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In this week’s On Background, One Nation hires a talk radio veteran, The Hollywood Reporter Australia lands with a flop, the ABC gets a new HR boss and what Seven’s earnings drop means for Peter V’landys’ NRL rights deal dreams
One Nation’s shock jock whisperer
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation might be surging in the polls, but its elected representatives are still struggling to get a grip on the party’s various populist brain farts.
The latest was Hanson’s plan to ban foreigners from owning residential property in Australia, which left her comrades flummoxed. Poor Barnaby Joyce had to re-record his response to Sky News’ Andrew Bolt, confirming that, no, permanent residents would not be kicked out of their homes.
Over on 2GB, accidental senator Sean Bell squared off against host Mark Levy, and also struggled to clarify what would happen to permanent residents, ultimately conceding that the “policy is one that’s being brought forward and investigated”.
Levy was unimpressed.
“Sean, come back to me when you’ve actually got an answer,” he said.
“This is turning into a train wreck, mate.”
Bell is no doubt hoping to avoid further on-air humiliations, and has recently enlisted the help of an experienced shock jock whisperer. Former 2GB producer Phil Sylvester took over as the senator’s media adviser last month, and a brief perusal of his CV suggests plenty of experience putting out bin fires.
Sylvester has enjoyed a lengthy professional relationship with scandal-prone radio man Chris Smith. In 2010, he departed as Smith’s producer at 2GB, shortly after Smith was (briefly) suspended following allegedly inappropriate behaviour towards several women at an office Christmas party.
Shortly after Smith was dumped from roles at 2GB and Sky News following eerily similar behaviour in 2022 (Christmas party-booze-female staff), he and Sylvester teamed up to launch a crisis management firm. More recently, Sylvester was Smith’s EP at 2SM where the broadcaster is enjoying his fourth second chance.
Sylvester and Smith recently won best networked radio show at the Australian Audio Awards, before the producer decided it was time for a new challenge.
“To be honest, I’ve been chucking rocks from the sideline for long enough and thought it was time to get in the game,” Sylvester told On Background.
Given One Nation’s meteoric rise, and intimate relationship with scandal, the game won’t be dull.
The Hollywood Misreporter
At first glance, it seemed the perfect antidote to the Australian media’s distinct lack of razzle-dazzle.
Last month, The Hollywood Reporter, announced it was bringing a spin-off of tinseltown’s favourite rag to these shores. The Australian edition, which launches this week, is a partnership between model-cum-influencer Paris Raine (who is the publisher) and editor-in-chief Sean Sennett, a muso described in the promotional material as a “veteran journalist”. Although few in the local industry knew much about either.
Still, On Background was ready to toss aside our scepticism. More competition is good, after all. And on Tuesday evening, THR looked to have landed a hot industry scoop to usher in week one, announcing on Instagram that actor Patrick Brammall, the co-star and co-creator of Colin from Accounts, also getting a bit of buzz from his role in The Devil Wears Prada 2, would be hosting this year’s Logies.
Only problem was that THR was wrong. Dead wrong.
On Wednesday morning, this masthead’s CBD column broke the news that Robert Irwin, scion of the crocodile wrangling dynasty, would be this year’s Logies host. THR’s Brammall post was swiftly deleted.
So what happened?
“The information was verified with more than one industry source and was believed to be accurate at the time of publication,” Raine told this column.
“Unfortunately, in this instance the information we received proved to be incorrect. Once we became aware of the error, the post was removed and corrected,” she said.
“We take accuracy seriously and are reviewing our verification procedures, including introducing an additional layer of confirmation for similar announcements moving forward.”
Aunty shuffles the deck chairs
Moves are, as ever, afoot at the public broadcaster.
Last month, ABC senior HR executive Josh Keech departed just moments after this masthead lobbed questions about his baffling decision to take his staff out on a yacht owned by Tom Snow, scion of the billionaire family that owns Canberra Airport.
It’s fair to say his departure wasn’t mourned by ABC staff. Keech had led ABC management’s bargaining team during protracted enterprise agreement negotiations with the union that led to the first strike at the public broadcaster in two decades.
The ill-fated yacht trip, or team-building exercise, came after four of Keech’s six-person team left in the first three months of the year.
But the ABC has now found a replacement, with Rena Christmann set to join as Head of Employee Relations & WHS, who will take over Keech’s old job in September. She joins from UNSW, which is also where Aunty’s director of strategic communications Freya Campbell came from last year.
If On Background can offer up a friendly word of advice it’s stick to land.
Could Seven give V’landys a $4 billion headache?
As forecast by this masthead, Southern Cross media announced job cuts and a profit downgrade on Thursday morning.
The business, created from the merger of Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media and Southern Cross’ radio networks also announced $65 million to $70 million in write-downs of legacy TV contracts.
Essentially, one TV deal did not deliver the commercial benefits expected. No word on which deal, and company insiders were quick to hose down suggestions that the contract in question was sport-related.
Naturally, the first question on our lips was what this means for Peter V’landys. The rugby league supremo, who takes the whole Sydney-Melbourne rivalry more seriously than most, is desperate to sign a new NRL TV rights deal that eclipses the $4.5 billion seven-year package inked between the AFL, Seven and Foxtel in 2022.
Foxtel has since been bought by British-based DAZN, owned by Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, and last year, this masthead reported that some DAZN insiders believed it was overpaying for the rights, a claim the company later dismissed.
Seven and Foxtel are also part of a $1.51 billion TV rights deal for cricket, set to expire in 2030-31. No doubt, all parties to that deal were horrified by last summer’s Ashes series, when two of the five Test matches lasted for just two days.
V’landys has lined up Seven’s owners Southern Cross and Amazon as potential suitors as he tries to drive up the price of the NRL. The current NRL deal with Nine (owner of this masthead) and Foxtel, worth $2 billion over five years, expires at the end of 2027.
But V’landys’ hopes have also been hit by a sluggish advertising market, and the Albanese government’s long-delayed gambling advertising reforms, which could eat into the budgets of free-to-air networks to the tune of about $30 million a year.
With those headwinds blowing, V’landys needs industry competition to drive the price up towards his magic number of $4 billion over five years. That will be a steeper climb if Southern Cross’ commercial position makes it seem a less serious contender.
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