Waleed Aly decides against going global

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In this week’s On Background: a spanner in the works for Waleed Aly’s ABC summer plans, Aunty’s top brass grilled, Mike Sneesby’s Saudi side gig, and Foxtel adds to its scrap pile.

Aly Broadcasting Corp

This week the ABC announced former Project host and public academic Waleed Aly will present ABC Radio Mornings in all states (barring Western Australia) over the summer break from December 22 to January 9.

That takes quite the strain off ABC Local’s summer team, and it looked like it was a bit of a soft launch for an increased presence for Aly on Aunty, now relieved from his Network Ten duties. The word is that after his national fill-in gig, Aly was all but set to join the ranks of one of the ABC’s top podcasts (and Radio National shows), Global Roaming, which is co-presented by Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald.

The show is said to be held in very high regard by the erudite senior management team and board at the ABC and is moving to several episodes a week next year. It would have meant Aly, a Gold Logie winner, placing most of his eggs in the ABC basket – he already hosts The Minefield.

But apparently the plans have now fallen through (some have suggested over pay negotiations) and he won’t now be joining Macdonald and Doogue.

Radio National continues to be beefed up, as it is a well-documented favourite of chair Kim Williams, and new boss Hugh Marks has made a point of taking big swings when the broadcaster has a hit, which they reckon they have in Global Roaming.

The ABC declined to comment and Aly offered an alternative story, saying while the ABC approached him about the idea, it wasn’t that it wasn’t feasible. “It was definitely not a situation where we had a basic agreement and then couldn’t agree on money. It’s nothing like that.”

Senate grilling

Staying with the ABC, the public broadcaster’s top brass were lucky enough to get a second grilling in as many months this week, as they were back in Canberra for a supplementary Senate estimates hearing, with managing director Hugh Marks and News boss Justin Stevens (among other execs) summoned.

It began with questions over the ABC’s handling of a historic asbestos crisis at a number of its Victorian sites in the 1980s, which has directly led to the deaths of three people. It turned into a fight over alleged unfair ABC coverage of the Liberals.

Justin Stevens and Hugh Marks at Senate estimates this week.

There were extensive back-and-forths between Liberal backbencher Sarah Henderson, her Liberal peer Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Marks and Stevens over one piece of analysis by Patricia Karvelas, and over comments made by ABC reporter Isabella Higgins in September in which she referred to remarks made by Price about Indian immigrants as “racist”.

Price managed to fit in the question of the day.

“Can you name any ABC presenter, especially in the ABC’s news and current affairs television programs, who you would consider to be conservative in their thinking?”

Marks responded: “I don’t know that that’s the right question for us to ask because, again, what any of our people think therefore should be irrelevant.”

“Is Tom Switzer still a presenter on one of your programs?” Price asked, referencing the former Radio National presenter who left the ABC two years ago for the right-wing think tank the Centre for Independent Studies. Switzer now regularly writes for The Australian and Spectator Australia but has left the think tank following sexual harassment allegations, which he denies.

But there was one line from Stevens in his defence of Karvelas that really struck a nerve with the Liberal Party duo.

“Anyone who watches Afternoon Briefing, reads her writing, knows that she is incredibly objective and impartial,” he said. “I would encourage people to read the raw article rather than going off the commentary that’s sat around it from Sky and others.”

Friends in high places

Nine’s former boss Mike Sneesby has gone from heading up Australia’s biggest media company to something of a diplomat in the Middle East as he settles into his role as chief executive of MBC Group, the largest broadcaster in Saudi Arabia, which recently became majority state-owned.

Two weeks ago its English-language radio station MBC Loud FM (also, bizarrely, home to Australian radio star Byron Cooke) posted a video to its Instagram page, showing Sneesby and his execs taking the Australian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Miles Armitage, on a tour around the MBC offices and studios in the nation’s capital. Curiously, there was also a contingent from the University of Wollongong’s Global Enterprises division.

Sneesby is a proud UOW alumnus and for years has been involved with the uni. But in July he was appointed to the board of Global Enterprises, a subdivision of the university tasked with taking its educational goals to the rest of the world. Great gig!

It’s a convenient link to have in Saudi Arabia as it was only three months after UOW announced a new campus in Riyadh. Regulatory hitches have since stalled the grand opening, which was due for the second half of this year. There have also been a number of questions raised about the country’s more than chequered human rights record.

This week the university told this masthead it has become the first foreign institution to receive a Saudi investment licence under the country’s Vision 2030 program, and co-ed English courses are due to commence next year. Surprisingly, they will be co-ed.

Foxtel scrap heap grows

There were more changes announced at British broadcaster Foxtel this week. Its two less-popular streaming platforms Flash and Lifestyle are to be retired and folded into Binge. Binge and Kayo will be moving onto the DAZN technology stack in February, On Background was told.

While Flash, a news streaming service, never really got off the ground, Lifestyle was created only 18 months ago to help launch Hubbl’s (which is in “maintenance mode”) Stack & Save function. All of Lifestyle’s content was already previously available on Binge.

Stack & Save was a major selling point for Hubbl – the more subscriptions you paid for through Hubbl, the more cash you saved. The only hitch was Netflix was initially the only non-Foxtel streaming service available for the discount.

Well, with the retirement of these two streamers this week, Foxtel has also quietly shelved Stack & Save.

“This will result in a monthly increase of $5, $10 or $15, depending on the discount tier you were previously receiving,” a note posted online said. Damn!