recent days interviewing Damon Johnston, editor of the Herald Sun — the paper that revealed back in March 2014 that a barrister, Lawyer X, had turned on her clients.
Stan’s got a plan
In an intriguing development, Diary can reveal Nine has met with international giants in a bid to find a partner for its streaming service Stan. The preliminary talks, said to include Disney and NBC, have so far involved Hugh Marks and Stan CEO Mike Sneesby from the Nine end.
They are seen as a bid to take Stan to the next level, just three months after Nine moved to full ownership through its takeover of Fairfax.
In particular, the discussions are a starting point to bring new content and resources to Stan as it takes on the might of global giants with massive resources who have come to Australia, most notably Netflix.
Well-placed insiders stress that Nine has no interest in selling out of Stan altogether because it is one of its key growth assets.
But Nine does want a partnership. And the Disney talks are no Mickey Mouse proposition, given the Hollywood giant chose Stan over Netflix for its local streaming rights last year.
It is understood the Disney deal substantially lifted Stan’s subscriptions over the summer school holiday period.
Extra time goal
Still on Nine, Diary is informed that there were urgent and delicate backroom talks last week about the final hosting line-up of its new-look Footy Show, due to air in just nine days.
The program has made the big call to forge ahead in 2019 without Eddie McGuire and Sam Newman. Just as with Today a few months back, this is about Nine looking for a less “blokey” hosting line-up to help the show appeal to a broader audience.
To this end, Nine’s key target is respected Fox Sports AFL host Neroli Meadows, who it wants to anchor the show with comedian Anthony Lehmann. Wheelchair tennis champion Dylan Alcott, and ex-AFL stars Brendan Fevola and Shane Crawford are also set to join the revamped show.
The problem for Nine in securing Meadows has been that Fox is her full-time employer and she needs a release granted to allow her to earn a no-doubt handsome second salary hosting the Footy Show.
We’re told a big part of the issue was hammering out exactly how Fox would benefit from any deal to release Meadows. This was the subject of lengthy chats between her management and Fox last week.
By week’s end, the waiver seemed likely to be granted.
Repeat airing
Emma Alberici’s chief Sardinian critic, independent filmmaker Lisa Camillo, is seeing her film Balentes (The Brave Ones) attract a new buzz following the controversy about Alberici’s subsequent ABC Foreign Correspondent investigation, Secret Sardinia.
Lavazza Italian Film Festival director Elysia Zeccola has announced that Balentes — a four-year labour of love revealing Sardinia’s poisoning by toxic military weapons — will have an encore screening at the Palace Como cinema in Melbourne’s South Yarra on April 17.
“There’s been renewed interest in the film in the light of the media attention,” she told Diary.
Foreign Correspondent claimed Secret Sardinia broke the story six weeks ago, despite Camillo pointing out its extensive similarities with Balentes, which screened throughout Australia last year.
Camillo will also make a high-profile appearance before the Italian parliament next month to give evidence on Sardinia’s poisoning.
Ground down by Clive
Ray Hadley has finally snapped. Six months of non-stop Clive Palmer ads will do that to you.
“They drive me cuckoo,” Hadley admitted to his 2GB and 4BC listeners on Friday.
It is for this reason that Hadley — who has largely let the ads run without comment until now — has announced a change of tack: he will no longer cop Clive Palmer in silence.
“I maintain his right to say what he wants, and he’s paying a large amount of money (to do so),” he told listeners. “I’ll reserve my right to correct every falsehood (in the ads) … If you vote for Clive Palmer or any of his candidates, you’re voting for people who have brains the size of a pea … I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.”
Following his epic spray, Hadley told Diary of the ads: “They’ve worn me down, and they’ve worn my listeners down.”
Churning it out
Believe it or not, some journos were miffed last week not to make Diary’s list of our most prolific reporters, dominated by Australian Churnalist of the Year Caleb Taylor and his seagull mates at the Daily Mail.
By popular demand, we have bowed to pressure and asked the list’s author, Conal Hanna at media monitor Streem, to prepare a new list that includes all comers, including bloggers and specialist media. Turns out there is one overwhelming Australian winner: TV writer and story-writing machine, David Knox of TV Tonight.
Knox has authored an astonishing 5856 articles over the past year (about 25 a day), more than double his nearest rival, business blogger James Mickleboro. Other keyboard slaves at Business Insider, Mumbrella and New Idea all make the top 20.
Even if Knox never slept, he would still be averaging one piece every hour, five days a week.
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