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May 1, 2026 — 5:00am
In this week’s On Background, an ABC veteran’s political event goes up in flames, Kayo forgets its ad-free policy, a looming payday for big media, and Rebel Wilson’s gripes with Foxtel’s billionaire owner.
Alan Kohler’s teal U-turn
The ABC’s nightly finance presenter, Alan Kohler, was an unlikely headline speaker at a ticketed event in Melbourne, helping search for teal candidates in the federal seat of Jagajaga.
According to the flyer which landed on On Background’s desk, tickets to the event titled “Alan Kohler: Home Truths on the Housing Crisis” were selling for $35 a pop, though if you’re a renter, you could score one for a reduced price of $20. Who are Voices of Jagajaga? They’re a part of the Community Independents Project, a political support network often linked with the urban teal movement in Australian politics.
Flyers for the event in the inner north-eastern suburb of Ivanhoe in Melbourne say the organisation aims at holding leaders accountable and to bridge the gap between people and politicians, local views and government policies and actions. But it also promotes the group’s active search to find candidates to run in the Victorian state election this year in both Eltham and Ivanhoe.
This was apparently all news to Kohler when asked about the organisers of the event on Thursday, and whether he had informed the ABC about his involvement in a political event.
“I thought it was a housing event,” the veteran journo said after promptly informing the ABC.
Kohler told On Background he kiboshed the appearance and the ABC agreed with his decision. “I understand my obligations as an ABC staffer. Anyway, the whole thing is my stuff-up,” he said. “I was stupid. I should’ve realised it was a political event.”
Voices of Jagajaga, for their part, declined to comment but said it was meeting to decide whether to postpone the event.
For the unlikely few who have not heard of Kohler, he is arguably Australia’s most experienced business journalist. He has worked for the ABC for nearly three decades and has at different times been a columnist for The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Kohler was also The Age’s editor in the 1990s.
These days, he is best known for hosting a nightly finance segment on the 7PM ABC News bulletin. Under the ABC’s new public comment guidelines, a person in his position is considered “very high risk” to conflicts of interest, regardless whether they are full-time or a contractor.
The ABC updated its policies regarding external work and public comment following the Antoinette Lattouf sacking saga.
“High-profile presenters are often seen as faces or voices of the ABC regardless of whether they work directly for us or are contracted to a co-production company,” ABC policy states.
That is that, then!
Don’t wanna miss a thing
There is only one place to catch the footy ad-free these days; that is, if you’re willing to shell out for a Kayo subscription. The kind folk at Foxtel taunted Seven this year with a new cut of their “don’t want to miss a thing” ad, flogging their ad-free coverage of NRL and AFL games. No ads during play is quite the edge on their broadcasting competitor despite the $45 per month subscription fee.
So naturally, punters weren’t happy when Hawthorn’s win against the Gold Coast Suns last weekend was interrupted when the broadcast unexpectedly switched to several minutes of ads, just as the final quarter kicked off. Not even after a goal, just ads during play. Bummer!
While the interruption doesn’t exactly square with the not “missing a thing” tagline, the company said it was a matter of “human error” and there have been steps put in place to prevent it happening again.
Subscribers will be pleased to know the spokesperson confirmed there are “no plans to introduce ads during live play”.
Len Down Under
During another eventful day in the witness box on Wednesday, actor Rebel Wilson brought her personal gripes with The Deb’s backer, and Foxtel’s somewhat new owner, billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik, back to the fore.
“My understanding is there is somebody [whose] funds are paying for these proceedings and all that stems from money derived from Sir Leonard Blavatnik,” Wilson said while in the witness box, sitting as a defendant in a defamation case brought against her by actor Charlotte MacInnes.
It is a pretty complex defamation suit with plenty of players involved. But at the heart of it, Wilson reckons Sir Leonard is funding the case in our Federal Court, alongside three other separate cases overseas, after what she claims were his attempts to kill the film The Deb, her directorial debut.
Wilson, who hasn’t actually provided hard evidence that Blavatnik is funding the case, said the claim was aided by the fact that Blavatnik’s plane was in Sydney last week. MacInnes’ barrister suggested Wilson was making all of this up, and a Foxtel spokesperson said Blavatnik was not and had not been in Australia. Blavatnik denies funding the case.
But that didn’t stop Wilson accusing people on “the team of a Russian oligarch billionaire” from arriving in Sydney last week ahead of the trial. Blavatnik was born in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine) and now holds British, American and Greek citizenships. He made his initial fortune through the privatisation of assets after the fall of the USSR.
Wilson putting the accusation on court records follows several other accusations last month, when Wilson took to Instagram (where she has a mere 11.1 million followers) to allege that “billionaire USSR born oligarch Sir Len Blavatnik” was now the money behind killing The Deb and the people who she “complained” about to him directly.
Wilson shared an email she addressed to “Dearest Len” in 2024 complaining about several executives including Amanda Ghost, a producer on the movie who appeared in court this week. She also went to New York to plead her case in person, she said.
“Instead his money has funded 4 lawsuits across two continents against me,” she wrote.
MacInnes, who is suing Wilson, is also signed to Atlantic Records, a subsidiary of Warner Music, which is owned by Blavatnik’s Access Industries.
A big question down under is whether Len will want his company to stump up to renew its rights to broadcast the NRL. But funding another Rebel Wilson film? That seems less likely.
Payday
Unsurprisingly, the ABC, News Corp and Nine are expected to be the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s new News Media Bargaining Incentive, replacing the old, failed code.
While the new policy encourages Google, Meta and TikTok to strike commercial deals with media companies directly, a failure to do so will effectively see those companies taxed based on their local revenues, leaving it up to the government to distribute those funds themselves.
But unlike the past code or other government programs, this time the government plans on distributing any collected funds based on the number of journalists employed by media companies.
How will it do this? It is likely to include an audit on media companies to ensure there is no fudging of numbers or overstating the number of journalists employed by each to get access to more cash.
While the definitive number of journalists in Australia is opaque, industry estimates count around 60 per cent of all journalists employed locally work for just three organisations, the ABC, News Corp and Nine, the latter of which owns The Herald and The Age.
Add Southern Cross Media to that pile, which includes the Seven Network and West Australian Newspapers, and that is another large chunk. Employment of journalists is around as concentrated as market share is in Australia.
Under the government’s definitions, a full-time equivalent journalist includes anyone involved in the production of core news content. Anyone who has worked in a newsroom knows defining who is involved in the production of “core news content” can be a little tricky.
What it won’t include is non-editorial managers, graphic designers and marketers producing non-news content, and curiously “narrators, anchors and presenters who present core news content that is produced by journalists”. With a total pool of cash estimated to be in the region of $250 million, this could mean as much as $150 million heading toward those three organisations alone. Financial figures are far from clear at this stage, however, and will depend on who does deals with whom.
That didn’t stop Nine’s television news division making 20 jobs in Sydney redundant this week as part of its “Future News” investment program. No on-air talent is impacted, On Background was told. It is all part of a multi-year transformation of upgrading and investing in the newsroom, director of news and current affairs Fiona Dear said.
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