Lateline may have survived in some form to see 2015, but the ABC’s only dedicated business program, The Business with Ticky Fullerton, is almost certainly a victim of a new round of cuts which will follow the slashing of the ABC’s $1.1bn budget by the Coalition.
The Business now screens on weekdays at 8.30pm on News24 and then again after Lateline on the main channel. But we noticed it was missing from ABC TV’s glossy programming brochure. When we asked the director of television, Richard Finlayson, why, he replied: “We’re looking at a series of changes that are relating to our budget announcement and we’re not in a position to confirm those at this stage except to say business coverage will continue to be an important part of what the ABC does.”
So important that since 2003, five business programs have been axed by Aunty. Business Breakfast ended in 2003, The Business Report on Radio National wound up that same year. Last year the ABC’s Sunday morning business program, Inside Business, was axed after Alan Kohler decided to pull up stumps after 12 years.
In August when the Australia Network was shut down by the Coalition government, Business Today, presented by Whitney Fitzsimmons, put to air its final program. The Business may maintain a presence on News24 in a watered-down form, sources say, but Fullerton’s The Business was the last of its kind.
A continuing source of tension at the ABC is the now infamous Putin sketch which got 7.30 and Leigh Sales into so much trouble last week. The irony is that 7.30’s executive producer, Sally Neighbour – not known for her sense of humour – recruited The Checkout’s Kirsten Drysdale to join 7.30 as the resident clown because she was under pressure from above to add some light touches.
Internal critics say 7.30 has become quite one-dimensional under her watch and the ratings have slumped. “Sally is so deadly intense, she took the direction literally,” a source said. “She flicked the switch to vaudeville in the most bizarrely ill-judged way.”
Sales, who usually has impeccable Twitter manners, has been widely criticised for tweeting that it wasn’t her decision to air the skit. We hear the tension in the 7.30 office erupted on Thursday afternoon as Sales complained she had been humiliated and Neighbour stormed out.
Further cracks appeared when the Media Watch host, Paul Barry, agreed with issues management expert Anthony McClellan, who said on Twitter that it wasn’t cool to “publicly dump” on her colleagues.
SBS chokes on its arancini
It will go down as the best of the 2015 TV programming launches. On Friday the multicultural broadcaster invited media to an unveiling of its innovative slate for next year in a film studio in inner-city Sydney.
It was a scorching hot day and guests were seated in a cool auditorium to listen to speeches from the chief executive and managing director, Michael Ebeid, and his director of television, Tony Iffland, and to watch highlights reels. But just as the crowd was about to take their bottles of SBS-branded water and head back to the office, a room divider was pulled back to magically reveal a mini-multicultural fiesta with all the SBS stars standing there with big smiles on their faces.
There were a dozen food stalls, wandering waiters with trays of drinks and a mariachi band. It was a great surprise, so well done SBS. Top marks for creativity and for bringing the brand to life.
But the day was about to turn ugly for Ebeid. Just as guests reached for their first chicken satay and German beer Crikey published a bombshell: “SBS insider reveals secret plan to kill Dateline.” The veteran television producer Allan Hogan detailed how the 30-year-old international affairs program he has worked on for two years was about to be gutted.
“If this was simply a matter of belt tightening, it might be passed off as unpleasant and possibly necessary, but it’s more like the removal of the lower intestine and the amputation of both legs,” Hogan wrote.
Its executive producer Peter Charley had already quit and the budget had been slashed. Soon journalists were bailing up Ebeid for a comment.
Trying to look nonplussed, he nibbled on an arancini as he confirmed Dateline was going to be “lighter” next year: “We do need to make the program a little bit lighter and that’s part of the direction that it will be going,” he told Guardian Australia. “Serious news and current affairs at 9.30pm at night is always difficult.”
Across the media the story became the imminent demise of Dateline and all the great new shows SBS had lined up for next year got lost in the coverage.
On Saturday there was another shock. The Dateline host Anjali Rao announced her resignation on Twitter. The last episode of Dateline, which airs on Tuesday at 9.30pm, was still being edited by Hogan on Friday afternoon.
TV ratings triumphs
TEN’s programming event was awkward for an entirely different reason. Ten was all but begging media buyers to advertise on the struggling network next year as they entertained them at a jungle themed party in honour of an Australian production of “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!” Ten managing director and chairman Hamish McLennan raised a few eyebrows when he said: “The only commitment we want from you tonight is that you match our audience share with the revenue share. That’s really important for us. We think it is fair, we are not asking for too much, we are not being greedy but what we want is for you to support us in that regard. If you do that you will have a got a vibrant and robust free-to-air TV market in this country.”
With less than two weeks until the end of the official television ratings survey period, on Saturday 29 November, there is little to celebrate for Ten which has only improved slightly in the ratings after a record bad year in 2013. For the third consecutive year Nine is set to win the greatest share of audience with the highly coveted demographics of people aged 25-54, 18-49 and 16-39. In total people Seven has again won the overall ratings crown although its primetime audience across the five mainland capitals has shrunk by 3.8%.
Q&A’s crunchtime
Monday’s Q&A is devoted to a discussion of media issues in the leadup to the announcement of the cuts to the public broadcasters in the coming days. Making up the panel on “Media Crunchtime” are the minister for communications, Malcolm Turnbull, the deputy opposition leader, Tanya Plibersek, the former Media Watch host and Age columnist Jonathan Holmes, the Daily Telegraph’s opinion editor, Sarrah Le Marquand and the comedian and novelist Ben Elton.
There is an intriguing backstory to the makeup of the panel, which has been the subject of much whispering this past week. Q&A’s first choice for the panel’s resident ABC critic was not Le Marquand, who is not a particularly vocal critic of the corporation, but the Australian’s media editor, Sharri Markson – who is not noted for her support of the public broadcaster. Markson agreed early on to appear alongside Turnbull as an anti-ABC voice. But after producers told her that Holmes, a strong supporter of the ABC, had joined the panel, Markson pulled out.
Markson’s conservative allies Miranda Devine and Tom Switzer have decided not to appear on Q&A too, but for entirely different reasons. According to Janet Albrechtsen, they have boycotted the show because “hip favourites such as Penny Wong and Tanya Plibersek draw raucous applause” while they get no love at all from the studio audience, which the ABC chooses according to voting preference.
“With a sense of disappointment and regret, I’m joining the boycott because this week the national broadcaster sank to new lows of contempt for its paying audience,” Albrechtsen wrote.
Stefanovic’s stinky blue suit
Karl Stefanovic’s decision to wear the blue same suit on television every day this year has paid off for the Today show co-host, who wanted to highlight sexism in TV. Not only has he made a good point well but he has won himself some unlikely fans.
“I’ve worn the same suit on air for a year – except for a couple of times because of circumstance – to make a point,” Stefanovic told the Fairfax Media entertainment reporter Michael Lallo in an exclusive story on Saturday.
“Women are judged much more harshly and keenly for what they do, what they say and what they wear. I’m judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humour – on how I do my job, basically. Whereas women are quite often judged on what they’re wearing or how their hair is ... that’s [what I wanted to test].”
It’s a welcome new direction for Stefanovic, whose image has always been a bit blokey, especially after he won the Gold Logie and thanked his wife, Cas, saying: “She has been a great influence on my life and has also got the best arse I have ever seen.”
