TV legend David Leckie dies aged 70

One of the driving forces of the Australian television industry, David Leckie steered both the Nine and Seven networks to the peak of their success.

Former Nine and Seven chief executive David Leckie at his home in Centennial Park, Sydney, in 2016.

They were the lions of Australian television with names as familiar to us today as the stars on their Nine Network: Kerry Packer, Sam Chisholm and David Leckie.

Packer died in 2005, Chisholm in 2018, and on Tuesday morning, Leckie, aged 70, died peacefully at his farm in the NSW Southern Highlands, surrounded by his wife Skye and their adult sons.

Executives such as Leckie and Chisholm once lorded over media empires in an era before the internet, and before personnel departments were rebranded “human resources” and managed out the tough, aggressive, no-nonsense achievers – if they had made the “mistake” of hiring them in the first place, that is.

That was what David Leckie most certainly was. “You never ended the day not knowing how you’d done,” said one Sydney executive who worked with him for years.

David and Skye Leckie. Picture: Instagram

One of the driving forces of the Australian television industry, Leckie steered both the Nine and Seven networks to the peak of their success.

Leckie worked in senior leadership positions under Packer at the Nine Network for 23 years before being hired by Kerry Stokes in 2003 to take over the then lagging Seven Network.

When, towards the end of his life, Packer ruminated on what had happened to his pride and joy (and profits), he said simply: “They’ve stuffed the place up.”

Channel 9 had been unbeatable in ratings for decades, and ratings mean dollars. But the men who made those dollars were gone: Chisholm to BSkyB in England, where he turned that business around, and Leckie to Seven, where he did the same.

Seven West Media managing director and chief executive James Warburton said in his ¬tribute on Tuesday: “David was a true legend of the Australian media industry and a loved part of the Seven family.

“Inspiring, engaging, loud, passionate and famously difficult at times, he was an extraordinary salesperson and an intuitive TV programmer. Without a doubt he was the best TV executive this country has ever seen and an important influence and mentor for so many people. He was once labelled ‘the last of the rock star CEOs’, and I’d say that was a pretty good description.”

If executives at Channel 7 saw his extension – 7177 – pop up on their desk phone, often moments after the television ratings had been released, they knew it was most likely bad news. Leckie was big, brash and his volume was mostly set to 11. But he was also a generous man who could dispense charm and compliments.

Seven West Media Chairman Kerry Stokes and Leckie in 2003. Picture: Gareth Morgan

Nonetheless, in the early days at Seven he did that sparingly at a network that had for years seen -itself as just a worthy runner-up.

In Leckie’s world, runners-up were losers.

He transferred from Nine to Seven in the early 2000s, about the same time as legendary news boss Peter Meakin and Melbourne’s Channel 9 boss Ian Johnston. It was a heart-lung transplant of Nine’s management talent to the opposition, and it would prove devastating to Nine and a life-giver to Seven.

Leckie, with terrific self-confidence, understood that it was the news and current affairs hour from 6pm, along with sport, that pumped the blood through the Nine Network. He brought not just that belief, but the skills to support the news and current affairs teams to his new employer.

Leckie, Meakin and Johnston delivered to Seven not just their management skills, but the winning culture they had grown up with and that had been the stamp of Nine owner Kerry Packer.

Sad to hear David Leckie is dead.He was a terrific CEO at Nine. Backed me when there was pressure, even from Kerry Packer.

— LaurieOakes (@LaurieOakes) July 20, 2021

Neither was run on fear, just a belief that the teams could do better and would do better. Or you’d better look elsewhere.

“What Leckie was able to do was give you that self-belief,” said former long-serving Seven news executive Steve Carey, among Australia’s most respected television news journalists.

“He made us believe we were every bit as good as Channel 9. I credit Leckie and Meakin, but particularly Leckie, with that fierce self-belief that we could and would be better at all costs.”

One of Leckie’s oldest friends, Seven’s commercial director Bruce McWilliam, recalled that during his days at Nine, Leckie was one of the few executives who was brave enough to go toe-to-toe with Packer.

Leckie with a young James Packer.

“David revered Kerry Packer, but he would stand up to him. I think he was the best of all of Packer’s executives in terms of dealing him with directly.

“David was a proud guy, he would answer back. He loved Packer, even though Packer sacked him in 2001.

“But of course when Packer got rid of him, Nine struggled to get anyone as good as David.”

McWilliam said piloting Seven to the top of the ratings was the highlight of Leckie’s professional life. “It made him very happy to leave Nine and to then build Seven up to No.1. That was a source of enormous satisfaction to him.”

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull and Leckie at Easts Rugby Club, at Bellevue Hill in Sydney, in 2018. Picture: John Feder

But McWilliam said that one of the secrets to Leckie’s longevity in the industry was the loyalty he engendered from his staff.

“He was a team builder,” McWilliam said.

Nine’s Today show host Karl Stefanovic also referred to Leckie’s sense of loyalty. Posting a tribute on Instagram on Tuesday, Stefanovic wrote: “I met him years ago at Nine and I shit myself every time I saw him coming at me in the corridors. He was frightening.

“Years later, I would lean on him for advice and he never wavered. When things were bad he was there.

“Beneath the toughest of exteriors, I loved his brutal, direct, unique and engaging company.”

Former Nine political journalist Laurie Oakes tweeted that Leckie was a “terrific CEO”.

“Backed me when there was pressure, even from Kerry Packer,” Oakes wrote.

Meakin said he didn’t know of any other television executive who could match Leckie in their judgment of what worked in commercial television.

“There are many people in this industry who owe him a massive debt, many of them their jobs. He was brave, he was brusque, he never took a backward step. He never left you in any doubt about his opinion. He was a champion of free to air television to the end.”

Indeed, when Leckie moved from Nine to Seven, he knew that sport – as much as news and entertainment – was the key to television network success.

In Britain, Chisholm’s company had won the rights to the English Premier League, and Leckie and Johnston sought to win back the TV rights to Australia’s most-watched sport – AFL.

In 2006, they did. In a deal with Foxtel and Ten, Seven won back the rights to broadcast AFL games. At a match at the MCG soon afterwards, Leckie, a lifelong rugby union man, needled the then AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou with the quip: “It’s not much of a game, is it?” But Leckie was well aware of what Seven had just achieved.

And he was also aware that AFL was just part of the equation for success. Seven had to advance on all fronts. Leckie let the staff know that they had paid a lot of money for the AFL rights, but the network had to push hard to ¬improve on every level.

“He had a holistic view,” said Carey. “He was good at wrapping around programming. News was the building block and you built all the other programs around it. He was across it all. He was very good at picking the right shows, the right mix. He knew what people wanted.”

And staff appreciated that Leckie mostly picked the right people for the right roles, believed in them and didn’t interfere. And he always backed them, which was not common in the back-stabbing world of Australian TV.

Leckie is survived by his wife Skye, their sons Harry and Ben, and Tim, Leckie’s son from his first marriage.