Meade joins the Murdoch migration. Crikey understands that The Australian‘s veteran media reporter Amanda Meade is the latest journalist to take redundancy from News Limited. Meade, best known from her decade editing the paper’s Media Diary column, has worked at the paper for 18 years out of its Sydney bureau. News Limited sources say Meade, who was unavailable for comment this morning, has received the go ahead to leave and is still weighing up her options for the future.
There has been a great deal of movement in The Oz‘s media section of late. Former Daily Telegraph associate editor Nick Tabakoff recently replaced Stephen Brook as media editor while long-serving marking writer Simon Canning took redundancy earlier this year. Veteran broadcast media writer Michael Bodey is on long service leave until early next year. Crikey is regularly updating our list of News Limited departures. — Matthew Knott
Bonings, Ten style. On Friday night, Ten management axed Melbourne newsreader, Helen Kapalos in a particularly ham-fisted way. This morning it did a public service when it said it was axing Breakfast and the Morning News from the end of the year. In a statement it said it was “proposed that Breakfast and Ten Morning News will cease production on November 30. “Breakfast television still represents an opportunity for Ten and we will return to the breakfast TV market at some point next year.” Why Ten would bother returning and wasting more money is strange. Breakfast never rated better than 50,000 and averaged around 35,000 to 40,000 over the past three months after starting in February.
That’s bad luck for the good co-host Kathryn Robinson. But it is good news because Ten is finally getting rid of the apparently useless Paul Henry, imported from NZ at a reported cost of $1 million and who was simply offensive beyond belief, in my opinion. — Glenn Dyer
Chapter and verse. Here’s the lead story on the Daily Telegraph’s website this morning. We love a cheap haircut, but not sure about the $500 verse.
Front page of the day. The biggest story in the UK right now is the unravelling of a report by the BBC’s flagship investigative program Newsnight. Here’s The Mail on Sunday with a classic triple-deck headline:
And check that apostrophe in the Tele’s copy!
It is wonderful how language changes.
When I worked at Channel 9 in Sydney ‘boning’ is what the boys in the production pool spent their time trying to do to the girls in the secretarial pool and the traffic department.
I have often wondered whether when Eddie McGuire was overheard saying he wanted to ‘bone’ a certain female newsreader, the language was hasterly redefined to protect the speaker from opprobrium.
Excellent news about Paul Henry. The Ten Network already had a high Dumb Factor and didn’t need it extended by his offensive attempts at hosting.
Frankly, all Oz breakfast TV offerings are woeful. The ABC is the best of the bunch but don’t take that as a compliment.
The Mail – imagine if “shoddy journalism” was a sackable offence here, and not a promotional one under our Murdochracy?
Oh noes! Without Paul Henry, it seems that The Hamster Wheel might have to change the channel to find things to satirise.
Have we really considered the deep implications of this?