Inside the lux lives of Australia’s free-to-air TV bosses

They rake in millions running our four major free-to-air TV stations, but where do the bosses of the ABC, Seven, Nine and Ten sit down to watch telly?

They are meant to have their fingers on the pulse of the nation or at least on the nation’s ageing population of free-to-air television viewers who determine what Australians want to watch.

However, the elite media bosses who rake in millions running the nation’s major free-to-air television companies stand in stark contrast to the growing ranks of middle-income earners and battlers who help them achieve their revenue targets by tuning in to watch their sports programs, reality shows, soaps and news programs.

Nowhere is that clearer than in their choice of exclusive and affluent private home addresses.

Politicians can continue to make their cases for media companies moving their operations to the western fringe of Sydney, the nation’s media capital, in an attempt to keep pace with the changing interests of our population and create jobs. But as long as the harbour views remain fixed in the east, the current breed of media bosses appear unlikely to follow.

Hugh Marks – Managing Director ABC

Lives – Paddington

The newly installed managing director of the ABC has pivoted with his move from commercial television to the national broadcaster.

It was much the same for the master of transformation when in 2019/2020 he swapped family life in a Californian bungalow in Artarmon on Sydney’s leafy north shore for more glamorous digs in a harbourside apartment in Balmoral.

Marks was soon sharing his carefree new life and $2400-a-week rented apartment with new girlfriend Alexi Baker, who previously worked under him at Nine.

Newly installed ABC managing director Hugh Marks. Picture: NewsWire

Hugh Marks' Paddington property. Picture: realestate.com.au

In 2021 he and Baker splashed out $8 million on a tidy four-bedroom, three-bathroom refurbed terrace on the south side of the harbour city in Paddington.

Last week Marks started his new job running the ABC out of the Ultimo headquarters on the western fringe of the CBD.

Whether he will venture as far west as Parramatta where the ABC last month opened an expensive new purpose-built facility, remains to be seen. There has been no rush from staff to date, or so we hear.

Marks’ Paddington home keeps him within proximity to the ABC’s gung-ho chairman, Kim Williams, Marks’ boss, who lives just 2kms away in Darling Point.

Matt Stanton – CEO Nine Entertainment

Lives – Balgowlah Heights

The British-born newly appointed head of Nine Entertainment received his formal appointment a fortnight ago and already some are speculating on the likelihood of Stanton upgrading from his family home to something swankier in a suburb more in keeping with some of the stylish homes favoured by Nine’s former chiefs.

Palm Beach? Woollahra? Dover Heights?

Stanton lives 11km drive from Nine’s North Sydney headquarters on Sydney’s Northern Beaches at Balgowlah Heights in a five bedroom/three bathroom family home he purchased in 2008 before undergoing a renovation and adding a swimming pool.

The home is a short walk to Dobroyd Head and Castle Rock Beach.

Having worked in groceries, beverages and retail, the golf enthusiast – and his preferred Manly stomping ground – was propelled into the spotlight in January after he went to the aid of a teenage boy being pursued by a large mob at Manly Wharf.

Nine’s new CEO Matt Stanton with wife Sarah on holidays. Picture: Facebook

The Stantons live in Double Bay, just 11km from Nine’s North Sydney Headquarters. Picture: realestate.com.au

The Stantons, Matt and wife Sarah, were enjoying a meal near Italian restaurant Fratelli Fresh when the mob of some 40 young men started to chase the teenager into the restaurant.

The episode put the spotlight firmly on Stanton who at the time was in the role as Nine’s acting CEO after being tapped to temporarily replace former Nine CEO Mike Sneesby who stood down last year.

The father-of-three first joined Nine’s magazine publishing division, then called ACP, in 2008 as chief operating and finance officer. He was promoted to CEO in 2012, just in time to offload the division to Bauer Media for $525 million.

Stanton would go to Bauer with the sale before the radically reduced business would later, in 2020, be sold for just $50 million.

Stanton’s appointment last week from his prior role as Nine’s chief strategy and finance officer could augur well for US property conglomerate CoStar which last month made a bid for Nine’s real estate platform, Domain.

Jeff Howard – CEO of Seven West Media

Lives – Mosman

Seven’s CEO Jeff Howard wasted little time upgrading from conservative Chatswood on Sydney’s leafy north shore to the sexier more exclusive harbourside suburb of Mosman after leaving media company HT&E/ARN and moving to Seven as CFO in 2020.

Howard and wife Sarah are now the proud owners of a fashionable $5.3 million four-bedroom Federation house in one of Sydney’s most affluent suburbs.

Over pre-dinner drinks, they can boast of sharing a postcode with former Qantas boss Alan Joyce, novelist Liane Moriarty and a long list of prominent miners, bankers, architects, lawyers and media stars.

Having replaced outgoing CEO James Warburton in April 2024, the self-described “boring” but gutsy accountant’s accountant Howard has overseen a period of enormous upheaval at Seven.

Despite this he remains something of a mystery man at Seven.

A leaked internal staff memo last year revealed Howard was a “family man” and keen runner who didn’t smoke, do drugs or drink coffee – all of which makes him something of an anomaly in television and give him good reason to be looking over his shoulder at Seven.

Seven West CEO Jeff Howard. Picture: LinkedIn

Mr Howard made the move from Chatswood to Mosman.

Beverley McGarvey – President of Network Ten

Lives – Double Bay

Born and raised outside Belfast in Northern Ireland, McGarvey grew up in a strife-torn neighbourhood where often retreated from the sectarian violence on the streets by losing herself in televised British soap operas.

Despite this affinity, McGarvey would become the woman who pulled the plug on Australian soap Neighbours twice – once in 2023 and again last month following a brief stay of execution.

After moving to Australia and Ten from Ireland via New Zealand in 2006, McGarvey appears to have shed her working-class background.

She and husband Ben Tannous, a one-time Ten lawyer who later worked for production companies Screentime and ITV and is now studying screenwriting at NIDA, would make their home in one of Sydney’s oldest and most prestigious suburbs, Double Bay.

Network 10 supremo Beverley McGarvey. Picture: Network 10

McGarvey and her family live in ritzy Double Bay. Picture: John Appleyard

The Double Bay address pitches McGarvey into a property market not dissimilar to former Ten star Lisa Wilkinson of whom McGarvey commented, in a note to colleagues in 2023, that The Project star had been reduced to tears when telling McGarvey she might have to sell her home to pay legal costs relating to the Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation action against both Ten and Wilkinson if Ten didn’t pay her costs.

A judge later ordered Ten to cough up.

By all accounts McGarvey, expected to be earning upwards of $1.5 million + bonuses at the privatised Ten, is very much at home among in Sydney’s east.

She and Tannous are also owners of a three-bedroom apartment in the suburb’s ritzy Kensington Gardens purchased in 2017 for $2.5 million. The $1300-a-week apartment has been on the rental market since 2022.

Nice to have a second income when your network came fourth in the national ratings in 2024 behind Seven (29.8 per cent), Nine (27.6 per cent) and the ABC (18.6 per cent). Even the network’s margin over fifth-placed SBS has slipped with SBS nudging double digits with 9.3 per cent compared to Ten’s 14.7 per cent.

Originally published as Inside the lux lives of Australia’s free-to-air TV bosses