ABC hopes embarrassing radio U-turn will deliver ratings dividend

In this week’s On Background, ABC Radio Sydney is hoping a returning talent can bring back listeners, a billionaire philanthropist’s passion project remains stuck in the doldrums, and Rupert Murdoch is in the mood to tell his story, again.

ABC’s backtrack on Sarah Mac

The decision to drop Sarah Macdonald from ABC Radio Sydney Mornings two years ago was hardly a masterstroke. But Hamish Macdonald, a perfectly fine broadcaster and internal ABC favourite, has presided over a concerted ratings slump in his second year in the Mornings chair, not dissimilar to the one that was used to justify the axing of his predecessor in 2024.

The ABC made a rare U-turn on that decision this week, with Sarah Macdonald telling the station’s breakfast host Craig Reucassel that Hugh Marks himself contacted her earlier this year, asking her to return to her old friend James Valentine’s Afternoons slot.

Marks also reached out to former weekends presenter Simon Marnie to get all the details about his departure, On Background hears. While it was a positive meeting between the pair, Marnie has moved on to other things.

The ABC’s overall local radio ratings have experienced a downturn during this period. But after losing Valentine, first from the station and then his tragic death to cancer, the ABC has also bid farewell to a slew of stalwart presenters, including Richard Glover, Robbie Buck and Marnie.

Rehiring a station favourite signals the broadcaster is making an effort to reclaim some of the audience which has left in recent years alongside the hosts they were so used to hearing.

So, the return of the familiar voice of Macdonald will be gleefully welcomed by ABC Sydney 702 listeners.

The success of radio is largely dependent on familiarity. That’s why the likes of Ray Hadley, Red Symons, Jon Faine or even (gulp) Alan Jones were so successful with their audiences for so long. But as media habits were upended by COVID lockdowns, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, the ABC’s local networks rode an audience wave that was followed by a long, deep crash.

The ABC appears to have gotten the balance between looking forward and looking back slightly wrong, if we go off vibes and audience figures.

Lightning rod

The decision to axe Macdonald in 2024 came at a time of intense overhaul at the ABC, and the Sydney radio operations was the lightning rod for that change. Its station manager, Steve Ahern, left in the middle of the year after the Antoinette Lattouf debacle. The station was also the flagship division being shifted out west to the broadcaster’s new Parramatta offices. Managing director David Anderson also announced his departure during this period, partly owing to health issues. And his content boss Chris Oliver-Taylor also left.

New chair Kim Williams, staff say, was effectively running the joint as an unofficial executive chair during this period. He met with angry staff after an uproar over Macdonald’s departure, which combined with the other talent exits, cuts and generally growing bad sentiment. ABC staff called the period “a public-relations disaster on many levels”.

A big part of the tension was the move to Parramatta, which was not well received by staff at 702. But the move was a part of the broader changes ushered in by the new audio boss Ben Latimer and his team that were put there to address the need for a cultural overhaul at the ABC, people familiar with the decisions at the time tell On Background.

Earlier that year, Williams and Anderson were put through their paces by Macdonald in an on-air interview, as the ABC marked the opening of the new Parramatta studios.

In a lively exchange, Macdonald pressed the pair over the rationale for forcing the Mornings team to be the first to make the move out west.

This is not to suggest this was why Macdonald was shafted just a few months later.

Two years later, Macdonald is back. Whether she can be a shot in the arm for the station, which reported another set of audience dire results on Thursday, will have to wait for 2027.

Judith’s problem

Still in the early stages of its return to action, the Judith Neilson Institute has faced a number of new headaches this year, calling in an external HR firm after a number of contractors prematurely left its first project led by Caro Meldrum-Hanna.

The first of several projects commissioned to be led by the Gold Walkley winning ex-Four Corners reporter for the billionaire philanthropist Judith Neilson is close to completion after beginning production more than two years ago, its chief executive Simon Freeman says.

He was asked by On Background about the engagement of an external HR firm Azuhr following the exit of several contractors who had worked on the project. He said the engagement was not “an investigation into the conduct of any individual or project”.

“The review was designed to consider how the team works together, priorities, communication and the need for roles and responsibilities to be clearly defined,” Freeman said.

The entire thing has been kept under wraps. A number of staff who worked on it were made to sign NDAs after they left, before it was completed.

Staff have been instructed to remove any reference to the Institute online after their departure.

“We have taken the decision not to publicly announce what JNI is working on for journalistic reasons, rather than any other motive,” Freeman added.

The revelations raise more challenges for the body, initially set up by the billionaire with a pledge to spend $100 million saving journalism.

The institute has been plagued by issues since it was founded in 2018, effectively going into hibernation in 2023 after Neilson decided she wanted to be more involved and take a more hands-on approach, leading to a mass exodus of its directors. Meldrum-Hanna was contacted for comment.

An overdue update

At 95, Rupert Murdoch is very sure of himself. He was praised by a Nevada judge for being an upstanding witness in his family’s court fight in 2024. Reading through the transcript of his deposition was illuminating, mostly because he hasn’t done a proper, on-the-record interview for some time. Why would he?

There were several hours of taped interviews with company veteran and News24 boss Paul Whittaker in 2024, initially supposed to be a series of specials with the News Corp chairman emeritus. He was hardly going to turn the screws on the boss! But for reasons which never quite came out in the wash, the majority of that conversation was left on the cutting room floor, with the project instead repackaged into a wider tribute to The Australian for its 60th birthday.

But now, one of Murdoch’s old contemporaries, writer Sir William Shawcross, has been granted access to write an updated and authorised biography of the media mogul, 34 years after his initial edition went to the presses, On Background can reveal.

Murdoch has not granted such wide access to someone outside the News Corp camp since sitting down with serialiser of the rich and powerful, Michael Wolff, over the course of 50 hours, almost two decades ago.

So it is unsurprising that Shawcross, who let his subject read his initial Rupert Murdoch: Ringmaster of the Information Circus draft before publication, is returning to write an update, published by News Corp’s own HarperCollins imprint.

With a Murdoch film Ink, starring Guy Pearce, set for release on Netflix later this year, and general interest in the family heightened following Succession and the real-life family version of the drama in Nevada, there is no doubt the book will be a bestseller and a moneymaker for News Corp. How critical, or adoring of Murdoch’s legacy 30 years on, is another question. News Corp was approached for comment.

Signed, sealed, delivered

While the talk has quietened down this week after the shock defection of Australian Financial Review editor James Chessell to his old mate Joe Aston’s Rampart, things are still happening.

On Background was hearing this week that the fledgling start-up has signed up with legal firm MinterEllison for its pre- and post-production help, after Nine (which publishes this masthead) severed ties with Rampart following staff uproar.

While those rumours remain unclear, Rampart has signed up the firm to deal with a separate complaint that has been made against it.

Now keep in mind, there aren’t many options when it comes to this kind of thing. But it helps that both Aston and Chessell have pre-existing relationships with Minters, largely because they are the firm of choice when it comes to defending this masthead in major defamation cases.

Minters was tasked with defending The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald against Ben Roberts-Smith, a case the papers won when Chessell himself was running Nine’s publishing business in 2023.

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