Photograph: Mick Tsikas/EPA
Mark Latham has been confirmed for tonight’s premiere of Karl Stefanovic’s TV panel show The Verdict on Channel Nine. Billed as “former federal Labor leader and stay-at-home dad”, the five-episode deal is the first of the “commercial opportunities” Latham spoke of when he gave his foul-mouthed performance at the Melbourne writers festival in August.
In a festival interview with ABC presenter Jonathan Green, Latham refused to answer questions or conduct a civil discourse. He said his family believed he would be “crazy to spill your story for free to a wanker like Jonathan Green ... You should sign up to the commercial opportunities. Which, of course, I have.”
The panellists on The Verdict – including independent senator Jacqui Lambie, Mamamia’s Jamila Rizvi and a counter-terrorism expert, Dr Anne Aly – will discuss whether sports stars guilty of a crime should be allowed back on the field, and how a teenager turns into a terrorist.
The Q&A team is very flattered Channel Nine has copied its format, and is waiting to see if Stefanovic, like Tony Jones, says: “I’ll take that as a comment.”
Salt into wounds
The Australian radio station that broadcast the royal hospital prank call in 2012 recently escaped a suspension of its licence despite a UK coroner finding that the call was partially responsible for the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha. But for one of the hosts who placed the call, Mel Greig, the death of the mother of three sent her spiralling into depression and spelled the end of her career in radio. In an interview with Channel Seven last year Greig said she had no confidence, still felt guilty and hadn’t worked in three years.
Last month Greig finally got a job in media as a contestant in Nine’s new series of Celebrity Apprentice Australia, in which celebrities work towards raising money for their charities while performing crazy stunts. In the package introducing Greig she said: “I haven’t been in a job for three years. Failure does not define you.”
But unfortunately Nine did define her, and in the tackiest of ways. Her tag for the program was “Royal Prank DJ” alongside Geoffrey Edelsten’s “Aussie Tycoon” and Blake Garvey’s “The Bachelor”. The tag popped up every time she was on TV and Beast was not alone in finding it unsavoury. After Greig complained it was changed to “Ex Radio Host”.
Fellow celebrity Richard Reid (“Hollywood Gossip Guru”) managed to stir things up further when he retweeted a comment from a viewer who said they were “not really happy about a murderer” being on Celebrity Apprentice.
A thoughtless re-tweet on my part. @MelGreigRadio sincere apologies https://t.co/N5qXGCLESz
— Richard Reid (@RReidsHollywood) October 2, 2015
Greig told News Corp: “I saw the initial tweet and blocked it, but to see a cast mate retweet it was disappointing. A troll is a troll and that doesn’t bother me, but retweeting that message is irresponsible. I’m not angry at Richard Reid, just disappointed that a profile person would encourage this.”
Australia’s youth a second chance for Euro glory
After the successful one-off inclusion of Australian Guy Sebastian in the Eurovision song contest earlier this year, SBS has pulled off another first. Australia will compete for the first time in the junior Eurovision song contest 2015, a mini-version open to 10- to 15-year-olds.
The young singer representing Australia in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, will be announced on Friday, but the competition will not be broadcast until November. An Australian will compete against singers from 16 countries for the chance to perform as a guest at next year’s Eurovision song contest in Stockholm.
A junior Eurovision executive, Vladislav Yakovlev, said: “Australia were so well received in Vienna at the ‘big’ contest in May this year, and we are thrilled to help them continue this story by coming to Bulgaria in November.” There’s just one catch: Australians cannot take part in the live tele-voting.
Women get a shot at top ABC job
The finishing line for the appointment of a new ABC director of news is in sight. It is the biggest job in journalism in the country, with responsibility for 1,400 staff across eight capital city newsrooms, 11 international bureaus and more than 50 regional and suburban locations.
Weekly Beast is pleased to report that at least two women have been considered for the role, vacated last month by Kate Torney, as well as the four male candidates we reported last week.
The executive producer of 7.30, Jo Puccini, was approached by the ABC board’s headhunters but declined to apply. She is a former executive producer of Media Watch and editor of the national reporting team. The other female candidate is Rebecca Matthews, head of ABC news logistical operations. She is a corporate lawyer who has held several senior jobs at the ABC, including piloting the former Stateline program, and has reported extensively for both ABC and Seven.
Finals fallout
Both Seven and Nine are pretty happy with the huge audiences who watched the two football finals at the weekend, but that didn’t stop them quibbling over who had the bigger piece of the action.
Saturday’s AFL grand final was trumpeted by Seven as the most watched show of the year, with an average metro audience of 2.635 million. But Nine had some boasts of its own, saying the NRL grand final “was watched by more viewers than the AFL grand final”. Confused? The rugby league had a national average audience of 3.739 million (metro 2.437 million; regional 1.302 million) so it looks like the AFL might win on the metro audience measure, although the NRL rates better when regional is added.
Social media is another battleground – 85,448 tweets were sent with the #NRLGF hashtag. Nine says the tweets peaked at 2,001 a minute at full time.
