News Corp’s star columnist and Sky News host Andrew Bolt has not hidden his admiration for far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, inviting him on his TV show to discuss all the things the two men have in common: a disdain for feminism, the Black Lives Matter movement and the left in general. But Bolt has stepped it up a notch, choosing to MC the alt-right pin-up boy’s Australian tour next month. Bolt will fly around the country to host Milo’s events – in Adelaide on 1 December and Perth on 2 December. Introducing Milo on The Bolt Report in September, Bolt excused his remarks about paedophilia as “too rude” and a “misjudgment” for which he had apologised. Milo had suggested that sex between “younger boys” and older men could be a “coming-of-age relationship … in which those older men help those younger boys discover who they are”.
Of his involvement with Yiannopoulos’ The Troll Academy Tour, Bolt said: “Milo is interesting and challenging. I don’t agree with everything he says, but Milo gets it right more often than he is wrong, particularly on liberty. Much more important is that he should be free to speak. The attempts to shut him down are a disgrace and I am joining Milo on this tour to defy them. Free speech must be defended above all. But Milo has also been a hugely entertaining guest several times on The Bolt Report on Sky News and I’m looking forward to meeting him in person here in Australia.”
Mark Latham, the former Labor leader, will MC Milo’s other nights, in Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast. The Troll Academy Tour is being mounted by Penthouse publisher Damien Costas in the name of free speech. “Whether it was Martin Luther King and the freedom riders in the 1960’s or Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, free speech is part of Australia’s robust democracy and the cornerstone of western civilisation. Penthouse is proud to be bringing Milo’s Troll Academy Tour to Australia.”
But not everyone agrees that Milo has anything in common with Martin Luther King. Under pressure from critics, Fox FM radio station pulled $10,000 worth of ads promoting the tour, prompting Costas to call them “poor snowflakes”.
OEPs at the ABC
A month after the ABC axed Lateline, an additional 11 staff from ABC News have taken voluntary redundancy. They include journalists, a camera operator, producers, a graphics supervisor, a radio reporter, a news editor, a director, an operations supervisor and a newsreader. They sure don’t sounds like the types of roles the ABC needs to make redundant, but the overall plan is to free up funds for more digital roles. In typical ABC speak, the voluntary redundancies were referred to by news director Gaven Morris as OEPs or “opportunity to express a preference for redundancy process”.
Weekly Beast has learned that Matt Peacock, senior ABC 7.30 reporter and the staff-elected director to the ABC board, is one of those taking redundancy. It’s not the first time Peacock has found himself on the cutting edge of cuts – despite rubbing shoulders with MD Michelle Guthrie at board meetings. In 2014 Peacock found himself placed into a redundancy “pool” alongside his colleagues on 7.30 to be assessed by management against a “skills matrix” in a process dubbed the Hunger Games. Peacock survived that matrix but sources say he has chosen to exit now ahead of his board role coming to an end in a few months’ time. Peacock is the author of Killer Company: James Hardie Exposed, which details his role in uncovering the corruption and spin of the asbestos industry over three decades. Actor Ewan Leslie played him in the 2012 ABC TV miniseries Devil’s Dust. Radio current affairs show PM will have an all new line-up next year. PM’s longtime executive producer Edmond Roy, a former foreign correspondent who was the late Mark Colvin’s right-hand man, is taking a year’s leave of absence from the RN’s flagship.
The ABC has taken the axe to Classic FM as well. Following the end of Saturday Mornings with Margaret Throsby last month, the 15-year-old music education program Keys to Music will be dropped in order to “reach a wider audience for education content” online. The producer and the presenter Graham Abbott will both be made redundant, along with four other Classic FM presenters who work across other programs. To expand the digital offering ABC Classic FM will hire four more digital staff.
Seven calls for Doctor Blake
Seven has unveiled its 2018 programming lineup at a big event for advertisers, media buyers and journalists in Melbourne. A second event was held in Sydney at the same time last week using a livestream of the proceedings. The chief executive, Tim Worner, said Seven had been number one for 11 years but also conceded that 2017 had been its “toughest year in recent history”. The lengthy legal battles with Amber Harrison as well as the drop in ratings early on in the year were major contributors. On Thursday, at the annual general meeting, the company announced major cuts in the order of $105m over the next two years. Chairman Kerry Stokes said the company’s financial results over the past 12 months were disappointing: Seven posted a full-year net loss of $744m in mid-August. It remains unclear how many jobs will go.
For it’s 2018 slate, Seven has “borrowed” from Nine’s success with Australian Ninja Warrior and will launch its own gruelling competition-style show called Australian Spartan. Surprisingly, Seven has also also looked to Aunty for two shows. It has picked up the popular drama series inexplicably dropped by the ABC six months ago, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, and will also air a new interview show brought to them by Andrew Denton of ABC’s Enough Rope fame. Seven’s head of drama, Julie McGauran, said the show starring Craig McLachlan was a no-brainer: “The Doctor Blake Mysteries is not only the number one Australian drama, it has one of the most adoring fan bases a show could wish for.”
A shock jock in a million
With its stable of highly paid opinion columnists including Paul Kelly, Janet Albrechtsen, Dennis Shanahan and Greg Sheridan, the Australian must have expected to pick up an award for opinion writing at its own in-house News awards on Friday. But no, the newly named Achievements in Opinion, Commentary and Provocation award went to rightwing shock jock Paul Murray for his live show on Sky News. The timing was bad because Murray had just had to admit that he was a “million per cent” wrong when he declared three months ago that Malcolm Roberts was not a dual citizen. “So tonight, we are going to go through a series of documents that I have seen, that I have read, that are a million per cent correct … and I believe very clearly proves you aren’t a dual citizen,” Murray told Roberts then. The high court didn’t agree.
Staying with Sky News, the pay TV channel has unveiled its 2018 lineup and everyone’s favourite Twitter guy and the Australian’s associate editor Chris Kenny is nowhere to be seen. Weekly Beast understands Kenny and Sky boss Angelos Frangopoulos don’t always get on. For his part though, Kenny says he’s “keen to explore radio”.
Vale Malcolm Colless
News Corp’s legendary powerbroker Malcolm Colless has died aged 73 from a suspected heart attack. Colless worked his way up from a cadetship on Sydney’s Daily Mirror to become a top News executive and at his retirement in 2007 he was the longest-serving director of News Limited. In 1977 Colless got the scoop on the press gallery that Sir John Kerr was about to resign and decades later as an executive he launched the Herald Sun and steered the company through its pay TV and online ventures.
