Matildas play havoc with ABC flagship program Four Corners
The ABC’s flagship investigative program will see its expose into PwC and the consulting industry buried in the ratings battle as Australia tunes into the Women’s World Cup blockbuster.
If Four Corners runs an expose on the consulting industry and no one in Australia is watching, did it ever really happen?
The ABC’s flagship investigative program has been confronted with that type of dilemma over the past fortnight, as it looks to give its long-awaited examination of the Big Four consulting firms and the PwC scandal, titled Shadow State, a decent run.
The problem has been the huge interest among Australians in the performance of the national women’s soccer team, the Matildas, in the FIFA World Cup.
Unfortunately for Four Corners, the team has been inconsiderately playing during its 8.30pm Monday slot. So the ABC show made the late move to delay the screening of Shadow State – which was due to run last Monday night – by a week because of the Matildas’ crunch game against Olympic champions Canada.
Apart from PwC, the story deals with other Big Four firms’ associations with government departments, such as KPMG’s association with the Department of Defence.
The Four Corners reporter on the story, Angus Grigg, threw his hands up a day before the show was due to air, tweeting: “Hi everyone, we‘re holding our @4corners ‘Shadow State’ for a week. While the rise of the consultants is a massive story we can’t compete with the @TheMatildas.”
How right he was. The replacement Four Corners episode, Inside the Shein Machine (about emerging Chinese fast fashion giant Shein) was thrashed about as badly in the ratings as Canada was beaten by Matildas (4-0). The game recorded 2.46m viewers nationally for Seven, including streaming: a record for an Australian women’s team sporting event. That was nearly seven times Four Corners’ like-for-like numbers on the night of 373,000.
Crisis seemingly averted for Shadow State. But what looked like a savvy decision then didn’t look so great a week later.
The Matildas’ huge victory over the Olympic champions meant they finished top of their qualifying group: meaning they will once more play during – you guessed it – the Four Corners timeslot on Monday night.
If the Matildas had finished second in their group, the game would have run in a Monday 5.30pm slot – averting a clash with Four Corners.
But the unexpectedly big win has left Four Corners potentially facing an even bigger ratings killer. This time, it will be the Matildas – potentially with inspirational captain Sam Kerr on the team – playing for a quarter-final berth in a blockbuster game at its home World Cup against Denmark.
Media watchers are already predicting the Matildas/Denmark game will attract a new record national audience for a women’s team sport of three million-plus.
So where does that leave the unfortunate Four Corners episode on PwC and the consultants? The ABC announced on Thursday that they would press ahead with the Monday night screening, guaranteeing that very few are likely to watch it live in competition with the Matildas.
But in the hope of gaining some viewers who would otherwise be watching the Matildas’ biggest game so far, the ABC experimented with putting the Four Corners episode on iview and YouTube a day early, at 5pm on Sunday. Good luck with that one.
ABC’s media Garma contingent the largest in the land
All of the country’s major media organisations have sent contingents to join PM Anthony Albanese at the Garma Festival in remote northeast Arnhem Land – but none match the ABC’s.
Aunty, which described itself in a press release on Friday as the “official media partner” of Garma, has committed the resources to back that status.
At least nine ABC presenters and editorial executives have been sent to the four-day festival, but we’re told a legion of other journalists and support staff are there for the public broadcaster as well.
The ABC contingent includes Q+A host Patricia Karvelas and federal political reporter Dana Morse (who jointly hosted the ABC News Channel’s live coverage of the opening ceremony on Friday, with Karvelas noting during the coverage that it was “unashamedly a ‘yes’ event”); the ABC’s head of Indigenous News, Suzanne Dredge; Insiders host David Speers and the show’s executive producer Sam Clark; ABC News Breakfast’s sports presenter Tony Armstrong; ABC deputy planning editor Meredith Griffiths; children’s news show Behind the News co-presenter Jack Evans; and the ABC’s voice correspondent and The Drum co-host, Dan Bourchier – who is hosting a special edition of Q+A from the festival that screens on Monday night.
Some commercial TV and print representatives have grumbled that they have had to make do with much tighter contingents, as beancounters keep a tight rein on the prohibitive costs of dispatching staff to Garma.
Diary is told airfares from the southern capital cities are averaging a prohibitive $5000 per person, while there is a further cost to media attendees of $600 per person for meals, an air mattress and a tent at Garma.
As a result, the size of most contingents has been kept small.
The Australian and News Corp dailies, AAP, Nine’s TV and print outlets, Seven, Ten, The Guardian, SBS, Bloomberg, Sky News and The West Australian have all kept their numbers to one to three staff each. Many print outlets are relying heavily on the five commercial photographers provided for the festival to keep costs down, rather than sending their own.
A senior ABC source has told Diary the ABC numbers were “entirely appropriate” given the upcoming referendum:
“We only send the absolute minimum number of staff required to produce flagship shows like Insiders, Q+A and news reporting from the event across all platforms,” the source said. “It’s a very tightly controlled invite list given the cost and anyone who does go is expected to help out running cables, for example.”
The ABC did not respond when asked about staffing numbers at Garma.
Simmering feud
A simmering year-long feud between ABC Radio Melbourne host Virginia Trioli and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews emerged in plain sight on her show on Friday.
Trioli delivered a diatribe about Andrews near the start of her show, all but implying that the Victorian Premier (who she dismissively described at one point as “the other politician”) was dodging her program, as she instead pointedly platformed Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto in a lengthy interview and talkback session.
But before she even started the Pesutto interview, a feisty Trioli saved some choice words for Andrews: who hasn’t appeared on her show since before last year’s Victorian election despite countless requests.
Diary was told that Andrews wouldn’t be rushing back on to Trioli’s show any time soon, after an October interview that was ostensibly to deal with the Victorian flood crisis at the time.
Trioli memorably wound up that interview by scolding the Victorian Premier: “Now look, Premier, you’ve requested not to be asked about policy or politics today, you say, out of respect to those who are dealing with the floods,” she began. “But it has been, I just checked, almost a year to the day when you were last in this studio or on this show for an interview. Can you give an assurance to the listeners that you will be back here for a proper, in-depth interview within a couple of weeks?”
On Friday, 10 months on, Trioli made it clear the Andrews boycott remained alive and well. “In the interests of balance and fairness – and also accountability – I just want to remind you that we regularly invite the Premier on this program,” Trioli told her listeners.
“We are regularly turned down. We invited him again on the program this morning. It took a little while to even get a response. But when we did, the answer was no.”
Trioli then delivered Andrews a lesson in accountability, at one point even dismissively referencing him as “the other politician”.
“The offer stands – the offer stands permanently, as it does on any show like this, in any city or country like this,” she said.
“The Premier of the state is welcome to come on at any stage. He refuses to at this stage, so I don’t want it seen unfairly as one politician getting a more elevated platform over another. The other politician, the Premier of this state, has declined that platform. But to repeat the invitation, Mr Premier, you’re welcome here anytime.”
As if to underline her displeasure, Trioli pointedly noted that her studio guest, Pesutto, is “always happy to take your calls”.
Maybe his absence was something to do with reports he was sick last week but Diary wouldn’t be betting on Andrews coming back on Trioli’s show any time soon. At least she’s in good company in being in Andrews’s bad books, along with 3AW’s morning radio king Neil Mitchell who the Premier has boycotted for six years.
Nine Melbourne newsroom’s sad tally board
The future of Nine’s Melbourne 6pm news bulletin continues to be a significant talking point in the southern capital.
Diary hears that after The Australian’s story a fortnight ago about Nine’s dilemma involving the future of its much-loved Melbourne newsreader, Peter Hitchener (amid a fall in ratings in 2023) the story was the talk of the newsroom. It should be noted that Hitchener’s heir apparent, weekend newsreader Alicia Loxley, has experienced an equivalent fall in ratings this year in percentage terms for the Friday-to-Sunday bulletins that she reads.
The elephant in the room was apparently addressed by Nine’s Melbourne news boss Hugh Nailon in private meetings on the Monday the story appeared, in which he uttered some stirring words to strongly defend the bulletin to staff.
However, there remains one glaring reference to Nine’s ratings performance during 2023 in its Docklands newsroom: an unmissable “0” on its whiteboard – marking the number of ratings weeks that the Nine Melbourne bulletin has won this year.
Insiders assure us that the tally of ratings week wins is not purely a feature of Nine’s Melbourne newsroom, but all of its newsrooms across the country, and is used as a “motivational” tool for staff to stir their competitive instincts against arch rival Seven.
Jon Faine’s surprise sign-off from media career
Prominent columnist at Melbourne’s The Age Jon Faine brought his three-decade media career to an abrupt halt on Sunday, when he announced to readers that he was choosing a new directorship over any continued role in the media.
After informing readers Sunday’s column would be his “last”, he revealed he’d accepted a job on the Museums Victoria board.
Faine’s unexpected departure comes four years after he started the column, soon after quitting the plum ABC Melbourne morning shift after 23 years.
Faine noted that keeping both the column and a role on a Victorian government board would have created “both the perception and the possibility of a conflict of interest”.
He also noted: “Surrendering a platform in mainstream media is a perilous step for someone who for so long has been used to amplifying their opinions and wallowing in their self-importance.”
Faine, 66, memorably signed off on his media career with the following line: “Now I am heading off to join the other fossils and dinosaurs at the museum.”
When Diary reached Faine on Sunday, he admitted: “I’ll miss it”, before quickly adding: “Never say never.”
Treaty or no treaty? Albo ties himself in knots
Will a successful “yes” vote in the voice referendum mean a subsequent treaty with Indigenous Australians?
Listeners to breakfast talk radio interviews with Anthony Albanese in the past fortnight or so would be more confused on the issue than anyone.
In an interview last month with 2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham, the PM seemed to definitively put that issue to bed, repeatedly stating that the voice was “not about a treaty”.
But when Radio National’s breakfast host Patricia Karvelas interviewed the PM on Wednesday on the same issue, he had his tap dancing shoes on. She relentlessly probed Albanese on whether a “yes” vote for the voice would also spell a treaty with Indigenous Australians.
Over 19 minutes of to-ing and fro-ing with Albanese during an interview that dealt heavily with the voice, Karvelas invoked the words “treaty” and “treaties” no less than 10 times, in an attempt to get the PM to fess up on whether the referendum was the first step towards a treaty. But over 13 questions about the voice and treaties, Albanese refused to directly answer Karvelas’s fundamental question: did he support, or would he preside over, a treaty with Indigenous Australians if the “yes” vote was successful?
A nervous-sounding Albanese ducked and wove when confronted with Karvelas’s first question: “Do you support a treaty, Prime Minister?” After pausing to take a deep breath, he responded: “Look, what is before the Australian people is a referendum, which is about voice, which is the first part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.”
In the minutes that followed, Albanese took the art of dodging Karvelas’s questions and giving verbose answers to new levels. He first tried to offload responsibility for treaties on to state governments, saying that they were happening “with the states right now”.
Karvelas then asked four times in a row whether Albanese was therefore saying “the commonwealth will never have a role with treaties”.
After he responded to the question with three lengthy “non-answer answers” – at one point telling the RN Breakfast host “not to get sucked in” – Karvelas valiantly gave it one more go.
“OK. So do you think the commonwealth has a role on negotiating treaties?” she asked.
Albanese wasn’t budging, riffing with yet another lengthy non-answer answer that ultimately claimed that the current agitation against the voice was a “rerun” of “negative campaigning” that occurred around the time of the Mabo decision in 1986.
Listeners were none the wiser on whether Albo would pursue a treaty if there was a “yes” vote. This was a significant departure from his seemingly much more definite response, exactly two weeks earlier, during his interview with Fordham which kicked off a national debate about whether a “yes” vote would mean a treaty, when Albanese repeatedly made it clear that a successful referendum had nothing to do with a treaty.
Fordham asked: “Surely as part of the Uluru Statement – we have a voice, we have treaty, we have truth-telling – as part of a treaty, won’t there be compensation?”
Albanese put up a denial wall: “This is not about a treaty,” he said four times, in response to repeated questions from Fordham.
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