In case you’ve been living under a rock, Lisa Wilkinson has been out on the hustings marketing her book – and the show she hosts, Ten’s The Project, wasn’t about to miss out on the action.
For Ten executives, it had all the elements of a ratings winner: a lovefest interview between Wilkinson and her co-host Hamish Macdonald, juicy revelations about her “gender pay gap” with Karl Stefanovic back when they co-hosted the Today show, and an opportunity to kick the rival Nine network into the bargain.
There was just one problem. For some reason, Wilkinson being a victim of underpayment was a major turn-off for Ten’s viewers. The Sunday Project attracted its lowest numbers since Wilkinson and Macdonald were reunited nearly two months ago, with just 270,000 viewers tuning in for the show’s first half-hour when the interview screened.
More importantly for Ten, the poor ratings rubbed off on its entire line-up. The highly publicised launch of Celebrity MasterChef, which features everyone from Rebecca Gibney to Gordon Ramsay, was soundly beaten by both Daryl Somers’ Hey Hey We’re 50 on Seven and Nine’s The Block.
Ten executives, we’re told, have been scratching their heads about the numbers, asking: “What went wrong?”
One possible issue was while Wilkinson and Macdonald were already sitting next to each other live in the studio, they oddly threw to a pre-taped version of themselves having a separate chat at Wilkinson’s Sydney harbourside mansion.
Then there was the actual content of the chat. At one point of the prerecorded interview, Wilkinson revealed she wasn’t in touch with Stefanovic any more. That prompted Macdonald to ask Wilkinson if Stefanovic would still “like” to be her friend. At that point, Wilkinson looked off camera, saying: “I’d rather we didn’t use this, if you don’t mind, because I don’t want to look like, I’m, you know (trailing off). But I was hurt. I was hurt.”
Oddly, that grab still made it to air, despite Wilkinson’s request not to use it. She also didn’t miss Nine over its alleged decision to allow a pay gap between Stefanovic and herself. “I think the idea was to humiliate me, because I’d been in negotiations to try and close the gender pay gap,” she said.
When Macdonald asked her how big the gap was, she replied: “Doesn’t get much bigger than the gap I experienced. I was very expendable.”
Back live after the interview concluded, there was then an outbreak of mutual love between the pair, after Wilkinson thanked Macdonald for making the interview a “safe space”.
“Love you Lise,” Macdonald said. “Right back at you,” Wilkinson replied.
But Diary hears after the low ratings from the interview, there’ll be no further plugs on The Project for Wilkinson’s book before its launch early next month.
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Dan’s wife bans media enemy no.1
One of the great media and political feuds of the Covid-19 pandemic has been Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ boycott of his No.1 media enemy, Melbourne talkback king Neil Mitchell.
But it has emerged the feud is no longer restricted to Dan. Now the entire Andrews clan has turned against Mitchell. The 3AW morning host tells Diary he has been banned on Twitter by Andrews’ wife Catherine Andrews, despite being neither “obscene or threatening” towards her.
A notification of the move Mitchell sent to us shows Dan’s better half blocked Mitchell not only from “following” her, but even from “viewing” her tweets. She has also dished out identical treatment to Mitchell’s senior producer, Heidi Murphy.
“Perhaps the family that bans together, stays together,” he says. “I am now banned by both the Premier and the first lady.”
Through this column, Mitchell has repeatedly beseeched Andrews to come on his show this year, so the biggest morning radio audience in Melbourne can hear his views on Covid-19. He has even offered to restrict his questions purely to the pandemic. But despite this, Andrews has often refused to even acknowledge the requests, and hasn’t appeared on Mitchell’s show for four years, ever since a testy interview between the pair on his show in 2017 when Mitchell accused the Premier of “political trickery”.
The 3AW morning host is not the only foe of the #IStandWithDan crowd to be blocked by Mrs Andrews. Just over a year ago, as revealed back then by this paper’s Strewth column, the Premier’s wife also banned The Australian’s Victorian political reporter Rachel Baxendale and her Herald Sun counterpart Alex White.
Mitchell says of the bans: “Catherine Andrews is a civilian, not an elected official, so she is entitled to block who she likes. But I can’t work out why she would bother blocking me. I usually block people who are obscene or threatening. But in this case I am guilty of neither.”
Still, Mitchell upped the ante last week, giving the Premier both barrels in a searing editorial about the Victorian IBAC corruption inquiry, which has been investigating whether Victorian Labor MPs misused public funds.
“The other issue is the Premier, Teflon Dan,” Mitchell said. “We’re told this has been rife, a war zone in the southeastern suburbs. That’s Daniel Andrews’ patch. It’s alleged deals were done with the Socialist Left faction. That’s Daniel Andrews’ faction … What was his role as leader of the government? Did he try to clean it up, as was his responsibility?”
Don’t bet on any appearance by any Andrews family member on Mitchell’s show for the foreseeable future.
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“Everyone’s side but ours”: Abbott vs. the ABC
Conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs has never been on the ABC’s Christmas card list. And that won’t be changing any time soon, with news reaching Diary that the IPA is about to release a serialised podcast series called ‘Their ABC’, which will examine “what’s wrong with the ABC and how to fix it”.
The headline act of the new podcast series, we’re told, is a lengthy critique of the national broadcaster by Tony Abbott — who has never been the ABC’s biggest fan.
Judging by some early grabs of the former prime minister’s comments obtained by Diary, his take is likely to generate plenty of media noise.
“It seems that they are on everyone’s side but ours,” Abbott says.
“They tend to be against the Australian government, regardless of its persuasion, but particularly if it’s a centre-right government.
“If Australia is in a disagreement with another country, they tend to take that country’s perspective and assume that we’ve done something wrong.”
Abbott adds: “We‘ve tried almost everything, different managing directors, different directors … any number of observations about where things should go. But it’s the culture that’s the problem.”
Plenty of other conservatives are poised to join Abbott in the series, including his former chief of staff and Sky News host Peta Credlin, ex-deputy PM John Anderson, One Nation’s Mark Latham, and Coalition senators Andrew Bragg, Sarah Henderson, Bridget McKenzie, Alex Antic and Matt Canavan.
The interviews have been conducted over nearly a year around the country by the IPA’s communications director, Evan Mulholland. The first instalment of the five-part podcast is out next week.
The podcast will also examine at length some of the IPA’s pet subjects, including whether the ABC should be privatised, allowed to advertise, or offer a subscription service.
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‘Bastardry’: Dom’s 2GB initiation of fire
As Shakespeare once noted: “Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.” Dominic Perrottet is fast realising the difference between his previous role of handing out goodies as Treasurer and his new role taking them away as Premier, as he landed for the first time under heavy fire from 2GB’s morning shock jocks Ray Hadley and Ben Fordham.
Their fury concerned the Perrottet government’s announcement on Fordham’s show on Friday that it was postponing travel from Sydney to regional NSW for a third time until November 1, after it had originally been set down by his predecessor Gladys Berejiklian for October 11.
It would be an understatement to say that news didn’t go down well with the shock jocks. Morning host Hadley took it particularly badly, calling Perrottet a “dickhead”, and accusing him of “bastardry” and “lies” over the announcement. He also claimed the Premier was “hiding” by dispatching NSW Deputy Premier Paul Toole to break the bad news on Fordham’s show, rather than fronting up himself.
The 2GB morning king also revealed a “forceful and frank” conversation he had privately with Perrottet just before going to air, in which Hadley made it clear he would have NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns on the show “every day” to show the Premier up.
“I’m telling Dominic Perrottet, and I told him this personally, I’ll spend as much time as I can now illustrating the lies you’ve told to the electorate,” he said.
It wasn’t much better on Fordham’s show either, with the breakfast host repeatedly berating Toole, and ordering him to “apologise” to the NSW electorate for the “betrayal” which had seen it break promises “so many times”.
Even 2GB afternoon host Deb Knight, about as far away from strident as it gets, dubbed the regional travel delay “the first big failure by Dominic Perrottet”.
With the shock jocks circling the wagons, maybe it’s just as well Perrottet last week assembled a team of six spinners with plenty of tough media experience to help him negotiate the challenging post-Gladys Berejiklian era.
They include gun new recruit and ex-Channel 7 TV reporter Mike Duffy, and no less than three ex-Daily Telegraph journos (former Telegraph managing editor Trevor Seymour, ex-night chief of staff Leigh van den Broeke and ex-court reporter Ian Paterson).
Let the games begin.
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Gladys’s partner departs ICAC media circus
The Gladys Berejiklian media circus is returning with a vengeance this week, with the start of remote ICAC proceedings investigating whether her dealings with disgraced Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire constituted “a breach of public trust”.
But one key legal figure is missing from the original ICAC proceedings about Maguire exactly a year ago that started it all: Arthur Moses SC, Berejiklian’s barrister at the time.
Why? Because as has become very well-known, Moses and Berejiklian are now in a committed relationship. With Moses now having such a personal interest in the matter, it would be unusual for him to represent her in a legal setting this time. Instead, Diary is reliably informed that high-profile barrister Bret Walker SC – who has represented both Christian Porter and George Pell recently – will take charge of Berejiklian’s legal interests this time.
It’s Walker who is understood to have given Berejiklian key legal advice in the hours leading up to her bombshell resignation as NSW premier just over a fortnight ago. Walker is said to have told her she was on “safe ground” to stay on – but Berejiklian ultimately chose to depart anyway.
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Armytage takes a haircut on $700K deal
The good news for Samantha Armytage is that despite an eventful year that has seen her depart Seven’s Sunrise, she has managed to line up a new deal with the network.
But now no longer a breakfast TV host, Diary hears Armytage’s re-cut deal with Seven is a financial reflection of her downsized obligations with the network.
It was revealed last week Armytage’s new roles with Seven would be as a “special guest” on Farmer Wants A Wife, Seven’s hit romance reality show that matches lonely farmers with city women, as well as making a handful of appearances on the network’s “marquee” racing events.
That’s a very different gig from the one she negotiated under her previous contract, in which as Sunrise host she had to interview everyone from prime ministers to Covid-19 medical experts.
At one point, Armytage described herself on Instagram as “one of the country’s senior female journalists”, and her financial package — understood to be worth about $700,000 a year – reflected that.
But speaking last week of her new special guest role on Farmer Wants A Wife, Armytage was sounding more like a reality TV identity, relating her guest stint on the show to her new-ish marriage to farmer Richard Lavender.
“I know first-hand that falling in love with a farmer is just about the most wonderful thing you can do …. I really want to help a farmer find a wife,” Armytage said From Diary’s understanding, her more relaxed schedule working with farmers and horses won’t be quite as lucrative for Armytage as her previous 3am starts on Sunrise.
But given she’s still on Seven’s books, does that leave the door slightly ajar for Armytage to revert to her previous role as one of Australia’s “senior female journalists” at some point?
Stranger things have happened.
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MKR 2.0 hunts global ‘mass market’ chefs
The hunt is on for a big-name international cook to come to Australia and help resurrect the fortunes of Seven’s My Kitchen Rules – which famously suffered a ratings disaster in 2020 – when it returns next year.
Diary is reliably informed that Seven’s brief is for a “mass-market” global identity with instant cut-through to join MKR 2.0. We hear Nigella Lawson, Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver are the calibre of names on Seven’s wishlist to give MKR the turbocharge it needs.
Lawson and Ramsay are involved with Ten’s MasterChef on non-exclusive deals, leaving open a stint with MKR.
We’re told Seven will downsize MKR much like it did The Voice this year.
That could be an added incentive for a Nigella, a Gordon or a Jamie to join the show, or possibly record both MKR and MasterChef on one trip to Australia once borders are open.
The other big question is whether ex-MasterChef stars Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan will be involved in MKR 2.0.
That would represent a delicious irony, with the now Seven-contracted Preston and Mehigan having repeatedly taken potshots at MKR when they were safely ensconced on Ten.
When still on MasterChef, Mehigan said: “My Kitchen Rules is quite obviously a blatant rip-off (of MasterChef). The set looks similar to ours and the phrases are the same.”
My, how things have changed.
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