Is former Iranian prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert planning a tell-all interview with one of the major news or current affairs shows at the commercial networks early in 2021?
Commercial network sources tell Diary this subject has been very much on the table.
And it is none other than “agent to the stars” James Erskine who has initiated quiet conversations with TV networks behind the scenes on behalf of Moore-Gilbert.
Erskine — who in a glittering managerial career has managed everyone from Michael Parkinson to Shane Warne, David Warner and Ian Thorpe — has personally been in touch with network powerbrokers about the possibility of an interview with Moore-Gilbert.
Normally with someone like Erskine, the subject of money would come up pretty early. But we’re assured there has been no mention at all of the folding stuff — yet.
“He’s just testing the waters,” one network source said.
Maybe that’s just as well. Network sources tell Diary that in the current constrained financial circumstances for media, six-figure sums for interviews are over.
But with ratings on the line in 2021, let’s see if that stance holds.
‘I feel disrespected’: Ita strikes back
ABC chair Ita Buttrose has accused Communications Minister Paul Fletcher of “disrespect” in his move a fortnight ago to use Twitter to make public a highly critical letter about the ABC board.
In strong comments made to Diary on Sunday, Buttrose has set the stage for her own robust letter to be sent on Monday, after Fletcher tweeted out his original correspondence which was fiercely critical of both last month’s controversial Four Corners #MeToo episode, “Inside the Canberra bubble”, and Ita’s decision to let it run.
In reference to the Minister’s decision to make the tough letter public through Twitter, Buttrose has simply told Diary: “I feel disrespected.”
Today I have written to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose with questions concerning the Four Corners program “Inside the Canberra Bubble†that was broadcast on 9 November 2020. pic.twitter.com/7acqFpdAL4
— Paul Fletcher (@PaulFletcherMP) November 30, 2020
We’re told Buttrose will use her own response to Fletcher’s letter on Monday to strongly defend the November 9 story about government frontbenchers Christian Porter and Alan Tudge, as well as the ABC’s decision to allow it to run. She is also set to take things up a notch by asking whether Fletcher, in sending the letter, has respected the ‘‘editorial independence’’ of the ABC.
In Fletcher’s tweeted three-page letter a fortnight ago, he asked 15 questions of Ita, including whether there had been a “failure by the board in its duty” to ensure the story was “accurate and impartial”.
But Buttrose has told Diary she won’t be doing a Fletcher by turning to social media to post her own private correspondence: “I can tell you one thing: I won’t be putting my letter on Twitter,” she told us. “That’s not how I operate.”
She would not be drawn further on this issue, but sources close to Buttrose say she privately thinks Fletcher’s letter was a “discourteous way to write to a chair of a commonwealth entity”.
Buttrose’s comments will raise the temperature in an increasingly feisty relationship between the ABC and the government. Relations deteriorated in the lead-up to the airing of the Four Corners story after representations were made from ministerial offices to board and management.
After a grilling from David Speers on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, Fletcher denied that he had plans to “sack” the ABC chair from what he admits is a “challenging” job over the story, but otherwise didn’t dial down his demand for Buttrose to justify why it aired.
“I do expect a serious and substantive response from one of the most serious and substantive figures in the Australian media landscape … The ABC Act imposes the responsibility on the ABC board that the ABC’s journalism is accurate and impartial.”
But Buttrose has told Diary she won’t be deterred from standing up for the ABC and its shows: “And if you look at my history, you know I’ll do that.”
Buttrose said that it would be misguided to say that she took her job as the ABC’s chief protector anything other than “very seriously” — saying she feels a “responsibility”.
“I’m the chair of the ABC. It’s a very big job,” she said.
“You’ve got to take your responsibility seriously. I was brought up on the ABC, and my father was assistant general manager of the ABC. So no one should doubt my commitment.”
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“We have to work together”
Ita Buttrose also had interesting things to tell Diary on a separate issue: the revelation last week by Paul Fletcher of a world-first new code to make Google and Facebook pay for news from traditional media organisations.
The ABC originally had been excluded from Fletcher’s list, but will now be included among the media organisations to benefit.
Buttrose says it is time for traditional media organisations to bury their tribal differences and unite in the face of a far bigger threat — the new media giants like Google and Facebook — as newsroom jobs disappear.
“There are a lot of great people at the ABC, as there are at News Corp and other media companies,” Ita tells Diary. “We have to work together. Jobs are being dropped here, there and everywhere. But the more pressure there is, the more we have to work together.”
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Tennis move uproots Nine’s schedule
The three-week delay in the start of the Australian Open is wreaking havoc with the schedules of the major networks for the start of 2021.
Most affected is the Australian Open’s broadcast partner, Nine. Normally the Australian Open starts just before the ratings season, with Nine normally using Roger Federer and co to heavily promote its ratings juggernaut Married At First Sight, which starts immediately after the tennis.
This year, things will be different.
To compensate for the schedule change, Diary understands Nine has hurriedly assembled a super-sized two-night Married At First Sight dinner party “all-stars special”, to screen on two consecutive Sundays, January 31 and February 7 2021.
The dinner parties were filmed on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week in Lilyfield in Sydney’s inner west, and — surprise, surprise — seemed entirely geared towards ratings-generating drama by featuring some of the show’s most controversial characters, including “Cyclone” Cyrell Paule, Jessika Power and Nasser Sultan.
If drama is your thing, the alleged “all stars” didn’t disappoint, with reports of screaming matches, tantrums and walkouts involving the most-hyped characters.
Meanwhile, Nine continues its efforts to get a substantial discount on its rights to the 2021 Australian Open because of the COVID-driven timing change.
Seven is cagily weighing up its options in relation to the schedule change, which is set to now see the Australian Open launch in the first week of ratings.
From what we’re told, the three-week Holey Moley — which Seven had originally planned to go up against MAFS — will now go head to head with the tennis, with another game show, Ultimate Tag, now a leading contender to go up against MAFS. But things remain fluid.
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Secret talks on Moore-Gilbert tell all
Is former Iranian prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert planning a tell-all interview with one of the major news or current affairs shows at the commercial networks early in 2021?
Commercial network sources tell Diary this subject has been very much on the table.
And it is none other than “agent to the stars” James Erskine who has initiated quiet conversations with TV networks behind the scenes on behalf of Moore-Gilbert.
Erskine — who in a glittering managerial career has managed everyone from Michael Parkinson to Shane Warne, David Warner and Ian Thorpe — has personally been in touch with network powerbrokers about the possibility of an interview with Moore-Gilbert.
Normally with someone like Erskine, the subject of money would come up pretty early. But we’re assured there has been no mention at all of the folding stuff — yet.
“He’s just testing the waters,” one network source said.
Maybe that’s just as well. Network sources tell Diary that in the current constrained financial circumstances for media, six-figure sums for interviews are over.
But with ratings on the line in 2021, let’s see if that stance holds.
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Busy Basil back on radio
Basil Zempilas is hell-bent on never living a quiet life. It isn’t enough for him to simply rest on the laurels of being Seven’s best-known west coast sports anchor, with his newest role as Lord Mayor of Perth thrown in.
Diary now understands that Southern Cross Austereo will this week announce that Zempilas will become the new face of breakfast on Triple M in Perth.
Busy Basil’s latest career move comes just weeks after Zempilas announced that he would have to leave his prior breakfast radio gig on the Nine-owned 6PR because he could no longer keep working for Nine while his main media job was with the Kerry Stokes-owned Seven.
But rather than enjoying the few extra hours to catch his breath while he also grapples with his new role of running the city of Perth, he decided he needed to replace one breakfast gig with another.
Zempilas will be joined in his lucrative new radio gig by a Seven West Media stablemate: The West Australian’s columnist Jenna Clarke. We’re told Clarke will also multi-task, staying at The West while doing breakfast. An announcement is imminent.
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Drum beats back ‘bias review’ criticism
Five months after Diary revealed the existence of the Blackburn Review at the ABC, it was finally released last Thursday — on the last night the Senate was sitting.
It was third time lucky for Queensland LNP senator James McGrath when he drummed up the numbers in the Senate to compel the release of former BBC consultant Kerry Blackburn’s report, after failing with first a Senate question on notice and then an FOI request for her $52,000 report.
So why the extended resistance to releasing it? Because the ABC claims the Blackburn review was meant to be an internal report into whether there was bias in the ABC’s 2019 election coverage — a sensitive issue when TV personalities and a government-funded broadcaster are involved.
Perhaps the most publicised finding related to the ABC’s 6pm panel show, The Drum, with the claim three episodes in May last year showed “a predominance of views which favoured Labor”.
But the public release of that view has irritated The Drum’s boss, Annie White, who is adamant the show is conducted under the media’s most “stringent” editorial policies, and is “the most diverse news program on the ABC”.
“The Drum deliberately avoids broadcasting an hour-long partisan shouting match between jaded political hacks,” White says. “Such fare is available on other networks.”
The Drum lines up about 1500 people a year to appear in unpaid, voluntary guest and panellist spots on the show.
White points out that in recent weeks, The Drum’s guests have been as diverse as it gets, ranging from “two people from coal mining communities debating climate policy” to “a jellyfish scientist who has been diagnosed with Aspergers on her reservations about gene editing” and “an actor and playwright with Down Syndrome”.
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Greiner makes an ABC defence
There has some resistance from one Liberal Party member who appeared on the most contentious episode of The Drum.
Kathryn Greiner, elder stateswoman in the NSW Liberal Party, appeared in the May 6 show, which Blackburn found to be “30 per cent Labor/Left positive” compared with just “4 per cent Coalition/Right positive”.
The episode also featured Peter FitzSimons, who makes no secret of leaning left, crisis management expert Feyi Akindoyeni and ACOSS boss Cassandra Goldie.
But Greiner, a 48-year member of the Liberal Party, hints that suggestions of anti-Liberal bias on May 6 and on other episodes of The Drum are a stretch.
Greiner tells Diary: “I’ve found that The Drum has always been welcoming of a diverse range of views. I’m a long-time member of the Liberal Party. From what I recall, in last year’s episode, I said my piece, and Peter said what he wants to say. I didn’t feel there was bias one way or the other.”
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Melbourne’s Mr Smith goes to Sydney
We’ve long known conservative politicians will do anything to get on 2GB, but this is ridiculous.
For much of a pandemic-dominated year, 2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham has been using Tim Smith, wannabe Victorian opposition leader and outspoken Member for Kew, as a de facto Melbourne correspondent.
But on Fordham’s last show of the year, Smith took it to a whole new level: flying up to Sydney (“at my own expense”, he tells Diary) just to appear on 2GB in person.
While Smith may not be popular in parts of the Victorian Liberal Party, Fordham welcomed him with open arms. “You’ll be hearing more from him on this show in 2021,” he says.
But why does Smith do it? It’s hardly a vote-winner in Kew.
Smith, who describes himself as “ambitious”, reckons 2GB breakfast gives him a priceless presence on the “national stage”.
A mask-less Smith also hasn’t wasted an opportunity to stick the knife in from up north, tweeting a photo of himself sharing a beer with Fordham in a Sydney bar, and telling Diary: “Coming to Sydney, I feel like I’m flying back into my own country. But in Melbourne, I went to a bottle shop last week, accidentally forgot my mask, and I was told I couldn’t be served.”
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Mail’s quality ‘bird poo’ yarns
It’s that time of the year again, when Diary releases its prestigious annual list of Australia’s most prolific journalists.
And what a bumper edition we have for you in 2020. Once again, it’s the colourful writers at the Daily Mail who as a group beat all comers on sheer story volumes.
Research conducted for Diary by media monitoring group Streem has found the Mail’s famous brand of quality journalism has once more produced seven of the country’s 10 most prodigious hacks in 2020, measured by the number of articles written.
But alas, the man who topped the list last year, Caleb Taylor, the Mail’s fearless investigative journalist on Z-grade reality stars, has lost his crown.
Taylor’s now-famous brand of analysis of papp photos (he’s perhaps best known for his prodigious use of the term “toned tummy”), could only manage fifth this year, with 1175 articles.
So that has left a new Daily Mail queen of alleged “TV and showbiz” gossip. It is ….(drumroll please): Marta Jary.
So far in 2020, Jary has submitted an astonishing 1324 articles for the Mail — or six a day, based on a five-day week.
Our favourite Jary stories? It’s hard to go past this trailblazing bird poo story from March: “Naomi Watts is hit with a wad of bird droppings as she takes a quick break from quarantine.”
A close second was: “Married At First Sight’s Martha Kalifatidis breaks her lockdown to gorge herself on KFC with a friend in Sydney’s Bondi.”
And Jary’s scoops are being churned out fast. She produced 340 more articles than Taylor did to win last year. And churnalism rules overall, with the Streem top 10 writing a third more stories than last year.
BBC apologises to staff over Russell Brand sex complaints
Some employees had stayed silent about the behaviour of the comedian and actor because they believed he ‘would always get his way’, a BBC director said.
Questions about ABC platforming ‘radical fringe Jewish voice’
Jewish groups have questioned why the national broadcaster has chosen to platform and ‘mainstream’ a Jewish ‘radical fringe voice’, in its coverage of anti-Semitic events in Sydney.