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Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, September thirteenth.
Speaker 1: The government has stripped combat medals from up to nine
Speaker 1: current and former officers after they were accused of turning
Speaker 1: a blind eye to war crimes by their subordinates. Fatal
Speaker 1: Opposition Defense spokesman Andrew Hasty, a former SAS captain, says
Speaker 1: senior commanders have been led off the hook for a
Speaker 1: lack of moral courage that went all the way to
Speaker 1: the top. That story is live now at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot Com three used to be the great powerhouse of
Speaker 1: TV in Australia. Now it's a bit of a soap opera.
Speaker 1: We've yet another top executive out the door. So what's
Speaker 1: going wrong at the entertainment giant? What was the moment
Speaker 1: when nine Entertainments jumped the shark?
Speaker 2: What have you got to say to the women who've
Speaker 2: made allegations against you?
Speaker 1: Was it when the Australians James Madden and Sophiel's Worth
Speaker 1: revealed nine's TV news boss was facing unproven misconduct allegations.
Speaker 2: Why weren't you upfront about why you left Nine?
Speaker 1: Was it when the company's chairman shoved our journalist Lamb
Speaker 1: Mendez to the ground at Canberra Airport?
Speaker 2: Great three, You've just assaulted me, You've just pushed me.
Speaker 2: It's all on camera, mister Castillo.
Speaker 1: Was it when he then tried to deny it.
Speaker 3: I did not lay a finger or a fist or
Speaker 3: anything else.
Speaker 1: Or was it when he then left his job good evening?
Speaker 3: The former Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has resigned as chair
Speaker 3: of nine Entertainment.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was when the chief executive stayed at a
Speaker 1: luxury boutique hotel in Paris and ran with the Olympic
Speaker 1: torch while his staff was striking for better pay. Why
Speaker 1: don't you just stop and have a chat to us now?
Speaker 4: So I'm meeting my family and.
Speaker 1: You're a boss of a media business here for work
Speaker 1: or are you here on a holiday with your family?
Speaker 1: On Thursday, Mike Sneezebee was out. Here's his statement read
Speaker 1: by an AI Voice.
Speaker 3: In recent months, I have reflected greatly on my plans
Speaker 3: for the future and in consultation with my family and
Speaker 3: those close to me, I made a personal decision to
Speaker 3: consider new opportunities in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: James Madden is The Australian's media editor. James Mike Sneezbe
Speaker 1: is considering new opportunities for twenty twenty five. What might
Speaker 1: they be?
Speaker 5: He is, Well, he's certainly not committed to any new
Speaker 5: job at this early point. I think that's just a
Speaker 5: comfortable phrase to say when perhaps you're leaving somewhere early
Speaker 5: than initially planned. But look, he's been three and a
Speaker 5: half years in the top job at nine as CEO.
Speaker 5: The dogs have been barking though for Mike for the
Speaker 5: past six months, and he made reference to that, I
Speaker 5: think in his statement this morning where he said it's
Speaker 5: a year that's really tested the resilience of everyone at
Speaker 5: nine and acknowledged that it had been a tough period.
Speaker 1: He came into this role after the previous CEO, Schu Mars,
Speaker 1: put his role early after he was accused of impropriety
Speaker 1: over his relationship with another executive. There was no complaint
Speaker 1: of misconduct or anything there, But what does that tell
Speaker 1: us about stability and the culture at nine that this
Speaker 1: is the second CEO in three years who's had to
Speaker 1: leave early.
Speaker 5: Look, I think what it tells us Claire is that
Speaker 5: whilst the retric around hu marus departure might have been
Speaker 5: certainly it's time to clean things up and to improve
Speaker 5: the culture at Nine, it never really happened. I think
Speaker 5: it's fair to say that Nine has taken their eye
Speaker 5: for ball, particularly with regards to the relationship between senior
Speaker 5: figures and younger staff. And we saw that play out
Speaker 5: with the Darren Wick saga and the Darren Wick resignation
Speaker 5: earlier this year, which in many ways precipitated Sneezbe's departure.
Speaker 1: Now Nine is today a very complex business that involves
Speaker 1: streaming platforms and newspapers, but the core of nine Entertainment
Speaker 1: is the Nine Television network, which for generations was one
Speaker 1: of the most stable companies in Australia under the Iron
Speaker 1: Group of the Packer family. It's quite a remarkable change,
Speaker 1: isn't it, from this almost institution to something that's now
Speaker 1: more of a soap opera.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is, and in many ways. The front page
Speaker 5: picture this week taken by Liam Mendez of ex newsboss
Speaker 5: Darren Wick, who's obviously at the center of many serious
Speaker 5: allegations doing a walk of shame, if you want to
Speaker 5: call it, out of a supermarket car park. The imagery
Speaker 5: of that was quite striking, given that for so long
Speaker 5: nine has been so successful in catching people out, calling
Speaker 5: people to account, and now the spotlight's back on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, famous for elbows out journalism. The current affair really
Speaker 1: the instigator of the kind of foot in the door
Speaker 1: journalism that both of these people were pulling victim too
Speaker 1: For you, what was the moment that it all really
Speaker 1: went wrong for nine and became inevitable that these people
Speaker 1: would lose their jobs. Was it pett Castello pushing Liam
Speaker 1: Mendez to the ground. Was it the allegations against Darren Wick,
Speaker 1: which of course again are unproven.
Speaker 5: I think the allegations against Darren Wick emboldened many staffers
Speaker 5: to come forward to our newspaper anonymously and to other
Speaker 5: media outlets as well.
Speaker 4: There's a real sense.
Speaker 5: Of enough is enough. This is the moment where we're
Speaker 5: not going to take it anymore. Because Wick and others
Speaker 5: had been so all powerful in that organization for so long,
Speaker 5: and many women had left in desperately sad circumstances. Is
Speaker 5: the truth that felt that they because they didn't comply
Speaker 5: with the directions and the wishes of certain male bosses,
Speaker 5: they felt that their careers weren't able to progress. So
Speaker 5: I think in a sense the dam burst even when
Speaker 5: women were talking about their experiences anonymously. The pressure that
Speaker 5: was brought to bear inside Nine on the culture, particularly
Speaker 5: the TV and Current Affairs division, was so great that
Speaker 5: subsequently Peter Corcello couldn't even answer fairly mild questions from
Speaker 5: Leam Mendez that day at Canberra Airport that once he
Speaker 5: lashed out, it was almost emblematic of the old guard
Speaker 5: of the company, metaphorically lashing out at what they perceived
Speaker 5: to be unfair scrutiny on their cherish culture.
Speaker 1: Mike Sneezeby then went to Paris and ran with the
Speaker 1: Olympic torch while the print division's journalists were on strike
Speaker 1: here in Australia. What did that moment tell us about
Speaker 1: Sneezebe's judgment and about his level of focus on print.
Speaker 4: I'm sure if he had his time over again, he
Speaker 4: wouldn't do it.
Speaker 5: He did seek to defend the carrying of the torch
Speaker 5: by saying well Nine was the host broadcast of the
Speaker 5: Olympics for Australia. He committed to this a long time ago,
Speaker 5: and he was representing nine as a whole. That may
Speaker 5: be true, but optics are everything. And the image of
Speaker 5: Mike Sneeze be running through the streets suburban streets of
Speaker 5: Paris in the days leading up to Paris Games while
Speaker 5: the company was in turmoil at home, particularly at that
Speaker 5: point the publishing division, who were in the midst of
Speaker 5: some delicate pay negotiations.
Speaker 4: It just sent the wrong message.
Speaker 5: The message was really that my priority is not staff,
Speaker 5: it's over here in Paris having a good time.
Speaker 1: Coming up? Should we be sad that this Titanic TV
Speaker 1: network has fallen so far? Culture is one thing, but
Speaker 1: nine share price has fallen over the past three years
Speaker 1: from three dollars to roughly a dollar twenty today. That's
Speaker 1: very hard to come back from, isn't it, James? And
Speaker 1: what are the decisions that have been made that have
Speaker 1: caused that problem?
Speaker 5: I think, and this isn't specific to nine necessarily, but
Speaker 5: a lot of media companies, particularly broadcast companies, were hoping
Speaker 5: and expecting that the soft advertising market would bounce back
Speaker 5: sooner than it has now. As we sit here today
Speaker 5: in September twenty twenty four. It hasn't bounced back, and
Speaker 5: it's been flat since the end of twenty two, So
Speaker 5: we're coming up to almost two years of a really
Speaker 5: flat advertise rising period and there's no turnaround in sight.
Speaker 5: I suspect that a lot of companies, including Nine, may
Speaker 5: be better against the fact that the ad slump was
Speaker 5: going to continue. So you've seen a significant outlay, particularly
Speaker 5: on sports rights from Nine in the last two years,
Speaker 5: namely tennis in the Olympics of the Big two, and
Speaker 5: with the Olympics, that was an enormous summer of money.
Speaker 5: They paid three hundred and five million for five Olympic games.
Speaker 5: We won't really know whether or not that was a
Speaker 5: wise investment until Brisbane twenty thirty two. But in many
Speaker 5: ways it's a back ended gamble because you'd expect they
Speaker 5: are going to lose money on the four games leading
Speaker 5: up to Brisbane and are hoping to crall back an
Speaker 5: enormous sum in twenty thirty two. And of course it's
Speaker 5: difficult to sit here in twenty four and know what
Speaker 5: the media landscape's going to look like in twenty thirty two.
Speaker 5: That's certainly something that's going to be hanging over the
Speaker 5: company's head for another eight years.
Speaker 1: Nine has put in an interim CEO, metst and he's
Speaker 1: the CFO at Network seven. Their great rival, the bean Counters,
Speaker 1: are also in charge after several of their executives left
Speaker 1: for exciting new opportunities as well. What does that tell
Speaker 1: us about the fate of media companies in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5: Possibly that they want to take a more sober approach
Speaker 5: to future investments. I suspect seven is also in dire
Speaker 5: straits in terms of its financials.
Speaker 4: Both seven and nine reported very.
Speaker 5: Disappointing results in the past few months, and seven share
Speaker 5: price has been woefully low for many many months now.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that Matt Stanton's obviously as CFO, been appointed
Speaker 5: acting CEO. That's not necessarily any indication that he will
Speaker 5: ultimately be appointed, but I think in coming years the
Speaker 5: expectation will be that costs will be tight, spending will
Speaker 5: be tight, and certainly any frills are likely to be
Speaker 5: paired back.
Speaker 1: Is this something sad about that? As a journo, James
Speaker 1: nine was famous for its largest were high wages for
Speaker 1: some of its stars, a culture of long lunches and
Speaker 1: boardroom drinks nights. What's your feeling about the sort of
Speaker 1: the big shift that we're seeing.
Speaker 5: It's sad for those that benefited from such largests, certainly,
Speaker 5: I don't think it's a surprise in many ways. I
Speaker 5: think maybe that culture of certain media outlets is simply
Speaker 5: brought into the modern era where any kind of excess
Speaker 5: is viewed poorly by shareholders, and I don't think the
Speaker 5: younger generation who work in the media are expecting that anyway.
Speaker 4: It feels like it's a period of change.
Speaker 1: It's sandwiches at the desk from now.
Speaker 4: On, that's right, and water from the tap.
Speaker 1: James Madden is The Australian's Media editor. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us on the front. Our team is Kristin Amiet, Jasper
Speaker 1: leak leat Semagluk, Joshua Burton, Tiffany Dimack and me Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: Forget all the best journalism is in The Australian twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven