ABC staff reject the ‘Hunger Games’
Redundancies in News at the ABC have been put on hold pending negotiations between ABC management and the staff unions. “Staff and union representatives were keen to stress again that no selection pools should be operating yet, until there has been an appropriate opportunity to have genuine consultation,” staff were told by news management in a note on Monday. “I made that clear in my first update to staff last Friday, and I am happy to repeat it again here. No ABC managers will be progressing those selection processes or identifying proposed redundancies from among the pools until further notice.”
But on Wednesday afternoon the dispute escalated dramatically when about 300 ABC staff rejected the “unfair and inhumane pooling process” announced by management last week (known by some as ‘The Hunger Games’) and passed the following resolution at a union meeting.
“Staff instruct the MEAA and CPSU to take all possible actions to defeat these proposals. Staff commit to support each other and their unions in these actions.
“The current management proposal is cruel and unfair and is detrimental to staff’s mental health and psychological welfare. We call on Mark Scott, ABC managing director, to intervene and institute both a voluntary redundancy and substitution process for all affected areas across the ABC as a matter of urgency.”
Dateline EP moves on to Al Jazeera
Dateline executive producer Peter Charley has landed himself a plum job as head of Al Jazeera’s North American investigations unit just six weeks after quitting SBS. Charley told The Weekly Beast his family would relocate to Washington after he finished his contract with SBS at the end of the month. With a highly-resourced team of 20 investigative journalists to manage, Charley’s job is to seek out the global scoops, like the one the unit broke last year about Yasser Arafat being poisoned with polonium.
“It’s going to be an extreme contrast to the budget I had to work with at Dateline,” Charley said. “We are not constrained by financial considerations at all.”
Charley, a former Lateline EP, says he made it clear to SBS management he wouldn’t be comfortable working at Dateline next year after the budget was stripped back and the format tinkered with to make it “lighter”. Since Charley resigned a further 12 staff have left Dateline.
In his note to staff about Charley’s departure, SBS’s news and current affairs chief Jim Carroll said under his leadership since 2007 the program had won multiple Walkley Awards, UNAA Media Peace Prizes and New York Film Festival Medals. “I first met Peter some 25 years ago when we were both at the Seven Network and have always considered him as a person and journalist of the highest integrity, intelligence and capability,” Carroll said.
‘Dysfunctional’ ABC management slammed
Trevor Bormann, last year’s Walkley winner for Foreign Correspondent’s “Prisoner X” scoop, has dumped a bucket on ABC news management on the way out the door. The accomplished foreign correspondent told BuzzFeed he had resigned because the place was “dysfunctional” after a botched restructure several years ago. Although his resignation has been tied to the current round of redundancies after the Coalition’s $254m budget cut, Bormann resigned before ABC MD Mark Scott announced how he would respond to the cuts last week.
‘It was like I had stolen something’: News Corp sackings
After 18 years at News Corp, the Melbourne-based national TV writer Dianne Butler was stunned to be ushered into a room and sacked on the spot last month by executive editor of the Editorial Network John McGourty who had flown down from Sydney to do the deed. Butler, a talented and very funny writer on television and popular culture, told Weekly Beast she was made redundant with her full entitlements but was not given any reason and was asked to leave the Herald and Weekly Times Tower on Southbank immediately.
“They told me not to go and get my handbag that I had left at my desk because they wanted me to leave straight away,” she said. “It was like I had stolen something.” That very day Butler had written the most popular story on the news.com.au website.
Another highly-regarded television writer for the Herald Sun, Darren Devlyn has left News Corp under even stranger circumstances. Sources said Devlyn, a 30 year veteran of journalism, has been paid out after an altercation in the office involving a senior Herald Sun editor. His News Corp colleagues are devastated that he is not coming back and TV industry executives have been asking how the Hun can ever replace the knowledge of the TV industry that Devlyn and Butler had between them.
A spokesman for News confirmed the two Herald Sun staffers had left the company but would not discuss the circumstances.
Baird a News man
It’s good to see NSW Liberal Premier Mike Baird was not put off by criticism of his role in promoting Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire in his State. Baird appeared alongside Andrew Bolt and Miranda Devine in a Daily Telegraph TV commercial filmed on a Sydney train. He stepped up again last week in another promotional role for the News empire. Along with Sydney radio stars Jonesy and Amanda (WSFM) and Fitzy and Wippa (Nova 969), Baird held up a placard with the words “Snap Sydney” to highlight a News Corp campaign. News NSW state director Brett Clegg: said “NewsLocal publications are at the forefront of communities in Sydney and this project is a unique way to unite and engage the city. It is another example of a true cross-platform initiative, utilising all of the NewsLocal assets across print, digital and social.” If Baird is not careful he could become another one of News Corp’s assets.
Funeral blues
Four free to air networks plus Sky News carried the Phillip Hughes funeral live and commercial free today. Fairfax Radio also ran a live national broadcast across its stations. But the scramble to cover what has become the biggest sport story this year has inspired some graceless behaviour. When a senior Nine reporter discovered he was not on the roster to cover the Macksville funeral he let his frustration be known around the Willoughby studios.
Who won the TV wars?
The TV ratings year ended on the weekend and the five free-to-air networks are butting heads over who won what. At a Nine network drinks party for producers, held at the very posh Point Piper Motoring Yacht Club on Tuesday night, programmer Michael Healy trumpeted that Nine had won every demographic under 54. It is true that for the third year the network has beaten Seven in the advertiser-friendly demos. However, it was still Seven who won the official OzTAM 2014 ratings year with the biggest share of the audience overall. They owe that to strong shows like My Kitchen Rules, the AFL and Home and Away.
But worryingly for Seven, Nine is closing the gap thanks to popular reality formats like The Block, which will run again twice next year. Seven’s combined channels had a share of 30.4%; Nine’s 29.2%; Ten’s 17.9%; the ABC 17.4% and SBS 5.2%. In the main channels only, the ABC has stolen third place from Ten’s primary channel, coming third with 12.7% ahead of Ten on 11.9%. Seven is first with 21.8%, Nine second with 21.2% and SBS 4.1. The highest rating program was Seven’s AFL Grand Final: Sydney V Hawthorn with 2.8m viewers and in second place was My Kitchen Rules-Winner Announced with 2.7m viewers.
Ten improved its share on 2013, albeit from a very low base. However the network did try to claim more than its share of the spoils in a press release quoting CEO Hamish McLennan saying Ten had “ended 2014 as the number one network in day time for the 14th consecutive year, thanks to key shows such as TEN Eyewitness News – which continues to dominate its timeslot – The Bold and The Beautiful, Studio 10 and Judge Judy”. However, it was actually the ABC which won daytime, not Ten. You see Ten left out the word “commercial” in its statement, which should have read “the number one commercial network in day time.”
Breakfast team go to Drive
The popular Weekend Breakfast team Veronica & Lewis has been named the new hosts of triple j’s Drive show. Veronica Milsom and Lewis Hobba have known each other since high school and teamed up to write and perform sketches for ABC TV’s now-defunct Hungry Beast. Recently Veronica has been seen on Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, the ABC2 series Backseat Drivers and Ten’s The Project. You might have seen Lewis on The Comedy Channel or more recently on the ABC’s The Chaser’s Media Circus.
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