The franchise that started Donald Trump’s rise to the US presidency, The Apprentice, is to return to Australian screens.
Diary can confirm Nine has commissioned Warner Brothers to make a season of The Celebrity Apprentice to screen in 2021. The network is whittling down a short-list of charismatic billionaires for the gig, with up to four on the shortlist.
Diary hears an earlier Nine wishlist for the role included mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and retail king Solomon Lew.
Whether either could find time in their busy schedules is uncertain. We’re also told UK or US billionaires would also be in contention, but COVID will likely skew it towards a local.
One definitely not in contention is Wizard Home Loans founder Mark Bouris, who was host of the previous Australian incarnation of the show. Nine apparently wants fresh blood.
There’ll be no lack of interest from “celebrities”. Past Celebrity Apprentice contestants Julia Morris and Sophie Monk both got big career boosts after winning seasons of the show.
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‘Under the bus’: Emma vs the ABC
Last week, the ABC chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici’s proposed ABC redundancy is understood to have been reaffirmed, in a meeting with news bosses.
But is that the end of the matter? There are still two weeks of “negotiations” left — in which the ABC looks at areas that fit her “skill set” — before Alberici’s proposed redundancy is likely to move to the next stage.
This month, Alberici was the stand-in host of Sarah Macdonald’s evening show on ABC Radio Sydney, raising the sudden possibility she could stay on the airwaves. But we’re now told that the prospects of a radio redeployment occurring have faded, leaving Alberici to confront the growing likelihood of a departure from Aunty.
But if it does go ahead, matters could yet escalate. Remember the controversy involving ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull and Alberici’s much-publicised 2018 corporate tax stories?
It subsequently emerged that both Alberici and the ABC deployed lawyers, during a process in which her analysis piece was first taken down, rewritten and ultimately re-posted on the ABC’s site.
The New Daily later revealed that lawyers representing Alberici helped to negotiate the re-posting, as well as an agreed form of words to go with it. Those words included a statement from the ABC that reaffirmed the organisation continued to hold “respect” for Alberici.
That statement came in the wake of claims Alberici had felt “thrown under the bus” after the article had originally been removed without explanation.
We hear whispers that Alberici could well feel chucked “under the bus” in 2020 as well, particularly by others in the ABC news division.
Gov debt is manageable & affordable. What's more troubling is household debt which is rising as people defer mortgage repayments & access their super early Luxury car sales are up as is retail trade. With unemployment set to reach 9.25% by Xmas there is a car crash coming #auspol
— Emma Alberici (@albericie) July 23, 2020
Given the 2018 experience, Diary hears the ABC is readying its lawyers to deal with the potential Alberici redundancy and its fallout. From what we’re told, Alberici may be following suit.
We texted and phoned Alberici on Sunday, including a question about whether she felt “unfairly targeted” by the redundancy? We didn’t receive a reply by the time of going to print. Meanwhile, an ABC spokesman said: “We never comment on individual cases.”
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‘A long, slow death’
Elsewhere in the ABC’s business area, three more senior identities, both on- and off-air, have put up their hands to leave the organisation.
Respected ABC finance correspondent Phil Lasker, along with the executive producer of The Business, Simon West, and senior business reporter, Andrew Robertson, have all accepted golden goodbyes from Aunty.
But where redundancies are not voluntary, it is, to coin the word of one ABC insider, “a marathon, not a sprint” for those anxiously waiting to see if there’s another role for them.
The staff who had their redundancies reaffirmed last Tuesday will now go through a three-week negotiation period where any possibilities for another ABC job are canvassed.
If that process is unsuccessful, there will be another six-week “redeployment” process undertaken.
But even at that point, it’s still not over. If no other job is found at the end of that six weeks, there is still the possibility of serving out a notice period — which, depending on the employee and contract, could still take up to 10 weeks.
Little wonder that one person involved in the redundancy process on Sunday dubbed it a “long, slow death”.
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Aunty turns on Ita
Ita Buttrose is fast learning that adulation at the ABC can be a fickle beast. Some of her own staff who publicly supported the ABC chair’s furious letter directed at Scott Morrison over his budget freeze just a few weeks back weren’t afraid to take a very different stance on Thursday, after Ita had said young workers lack “resilience” and “need hugging”.
Millennials facing redundancy at the ABC weren’t impressed. ABC Life’s Grace Jennings-Edquist was the bluntest: “As a millennial currently facing redundancy at the ABC during a recession, I don’t need a hug. I need a job.”
On a similar theme, TripleJ Hack host Avani Dias pointed out Ita’s comments were directed at “the very young people who are more likely to have lost work during the pandemic and be in unstable jobs than older Australians”.
She also invited the ABC chair on her show “to speak to young workers who she says lack resilience and need hugs”.
Ita, however, decided that one was an offer she could refuse.
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Kochie’s new Seven deal
David Koch’s reign over Australian breakfast TV will continue for at least a further two years, Diary can exclusively reveal.
With Sunrise winning the 2020 ratings year already (in July!), we’re reliably informed that Koch will this week formally sign on the dotted line with Seven to extend his stint on the show to two decades.
In these perilous times for free-to-airs, it’s most likely Koch has had no pay rise on his previously reported $800,000-a-year salary. Two more years will complete 20 years in the Sunrise chair, the longest unbroken run for a national breakfast host.
By our reckoning, he will also set an Australian record for the single most amount of live national TV hours. Diary’s calculations suggest Koch will burst through 15,000 live TV hours in 2022.
Koch’s extension will heap yet more pain on Nine’s Today show, in a rivalry Sunrise has dominated since he joined in 2002. Despite Today’s new combination of Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon going up against Koch and Sam Armytage, it has been well beaten by Sunrise in 2020.
The new contract will take Koch through to December 2022, when he will be 66. Could he renew beyond then?
Don’t rule it out yet. The option remains open, and indeed, Koch’s insane schedule seems crazier than ever. The club he chairs, Port Adelaide, is topping the AFL table. He’s also started a new business streaming service, ausbiz: where he’s now even hosting a new daily one-hour stock-tipping show on ausbiz, called The Call.
Clearly, the man likes being busy.
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Chatham House fury
Ita Buttrose’s “young workers need hugs” address to the Australia-UK Chamber of Commerce on Thursday was meant to be under the Chatham House rule, in which a speaker’s identity is not publicly revealed by anyone present.
But in the spirit of Laurie Oakes’s stance on Malcolm Turnbull’s now-famous 2017 Midwinter Ball speech, Nine newspapers’ reporter Latika Bourke worked around this issue: declaring in her story that she “did not attend but sources who dialled in relayed some of her comments”.
EXCLUSIVE
— Latika M Bourke (@latikambourke) July 22, 2020
- ABC Chair and media veteran Ita Buttrose says millenial staff 'lack resilience' and ‘almost need hugging’ for reasurrance - questions whether it’s the result of bad parenting.
My report â¬‡ï¸ https://t.co/LorwRIPwvc
Diary hears that stance has annoyed Australia-UK Chamber CEO Catherine Woo no end. She fired off a letter to the editor of the SMH on Thursday, stating the body was “very disappointed” the newspapers used the loophole to publish the comments.
But Nine newspaper sources remain adamant they “didn’t break any rules” in reporting the address.
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First class Carlton
Former broadcaster Mike Carlton was reminiscing about the glory days when he worked for the ABC half a century ago, just as Qantas’s very last 747 headed for an aircraft boneyard in the Mojave Desert last week.
Carlton tweeted on Wednesday: “Do you remember your first flight in a 747? Mine was 1970, London to New York, TWA. First class (someone else was paying.) They had a buffet up the pointy end, silver service, Krug. Them were the days.”
Sounds like Aunty had quite the travel budget back in Mike’s ABC days!
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Seven’s Razor Gang
Seven’s dismal finances continue to see the razor out at the network, this time at digital site 7news.com.au.
Diary hears that under executive producer Phil Goyen, a number of casuals and regular contributors have been cut at the site — most notably, its award-winning crime editor Duncan McNab, who cleared out his desk on Friday.
But we’re told McNab won’t be idle for long. He’s already signed a book deal on the Ruby Princess debacle, scheduled to be released early next year.
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Smith bombards 2GB
It’s an accepted fact of Australian politics that up and coming conservative political figures will do anything for airtime on 2GB.
But Tim Smith, wannabe Victorian opposition leader and outspoken Member for Kew in Melbourne’s leafy east, has taken it to a whole new level.
Sydney listeners heard Smith twice on Ben Fordham’s 2GB breakfast show last week, after a rash of recent similar appearances.
But why? It won’t win him any votes in Kew, or anywhere else in Victoria.
Smith, however, isn’t letting that stop him from a series of colourful cameos on 2GB. On Thursday, posing as the de facto Premier of Victoria, Smith told bemused Sydneysiders: “I’m terribly sorry that our government has imperilled your state in the way that it has.”
That statement by the Member for Kew on behalf of all Victorians came after Smith had on Monday told Fordham that Melburnians were being “muzzled like dogs”.
Privately, Diary hears that some of Smith’s colleagues, and even the man who’s in the position he covets, Victorian Liberal leader Michael O’Brien, are happy he’s bombarding the 2GB airwaves so vigorously. One Victorian Liberal colleague has privately confided: “No one knows why he does so much Sydney radio. But it’s less than we have to hear from him here in Melbourne, so no one’s complaining too loudly.”
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Chairman Dad
Nine’s $10,000-a-head Liberal Party fundraiser at its Sydney studios last September — which prompted even its own political editor, Chris Uhlmann, to protest to his bosses — saw the network cop a media walloping.
But that hasn’t stopped Seb Costello, the Melbourne-based senior Nine reporter, ex-European correspondent and budding 9Now sports anchor, from becoming a one-man anti-Labor wrecking ball. As the son of current Nine chairman and ex-Lib federal treasurer Peter Costello, Seb’s political opinions will always be more conspicuous than those of other Nine identities. So surely Costello Jr wouldn’t be shocked that a series of missives he has tweeted against Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has gained him plenty of attention.
What may have blindsided him, however, was the virtual bloody nose he copped on Twitter from one of his own, Nine Melbourne sports reporter Corey Norris, for his anti-Andrews diatribes.
Seb’s recent tweets had variously dubbed the actions of the Andrews government as being “embarrassing”, and as “obviously” failing.
But last week, he amped it up. On Wednesday he alleged hypocrisy by Andrews about COVID rule breaches.
“Everyday day (sic) the media is emailed details about individuals who didn’t follow Covid rules,” Costello Jr tweeted. “On the other hand, if the media asks Premier Andrews about a Govt-initiated Hotel Quarintine (sic) program that didn’t follow Covid rules, we’re told we’re not allowed details.”
That was enough for Nine’s Norris, who took the brave (some would say crazy) step of publicly slapping down the boss’s son: “I reckon enough of the blame game Seb,” he sternly tweeted. “It won’t fix anything in the short term.”
But a public slapdown from his colleague has done nothing to silence Costello Jr, who on the weekend was right back on the political attack.
“The Andrews Govt has now let the virus get out of where it shouldn’t have got out of (Quarantine) and into where it shouldn’t have got into (Aged Care),” he tweeted.
That one prompted some more unflattering responses, including one asking whether Costello Jr was still a Liberal Party member
The Andrews Govt has now let the virus get out of where it shouldn’t have got out of (Quarantine) and into where it shouldn’t have got into (Aged Care).
— Seb Costello (@SebCostello9) July 25, 2020
We need to stop being distracted by the drip-fed examples of individuals not complying & start focusing on who is running this.
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