By James Manning

It wasn’t the most-watched show of the week, and it didn’t attract the biggest 60 Minutes overnight audience of the year, but the impact of Nick McKenzie’s 60 Minutes report on Crown Casino has been far-reaching.

A key player in bringing the report to TV was Nine’s national head of news and current affairs Darren Wick.

Talking to Mediaweek about the episode and the team behind it, Wick told us:

“Nick McKenzie’s curiosity and his enthusiasm for the job, which is what makes great reporters, is second to none.

“What 60 Minutes did is team Nick with Grace Tobin who is an outstanding producer who won a Walkley for reporting the Matthew Leveson case and wrote a book on it. The two of them jelled and when you get a reporter and a producer who click together it is a good thing for a program, whether it be 60 Minutes or A Current Affair. They feed off each other with ideas and energy and they find the way to get the story when doors are shut.”

Nine’s news brands are excited to be able to work with their new colleagues from the former Fairfax titles, said Wick.

“After the merger we had always talked about working with The Age and The SMH who have a tradition of working with Four Corners. We thought that was a space we could be playing in with 60 Minutes.”

Wick said the Nine executives helping drive the partnership included Nine publishing’s group executive editor James Chessell, 60 Minutes EP Kirsty Thomson and Nine group CEO Hugh Marks. “Everyone was interested in how it would work. The Age and The SMH have had a lot of success with Four Corners and the journalists might have been anxious with us. Nine and the newspapers wouldn’t traditionally have the same audience, but we feel it worked out very well.

“There will be learnings for both sides and a bunch of us will sit down together next week and review how it went.”

Making the Crown Casino investigation a 60 Minutes’ episode was better than producing it as a standalone special, said Wick. “The 60 Minutes brand is stronger than a standalone special. It is also good to show that 60 Minutes can do things bigger and better than Four Corners.”

Perhaps the most criticism that was levelled at Nine in relation to the Crown story was the way the channel promoted it with what some thought was an over-the-top promo. “The promo is to get people in,” explained Wick. The TV news boss said he has had questions about those promos from both outside and inside of Nine.

“Remember you are talking to a former executive producer of A Current Affair. As long as the promo was accurate it was fine. I don’t worry about the criticism too much. People knock things for the sake of it and then it becomes click bait for online news outlets. If the phones had gone into meltdown with complaints we would have worried about it. They didn’t, it was the usual noisy knitting brigade on social media.”

Does Nick McKenzie have a career ahead of him on TV? “Nick’s got any career ahead of him if he wants it. He’s very talented. Nick’s not just good at his job, he’s a good person and a good fit culturally for the group.”

Wick said McKenzie has other stories he will be working on too. “And it won’t just be Nick, we are also working with journalists Richard Baker, Adele Ferguson and Kate McClymont. And not just for 60 Minutes.”

By Andrew Mercado

The good news though is Brunswick Heads looks terrific and tropical (sorry Barwon Heads) and it’s so seamless, somebody should investigate if the local fish co-op closed its doors just so this show could move in and take over.

In one of those amazing TV coincidences, both Laura (Sigrid Thornton) and Bob Jelly (John Howard) return to town, after long absences, on the same day, and literally bump into each other. I don’t remember these characters being so over the top, and next to the laconic (scene-stealing) Kev (Kevin Harrington), they come across a bit cartoonish at first, but both settle down by the second episode.

SeaChange is a bit clunky as it tries to fill in all the gaps, but viewers are forgiving of anything if they love the show enough. After all, if a soap villain can be buried alive, dug up as a rotting corpse, and still come back from the dead to cheers from fans (The Freak is back!), then Pearl Bay, which was always a wackier and more off-kilter place than Wentworth, can do whatever it likes.

Directed by Wayne Blair, who also plays a local radio DJ (a la Northern Exposure), new cast members like Brooke Satchwell, Dan Wylie, Katrina Milosevic and Darren McMullen, get off to a good start. Let’s hope though that there is more in store for Heather Jelly who still comes across as a one-note wimpy wife. After Kerry Armstrong’s blistering and multi-faceted guest role on Neighbours, let’s hope she gets to show another side or two here too.

Les Norton (Sunday on ABC) is another show that has had to re-jig its past so its plays better today. Just as SeaChange is now noticeably more diverse, the original Les Norton novels have been toned down and brilliantly re-worked for a modern audience. Some purists may jump up and down but I reckon the “new age” Les (played by newcomer Alexander Bertrand), backed by another incredible Aussie cast (David Wenham, Rebel Wilson, Hunter Page Lochard etc), is a winner.

Corruption is an ongoing theme in SeaChange and Les Norton and it is also at the heart of The Boys (Amazon Prime). For anyone sick to death of Marvel movies, this is the perfect antidote to skewer an overworked genre. A ruthless corporation (led by Elizabeth Shue) pimps out superheroes (including Outrageous Fortune’s Antony Starr) to cities, but behind the capes and costumes, the good guys can be very bad. The Boys is startlingly violent and deeply cynical, but in a world where Sunrise has to apologise after demonising their core audience as “dole bludgers”, is it any wonder we want larger than life heroes to save us, or seachanges to escape to?

At a function in Melbourne the same day Tennis Australia launched the Australian Open 2020, Nine has revealed plans to build on the success of its 2019 tennis coverage with an expanded cross-platform slate featuring the new ATP Cup, which will premiere as the lead-in to the Australian Open.

These are the highlights from Nine’s presentation about what it hopes will be good news for viewers and advertisers:

Nine will use the 9Gem multi-channel to expand its coverage of the 2020 Australian Open and ensure TV viewers have greater choice over the games they watch. This expanded free-to-air coverage is in addition to 9Now carrying every game of the tournament live.

Nine will also be home to the new ATP Cup, a men’s tournament between competing nations, which will feature 24 teams and have the highest prize money outside of a major grand slam.

This year’s summer of tennis will start in November with world no. 1 Ash Barty leading Australia in the final of the Fed Cup, followed by the Davis Cup finals from Spain. Then the Brisbane International, Hobart International and then Adelaide International – together with the ATP Cup – all leading into the Australian Open.

“Last year more than 14.4 million Aussies tuned in to our Summer of Tennis,” said Tom Malone, Nine’s director of sport. “In 2020 it will be even bigger. We will again bring a dynamic broadcasting approach to what is an unmissable festival of summer – delivering the matches, atmosphere and fun to Aussies to appeal more deeply to every type of fan, all the way from the fanatic to the festivalgoer.

“Not only we will have an additional two days of coverage on 9Gem, showing more matches on linear TV than in 2019, this is part of our expanded coverage which will capitalise on the great lead-in offered by the ATP Cup. This will build national momentum in the run-up to the hugely successful Australian Open.”

Nine will offer commercial partners new ways of integrating into the Australian Open, building on its innovative cross-platform pillar strategy of 2019. This creates bespoke opportunities around the tournament for a range of clients in areas such as news, sport, lifestyle and entertainment.

These new opportunities around the Australian Open in 2020 include:

• Publishing – Nine will look to develop a Good Weekend edition for the Australian Open, titled Good AO, which will be the bible on the Open, with unmissable experiences, advice on food/restaurants around the Grand Slam event, and distribution across Sydney and Melbourne.
• Digital – AO Essential will be a dedicated 9Now program, including highlight packages and unmissable moments from the previous day’s play.
• Television/Digital – a weekend television show launching in October, which will cater to fans and fanatics who want to know everything about the run-up to the Australian Open.
• Television/Digital – Behind the Racquet – a 60 Minutes feature special, which will go behind the scenes at the Australian Open and show viewers what exactly goes into creating a Grand Slam tennis event.

“In 2019, we clearly demonstrated what we could do for marketers around the Australian Open with exciting new activations that delivered real results for brands likes Kia, Peters and Uber Eats,” Matt Granger, Nine’s director of sales – sports, said.

“Next year’s tournament will be no different, with a range of bespoke solutions being developed for clients that seek to capitalise on the truly unique nature of tennis in January. Last year we showed that there is no other event like the Australian Open, which captures fans across the areas of food, kids, music, and of course tennis itself.”

Thursday Week 31 2019

By James Manning

• Seven News 950,000/930,000
• Nine News 815,000/805,000
• A Current Affair 716,000
• ABC News 595,000
• 7.30 476,000
• The Project 254,000/457,000
• 10 News First 342,000
• The Drum 172,000
• SBS World News 126,000

Breakfast TV

• Sunrise 253,000
• Today 201,000

Seven

It’s been a while since Seven lost a network Thursday night, but Nine’s combo of Ashes cricket and live NRL was a magnet for viewers.

After three nights close to 700,000, Home And Away dipped to 565,000.

The Front Bar was then on 344,000 across the network, one of its smallest audiences this year. The Melbourne crowd was 197,000, which was down on recent FB numbers. 

Nine

Cricket and NRL were key to Nine’s success across the country.

The Ashes started horrendously for Australia with three early wickets. Steve Smith then managed to steady the ship for the country and the broadcast rights holder. The audience for the first session across Nine and 9Gem was 695,000. The lunch break did 482,000 and then the second session was on 392,000.

The cricket was a key influencer in where Thursday viewers went. With NRL getting the primary channel in rugby league capitals, 9Gem did well with shares of 10.9% in Sydney and 11.9% in Brisbane.

The cricket was on Nine’s primary channel in Melbourne, which basked in a Thursday share 30.3% which the channel hasn’t seen since the glory days of The Footy Show.

The NRL did good business in its key territories – 204,000 in Sydney and 83,000 in Brisbane.

10

The Bachelor’s Matt Agnew saw the audience for the second episode of the new season dip from 828,000 to 693,000. Melbourne remains the strongest market with 238,000 last night.

Two episodes of Law & Order: SVU then did 275,000 and 205,000.

ABC

Escape From The City was on the edges of Hobart on a very cold day filmed in May last year. It might be a big shock for the couple moving from Sydney’s northern beaches. The audience was 389,000.

SBS

A solid couple of hours of drama from 8.30pm with the new Aussie series The Hunting launching with 277,000.

Later The Handmaid’s Tale was on 199,000.

Earlier in the night at 8pm Matthew Evans returned with a new season of Gourmet Farmer on 168,000.