Nine’s 60 Minutes chases accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson’s ex-husband for interview
The Nine Network is confident it can convince accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon, to sit down with 60 Minutes for a tell-all interview once her trial is over.
As accused culinary killer Erin Patterson’s triple-murder trial enters its final days, two vital questions are on the tip of almost everyone’s tongue.
First: Did the mother of two really invite her closest in-laws around for a light luncheon before deliberately killing them with poisoned portions of homemade beef Wellington that she allegedly laced with toxic death cap mushrooms foraged from a nearby forest?
Second: With which network will her estranged husband, Simon Patterson, share his exclusive story?
We hear Nine’s 60 Minutes and Seven’s Spotlight are both cooking up rival “mushroom murder trial” specials to run in the immediate aftermath of the verdict – and have been doggedly pursuing Mr Patterson for months while waving oversized chequebooks about in the hope of attracting his attention and securing a blockbuster tell-all interview.
After all, it was his parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and aunt, Heather Wilkinson, who allegedly fell victim to Patterson’s mushroom-laden meal, with his uncle, Ian Wilkinson, the sole survivor among the dinner guests, despite falling violently ill.
No matter what happens at the end of the court case, the bloke’s surely going to have some views … and viewers are surely going to be keen to hear them.
Although we’re assured no deal has yet been done (that would be most improper amid an ongoing criminal trial, now wouldn’t it?), the word is 60 Minutes is quietly confident it has the exclusive interview with Simon Patterson all but in the can and is already working on a plan to get it to air within days of the verdict.
Unsurprisingly, Nine was none too keen to be drawn on the speculation when we started asking questions, but the big budget show certainly has quite the track record when it comes to securing the “must-see” stories.
Sixty scored the first interview with Cleo Smith’s parents, Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon, in the wake of the toddler’s abduction, as part of a deal worth more than $2m a few years back. The network also spent lavishly to lock down a behind-bars chat with drug mule Cassie Sainsbury in her Bogota prison cell in 2017, and win the first-ever sit-down with Lindy Chamberlain following her release from prison in 1986.
It even bought the first tell-all with late prime minister Bob Hawke and his then-new partner, Blanche d’Alpuget, in 1995.
That’s a tough act to compete against for Spotlight – a comparatively young, unknown brand that still struggles with being mistaken for the discount haberdashery chain of the same name.
Little wonder the program keeps getting taken to the cleaners, and has only clocked up one lonesome ratings win against its bigger, brasher rival in the past year and a bit.
The beleaguered current affair show’s cause hasn’t been helped by the fact the producer-reporter it tasked with chasing Simon Patterson for an interview, Denham Hitchcock, last week threw in the towel and quit the network.
Still, we hear Spotlight remains committed to running an extended story on the murder trial after it wraps and has been busy filming with just about anyone claiming to have a passing connection to the case.
Erin Patterson has steadfastly maintained her innocence during the murder investigation and her ensuing trial and insists the fatal feast was a tragic accident.
Which doubtless begs the question the rival networks must also be asking themselves right now: What do they do if she is acquitted?
Ten goes headhunting
Everyone knows losing one experienced reporter may be regarded as a misfortune while losing two looks like plain carelessness … but three? In as many days? To the same network?
It might just be the most aggressive poaching raid in modern TV history – and who would have guessed Ten would be the one doing the headhunting!
Diary only last week revealed the channel’s top news boss, Martin White, was setting up a new investigative show to challenge 60 Minutes and Spotlight and he’s already been busy luring journos from rival networks.
So far, White has managed to convince Seven’s award-winning former foreign correspondent Amelia Brace, 7News Sydney reporter Bill Hogan and Spotlight producer-reporter Hitchcock (of mushroom murder trial fame) to change channels and sign on for his untested new program.
We can reveal all three handed in their notice at Seven last week, with Brace and Hitchcock both exiting the station’s Media City headquarters in Sydney within hours of quitting. They will start their new jobs at Ten’s Pyrmont bunker on Monday morning.
Hogan will be required to work three more weeks in Seven’s Sydney newsroom before following them across town to what’s being referred to internally at Ten as “the investigative unit”.
Diary hears the hiring spree comes after Ten’s parent company, Paramount Global, cut the network’s chief, Beverley McGarvey, a sizeable cheque for $20m to invest in new content.
Ten was so determined to snaffle Brace they offered her a hefty $50,000 increase on the $220,000 a year she had been pulling in at Seven – though it still required her to take a leap of faith and quit her day job before Ten emailed her new contract across on Friday afternoon.
By then she’d already broken the news she was leaving to her “work family” – while hinting there might be some lingering animus at Seven despite the welcome departure of the network’s former news boss Anthony De Ceglie little more than a fortnight ago.
“It feels off to not have an official ‘last day’ to say goodbye, but it’s best for me to just fade away for now,” Brace said in a message to colleagues on Friday.
“Stand up for yourselves, and each other … and think of me every time you have to find a f..king case study.”
Her recruitment will come as little surprise to regular readers, with Diary last week revealing she was at the top of Ten’s wish list for the new show.
As for the chisel-jawed Hitchcock – who could just about be described as “an investigative unit” in his own right – it’s the second time he has sailed off into the sunset at Spotlight.
The yacht master quit the program for the first time in 2023 with grand ambitions to turn his boat life with Brazilian wife Mari and daughter Kaia into a hit online docu-series … only to discover no one much cares for docu-series about boat life.
Hitchcock trumpeted his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it second coming at Spotlight in February, saying it was “time to wash some of the salt out – and get back to what I do best”.
Last week he told those same colleagues the opportunity to host Ten’s new program was too good to pass up.
Hinch’s hunch
As Nine and Seven fret about who Ten will tap next for their new show, at least one network news veteran has ruled himself out of contention: Derryn Hinch.
The 81-year-old human headline, whose eponymous program Hinch was a hit for Ten in the mid-1990s, reckons he’s “semi-retired” these days. But he’s still pleased to see his old network investing in long-form current affairs again and has a hunch it might just pay off. “You don’t see as much current affairs on television as you’d like and this is definitely a move in the right direction,” he told Diary.
“It’s a good strategy, and really encouraging.”
As for the network’s other “current affairs” program, The Project?
“I’ve never been a fan,” he said. “Is it supposed to be a comedy show? A current affairs show? An entertainment show? I don’t know; I’m not sure anyone knows.” His blunt advice on how to improve the woke, nightly gibberfest? “Scrap it.”
We weren’t the only ones asking around about The Project following revelations (by us, naturally) that the program is under review at Ten.
The Sunday Project’s own host, eternally roving reporter Hamish Macdonald, used his taxpayer-funded side hustle as a part-time presenter on ABC Radio’s Sydney morning show to quiz media commentator Tim Burrowes about whether the 16-year-old Ten show had seen out its natural “lifespan”.
“Shows that last 15 years are pretty rare,” Burrowes told Macdonald on Monday. “Probably an increasing rarity as we go forward and more TV is on demand and less is consumed live.”
So … scrap it, right?
Logies off the charts
If there’s one thing that unites all the television networks, at least for a few scintillating hours each year, it’s the industry’s star-studded awards night, the Logies.
Sydney Star Casino will play host to the glittering gala once again this winter when it is held on August 3, with comedian Sam Pang to return as compere for the third year in a row.
Now as Pang knows only too well, it’s not a matter of cramming all of television’s brightest stars and biggest egos (you know who you are) into one room and simply hoping they get along: every network needs to be treated equally – both when it comes to jokes and, more importantly, to the seating plan.
Although the event was broadcast by Nine for decades, there was a longstanding rule the telecast had to remain neutral with the prime positions divvied up evenly between all channels so their respective “talent” could be spotted when the cameras panned across the audience. (And here you were thinking Goldilocks was fussy when it came to seating options.)
It sounds trivial but, trust us, it’s a tremendously big deal – and it’s traditionally taken many hours and much negotiating to get the chart just right.
That was, at least, until Seven acquired the rights to broadcast the event from 2023.
Since then, Diary hears the station has increasingly placed pressure on the awards night’s producers to seat their own stable of stars front and centre for the cameras.
Could that be the reason that the man charged with piecing together the annual seating jigsaw, the widely revered John Flower, has decided to part ways with the Logies after 18 years?
The famously fair seating director fired off an email to some of the country’s most popular personalities late last week explaining his departure and saying: “Some of you may have an understanding as to the reasons behind this decision but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for the support, friendship and love I’ve experienced over many years.”
He then rattled off a list of people he wanted to personally acknowledge from the ABC, Nine, Ten, Foxtel and SBS, as well as event management outfits Rizer and HotHouse.
In fact, everywhere, you might note, except Seven and the production company behind the Logies, Fourth Wall.
Funny that.
We asked Flower if he cared to elaborate on his reasons for leaving the Logies, but he told Diary he felt his email just about said it all.
Dubai-ing it?
Who would have thought we wanted to watch Today’s Karl Stefanovic and Richard Wilkins strutting about in boardshorts and riding water slides over our morning cereal?
But apparently we did.
The breakfast show’s ratings were up on last week as it broadcast from the Middle Eastern metropolis of Dubai as part of an advertising stunt expected to net Nine more than $1m.
Still, not everyone was in for the drawn-out tourism promotion.
Aussie human rights campaigner Radha Stirling has a strong connection with Nine, having worked with 60 Minutes on its investigations into the abduction of Princess Latifa (daughter of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum) and its interview with wanted crypto-nerd Chris Emms.
Yet she couldn’t stomach watching the network’s “luxury lifestyle coverage (of Dubai), interviews with local representatives, and tourism promotions, all framed in an overwhelmingly positive light”.
“Australian citizens deserve clear, balanced information, not promotional content repackaged as news,” Stirling fumed.
She clearly missed the hard-hitting segment where Wilkins “faced his fears” and took a hot-air balloon ride over the city.
ABC’s whitewash
It’s no secret that times are tough in the media game. Look at the ABC, for example – it has to scrape by on a paltry annual taxpayer budget of just $1.2bn a year.
What’s more, it has got a massive job to do with that piddling amount of money.
According to the ABC’s charter, it needs to “broadcast programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community; and broadcast programs of an educational nature”.
With cash (allegedly) scarce at the public broadcaster, it is no wonder it chooses to invest in journalism that simultaneously checks all these boxes, such as last week’s groundbreaking investigation into “how to dry laundry without a dryer when it’s cold or wet outside”.
Now we know what you’re thinking: that’s a tough yarn to crack.
Fortunately, Amy Sheehan, a 20-year news veteran, managed to convince fellow ABC reporter Lish Fejer to go on the record while promoting her side project running “The Fix It Chicks”, which apparently teaches people “cheap ways to wash and dry laundry”.
“When using a rack for air drying, make sure the clothes are spaced out well so air can circulate around each item,” Sheehan revealed, before adding: “Look at any glass or window that is being hit by the sun – put your drying rack there, that will activate the drying process.
“If heading out for the day, hang sheets and towels over chairs and tables.”
Gripping journalism. Imagine if you were actually paying for this.
Oh wait. You are.
AFR stuck in Cocoon
Disgraced disability support provider Cocoon SDA Care has gone into liquidation after The Australian’s David Murray revealed it had been permanently banned by the NDIS for allegedly falsely billing taxpayers for services to dead people and inmates.
And yet, and yet … the company remains proudly listed in 14th spot on The Australian Financial Review’s “Fast 100 List” from last November (strangely enough, the month after federal authorities began investigating the firm) and continues to boast online that it was rated “one of the best places to work” in a separate AFR BOSS awards list just seven weeks ago.
This despite revelations it had already stopped paying wages to staff, including frontline care workers, in March after the National Disability Insurance Agency started manually reviewing all its payment claims.
Staff say super payments are owing from way back (at least last year), while the business racked up a bill of almost $10m to the Australian Taxation Office by mid-2024.
What’s more, the AFR’s niche news site is still hosting a story sponsored by Cocoon SDA Care on its website, praising the business for “encouraging an atmosphere of fun and community”.
Yeah, it sounds like a real hoot.
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Former Today show sports presenter Alex Cullen is in confidential discussions to play a starring role in a new reality series backed by the very billionaire who effectively got him fired from Nine.
Vodafone hires ad agency as it readies to battle Telstra
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