So John Westacott has the top job at Nine in news and current affairs. That certainly shows the value of taking the boss on a jaunt around Sydney Harbour on your vintage yacht. Now for the changes.

Westie has trained for the top job by taking an intensive degree in management at Harvard University years ago and by twice attempting to leave Nine for Seven, once while in charge of A Current Affair and once at 60 Minutes.

The time at ACA was in the early 1990s when he attempted to leave Nine for Seven and take Jana Wendt and others with him. Then at the end of 2002 he made a similar threat, aiming to take at least one 60 Minutes to Seven.

Despite these two standout examples of network disloyalty, he was retained by David Leckie, then Nine’s boss, and then by David Gyngell the man in charge in 2002 and a great Westie mate.

Westacott holds a grudge. That will be bad news for A Current Affair boss Darren Wick. It was Wick and David Hurley who organised Westacott’s overthrow as boss of A Current Affair back in 2004 when David Gyngell was running Nine. An implacable foe was created.

The ACA coup saw Westie’s oversight of the program removed and one of his favoured mates, John McAvoy (husband of 60 Minutes reporter, Tara Brown) and a 60 Minutes producer, moved upstairs to oversee factual programming. ACA switched from the ”upmarket” approach of John Alexander, which Westie encouraged, to the present downmarket skew.

Wick, who now oversees A Current Affair, was heard to say that if Westie got the news and current affairs job he (Wick) was ”gone”. He may be replaced by John McAvoy.

Like Ray Martin, Westie has clung to Nine and watched people he worked closely with — like Jim Waley, Jana Wendt and Peter Meakin — boned or leave because the regime of John Alexander and James Packer became too much to bear.

Like Martin, Westacott could have stood up to the changes inflicted by Alexander and Packer, but remained silent through successive regime changes.

Westie flourished under David Gyngell, the former Nine CEO. His salary rose sharply and topped $1 million in 2005. That led to the sum of $1 million being called a ”Westie” at Nine. He was the highest paid producer in the Nine Network at the time. He is now on less than half a Westie after his pay was slashed by Sam Chisholm after Gyngell’s departure.

He has considerable experience as an executive producer at 60 Minutes, Today Show and Business Sunday, but he has little experience as an actual producer, making stories week in, week out, or reporting. He has no news experience whatsoever (except for the ill-fated The National on the ABC 23 years ago).

The thing that separates him from his direct opponent, Meakin at Seven, is the flood of non-news programs Meakin has put to air: from Money, to RPA, to The Block, Meakin has had a hand in the development of lots of ideas.

Nine’s problems are in its 6pm news broadcasts: fix those and their lead-ins and a lot of other problems disappear. And the first problem to fix is the Sydney 6pm news, and heal a newsroom is riven by splits and a lack of leadership.