Eyebrow-raising Kate Ritchie revelation stuns bosses at Nova during rehab stint as magland is roiled by 'Flying Monkey' witchhunt: INSIDE MAIL

In our must-read Mail+ column, Steve Jackson and Peter van Onselen reveal what’s REALLY going on in the worlds of media and politics each week.

Today show turmoil

Talk about here today, gone tomorrow – Nine’s embattled breakfast show has been hit with an existential news desk crisis amid enduring complaints about the network’s ‘toxic’ culture. 

Inside Mail can reveal more than half the Today show ‘early news’ producers have quit the show in a matter of months – with one exiting and another resigning in the past week alone – while another producer is openly applying for alternative roles and two more are ‘actively considering leaving’.

Sources said the exodus had decimated the young team, which is required to work some of the toughest hours in the game, and that they feared the mass departures would only weaken Today’s news chops as it continues to trail behind Seven’s rival breakfast show, Sunrise.  

‘Everyone is extremely concerned about the high staff turnover among the network’s early news producers,’ one senior network insider told us. 

‘It’s only a small team as it is and they work incredibly demanding hours – 1am to 9am – usually with little or no thanks… so they’re going to be hard to replace. 

‘Between the people who have already gone and those thinking about following them out the door, there’s almost no one left – it basically leaves just three casuals and the executive producer.’

The talented crew of hard-working producers making for the exit at Nine’s North Sydney headquarters includes popular staffers Zach Marriott, Elise Bejjani, Texas Reeks and Emily Gilkes – and while some already have alternate jobs lined up (we hear oOh!media is proving a particularly popular destination) others have simply had enough. 

Indeed, although some of the departees have been keen to express how much they enjoyed their time on the show, it is understood others have felt as though the program’s news producers were often treated like second-class citizens inside Today’s fractured behind-the-scenes set-up. 

See, it’s not just the gruelling hours that have proven hard to swallow. One of the chief causes of dissent inside the perennially second-placed breakfast show appears to be who is entitled to have, well, breakfast on the perennially second-placed show.  

The Today show caters for its dedicated producers – who report directly to the program’s executive producer – and pays for their morning meal each day.

In stark contrast, members of the news team – who are technically part of the Nine News department – are forced to buy their own breakfast, even though they are working on the same program, and sit just metres apart for their company-fed colleagues in the same newsroom.

‘It’s a case of the haves and have-nots and how people working on the same show are treated differently depending on who they report to,’ one insider said. 

The practice of paying for staff breakfasts has long been a contentious – and costly – exercise, with Today’s execs even banning staffers from billing their breakfast to the program a couple of years back. 

We revealed in January that cutting the perk had saved Today about $250,000 per annum (yep – that’s one truckload of smashed avo), only for it to creep back in over the past year. 

Despite the festering resentment, Today show insiders said young staffers did not feel empowered to discuss their concerns with the network’s approachable head of morning television and renowned Dirty Rotten Scoundrels buff Steve ‘Ruprecht’ Burling or star presenters Karl Stefanovic and Sarah Abo for fear their concerns might be dismissed as trivial. 

‘From the outside, it probably doesn’t look like a massive deal, but when you’ve got half the team getting little perks, like brekky, while the other half miss out, that’s always going to create division inside a team that works in such close quarters,’ one source told us. 

‘In the end it’s these little issues that become big problems – and when more than half your staff is leaving in quick succession, make no mistake, that’s a big problem.’ 

We hear the newsroom desk disquiet isn’t limited to Nine’s Today show news desk either, with a slew of resignations across the station. 

Another senior producer on the channel’s flagship news 6pm bulletin even took personal leave this month after being worked to the point of exhaustion. 

Yet another has apparently applied for a different role internally at Nine in a bid to get off the prime-time bulletin, while one of the network’s best daytime line-up producers has jumped ship to rival Seven. 

We know it’s impossible to keep everyone happy all the time – particularly in such an intense, demanding atmosphere – but when more than half your producers quit in such a short period of time, it’s sure to ring alarm bells.

Or at least it should.  

Nova’s Kate Ritchie $1million question

It’s the $1million question: when will Kate Ritchie return to her co-hosting duties on Nova’s breakfast radio program alongside Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald and Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli?

Or indeed, will she, given the show’s soaring success in her absence? 

The former Home and Away actress, who pockets a cool $1m a year for the gig, has been on extended leave from the trio’s program since suffering a very public meltdown in Sydney’s east in January.

The 46-year-old has since been spotted looking refreshed and rejuvenated while out for exercise walks in the Harbour City as she receives ongoing treatment at a rehabilitation clinic in the wake of the troubling incident.

It is understood the one-time soap star’s agent Mark Morrissey has been locked in ongoing talks with the network about her future ever since she was seen acting erratically after picking her daughter up from school and leaving her in a running car while she rocked back and forth and broke down in tears in a public park.

It’s a difficult situation for Nova which has found itself trying to juggle its obvious, heartfelt concern for Ritchie’s wellbeing with the need to responsibly manage its multimillion-dollar breakfast program. 

Worryingly for Ritchie’s team, Fitzy and Wippa have not only managed to battle through without her, they last month recorded their highest ratings in almost a year while claiming 8.7 per cent share of the available audience.

The stellar 1.3 percentage point rise saw the lads leapfrog Bogart Torelli on smooth fm, with the breakfast duo now just 0.2 percentage points off toppling the timeslot’s third most popular show, fronted by Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones, on GOLD101.7 (formerly WSFM).

We asked Nova when – or if – Ritchie would be back, and whether she had still pocketed a quarter of a million dollars from the network despite being on leave for the past the three months… but they evidently weren’t all too keen to discuss the situation, and we were met with radio silence.  

Of course, the station has been all through this before, with Ritchie taking an extended break from her $1.2m co-hosting role alongside veteran broadcaster Tim Blackwell and comedian Joel Creasey on the network’s popular drive-time program back in October 2022 citing stress and exhaustion… never to return to the show. 

Now, we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – we’re big Ritchie fans… so we hope she makes a full and healthy comeback in her personal life first and foremost, irrespective of what that means for her professional life at Nova. After all, that’s what’s truly important.

An arresting development for Ricky Nixon 

Flamed-haired former AFL player agent Ricky Nixon is all fired up and vowing to launch legal action against Victoria Police, accusing them of selling details of his imminent arrest to Channel Seven. 

The 62-year-old was taken into custody outside his Port Melbourne apartment last Thursday morning for allegedly posting a series of threats on his Facebook account targeting a police officer.  

He was later charged with intimidating a law enforcement officer, making a threat to kill and using a carriage service to menace – and is scheduled to face Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on July 4, where he is expected to claim his social media was hacked. 

If you thought the looming appearance would have Chicken, as the renowned footy identity is known, worried, you’d be wrong – he’s relishing the opportunity to front court. 

‘The police and media are going to pay for this one,’ he told us when we caught up with him earlier this week. 

‘It was a massive stitch-up – how did Channel Seven know to be outside my house and waiting before I was arrested?

‘Because they were tipped off by police! How is that even remotely acceptable?

‘Well, I will be seeking a subpoena so I can find out what the arrangement between Seven and the police was – and whether any money changed hands, and I believe it did.’

Nixon’s claims come as serial fraudster Peter Foster, also 62, continues to accuse the Nine Network, 60 Minutes, presenter Karl Stefanovic and NSW Police of colluding to have him wrongly incarcerated following a ‘made-for-TV’ arrest five years ago.

The career conman reckons he’s got a chance of winning a $4million payout over that one… and, hey, you’ve got to be in it to win it. 

Still, if we’re being honest (and as everyone knows, we try to be), we’d be very surprised if any police officers ever traded tip offs for cash tips as Nixon is suggesting…. that would be quite the arresting development. 

Watt an absolute shocker

Labor’s chief attack dog described Peter Dutton‘s $750 million promise to crackdown on ‘drugs and thugs’ as a ‘cynical move’ this week.

But it can be revealed that Employment Minister Murray Watt has always held a rather, er, liberal attitude to hard drugs.

In one of his first acts after being elected President of the University of Queensland Student Union in 1994, Watt helped publish the ‘Union Diary’, which included a foreword written by himself.

‘Welcome to the new improved UQ Student Diary for 1994,’ Watt wrote.

‘This year, for the first time, the Union has put together a diary which doubles as a comprehensive guide to Union Services’.

A disclaimer on the front notes that the contributors do not take responsibility for the contents – and Inside Mail is not suggesting that Mr Watt authored anything other than the foreword.

But it’s a fair assumption that the Union President may have had a passing interest in the content within the Union’s own diary publication. 

And, if he somehow didn’t, we at Inside Mail are always on hand to help.  

The diary included, among other things, a comprehensive guide on drugs and alcohol, which featured a section about how to obtain heroin injecting needles from the University Health Service.

‘If you have no other choice but to share a needle, rinse it twice in bleach, twice in water, this will cut down your risk of infection, but is not 100% safe,’ the guide helpfully notes.

Perhaps most shockingly, a section on alcohol states: ‘I think the only thrill to underage drinking is breaking the law.

‘Women should be warned that getting very drunk at university functions can and has led to being raped.’

Ecstasy can, according to the guide, cause the user to ‘tell everybody that you love them, jaw clenching, sleeping with people you don’t know’. 

Meanwhile, the section on marijuana gives tips on hiding drugs from the police, adding: ‘Keep it stashed in a place police or dogs will never find. Nothing worse can happen to you in your life than to be busted by the Queensland drug squad.’

The price for heroin is stated as $500-600 per gram. Readers are warned of addictive qualities of the drug, which has a list of side-effects such as: ‘no pain, totally relaxed, vomiting if injected, bliss, tranquility.’

Another section describes mushrooms as ‘cow’s gift to humankind’.

‘The two most common local mushrooms are goldentops and blue meanies,’ it adds.

Inside Mail asked Watt’s office whether he would still recommend this advice to young students today.

A spokesperson for Watt responded: ‘If this is the best that the Liberal Dirt Unit can dig up, then they’re in serious trouble.

‘More than 30 years ago, while serving as UQ Student Union President, Senator Watt was asked to contribute a foreword to a student diary,’ the spokesperson added.

‘He had nothing to do with the editing, composing or other contributions in the diary.

‘In fact, the page containing the foreword clearly states that the contributors do not take responsibility for information provided in this publication.

‘While the Liberals are focused on Senator Watt, Labor is focused on delivering cost-of-living relief to millions of Australians.’

While that may be so, the diary featured a not-so-subtle nod to his political leanings with the page numbers adorned with small hammer and sickle symbols. 

Watt’s frontbench colleague Jenny McAllister, the Minister for Emergency Management, also served as his union secretary back then.

And, who knows, maybe the union secretary and the union president did have little to do with the diary: the acknowledgements’ section managed to misspell her name: ‘Jenni McAlister’.

Cash or content for Seven and Nine? 

Channels Seven and Nine once were warriors. But these days, the fierce rivalry between the commercial channels isn’t quite so fierce. 

The networks ended their separate news chopper operations almost nine years ago, back in September 2016, instead opting to pool helicopter vision across their major capital city stations in a move rumoured to save them about $3million a year. 

Since then, Seven and Nine have increasingly worked together and shared news vision in a desperate bid to keep costs down. 

Now, it looks like they could go one step further and share premises as well – at least when it comes to their LA bureaux. 

Inside Mail hears the lease on Seven’s Century City office, just west of Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Boulevard, is almost up and they are actively in negotiations to move in with Nine at their rival Sunset Boulevard site in Hollywood. 

Although the talks are still in their infancy, it’s understood both networks are enthusiastic about the considerable savings such a newsroom merger could offer… eventually. 

Nine’s LA engine room would require a considerable upgrade, we’re told, before it would be capable of feeding back vision for both the channels at the same time.

The major drawback? 

Well, Nine News boss Fiona Dear and her Seven counterpart, Anthony De Celgie, know the move would come at a considerable cost to their news operations… in as far as it would be next to impossible to safeguard sending back exclusives to Australia if the stories were both being played out of the same premises. 

We expect this is one decision that will clearly demonstrate what is truly more important to our major free-to-air outlets these days: cash or content. 

Sadly, we fear costs will come out on top.  

Shields under fire

Forget two-up… we’re hearing the most popular betting action this ANZAC Day is on how much longer under-fire Sydney Morning Herald editor Bevan Shields survives… at least for those having a wager in at the masthead’s Denison Street bunker. 

And so far, most the money appears to be on ‘not very long’. 

After all, the big guy’s had a horror run of late. 

The Australian’s James Madden last week revealed Shields had decided it was a good idea to take a holiday during a federal election campaign… and stay at the luxurious New York City townhouse of former Liberal prime minister and current Liberal party critique Malcolm’-tent’ Turnbull. 

Tellingly, Madden noted that neither Nine chief Matt Stanton nor the paper’s top brass – publishing boss Tory Maguire and executive editor editor Luke McIlveen – were inclined to offer Shields a public vote of confidence. 

Though they must surely be tired of receiving media enquiries about the bloke.  

After all, the latest brouhaha came just days after Media Watch host Linton Besser revealed Shields had been forced to back down and reinstate some quotes critical of Racing NSW and National Rugby League boss Peter V’Landys that had mysteriously disappeared from decorated journo Kate McClymont‘s copy without her knowledge. 

McClymont was so incensed by the decision to delete the comments, initially made by famed horse whisperer Gai Waterhouse at the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the Rosehill [Racecourse] Sale, Besser suggested she even gave the editor something of a public dressing down in the newsroom. 

And rightfully so. 

Yet, as if those two incidents weren’t bad enough for Shields, somehow we can’t shake the feeling that there is even more drama on the way – and soon. 

There’s just something in the air, if you know what we mean. 

Little wonder the masthead’s hard-working journalists have spent the past week speculating about successors. 

So far, we’re hearing the SMH’s highly regarded investigations editor (and former news, justice and world editor) Nick Ralston, accomplished deputy editor Liam Phelan, and chief reporter Jordan Baker, as well as the Australian Financial Review’s deputy editor Kylar Loussikian, have all had their names bandied about as potential replacements.

We asked Nine if they would like to address widespread speculation (at least within their own newsrooms) that an SMH leadership succession was on the not-too-distant horizon… but alas they did not. It seems only time will tell.

Seventh heaven on election night

It’s still way too early to call who will win the federal election… but we’re fairly confident we can at least predict who will win the equally fierce battle for eyeballs on election night. 

Seven news supremo Anthony De Ceglie has pulled out all the stops to make his coverage of the national poll the biggest and boldest in the land by recruiting a heavy-hitting panel featuring some of the nation’s most outspoken political names. 

The network’s rolling coverage, which will be overseen by the country’s elder statesman of federal political reportage, Mark Riley, includes a star-studded host of commentators (well, in Canberra they’re considered stars anyway), from former Labor Opposition leader Bill Shorten and Labor housing minister Clare O’Neil and environment minister Tanya Plibersek to Liberal senators Jane Hume and Michaelia Cash, leading Indigenous affairs advocate Warren Mundine and the one and only Clive Palmer.

Indeed, it seems just about every interesting man and woman (and their dog) is on the panel. And that’s not to mention, Seven’s boy genius Hugh Whitfeld, who will be calling seats throughout the evening. 

It’s a tough act to compete against.  

So, who’s hosting Nine’s coverage? 

Who knows? And, quite frankly, who cares? With a line-up like Seven’s in place, we’re pretty sure it’s going to be the one to watch. 

Blazing sirens over ambo show

Anyone who has seen Channel Nine’s factual television series Paramedics will know the show does a top-shelf job of highlighting the amazing work done by our heroic first responders. 

Of course, given the life-and-death subject matter and heightened emotions of those being filmed, the WA health department – which works with independent production house WTFN Entertainment – insists on a few guarantees in exchange for their cooperation. 

Chiefly, the department doesn’t want a program that promises to focus solely on showcasing their paramedics’ dedication, bravery and professionalism to get hijacked by political agendas and misused to undermine the public’s confidence in front-line medicos.

After all, their jobs are challenging enough as it is. So, it’s hardly surprising. 

Unless, of course, you work at the ABC, which was mightily surprised to discover there were restrictions in place ensuring the action-packed show, narrated by former Secret Lives of Us star Samuel Johnson, couldn’t be used to ‘negatively portray’ the very health system they were actively trying to promote. 

No drama: In a bizarre piece on the public broadcaster’s website on the weekend, the ABC was more than happy to do the very thing the creators wanted to avoid and politicise the popular series while accusing the WA health department of ‘censoring’ the program by suggesting the series couldn’t tackle issues surrounding hospital bed numbers and wait times.

Really? This is a shock? Have they ever seen a factual television show before???

Seriously, can’t we even praise our most committed community heroes these days without the self-appointed boy and girl scouts at Aunty having to ruin it by trying to turn a good, honest real-life, observational series into some sort of political drama?

What’s next? Scandalous revelations Channel 10’s Bondi Rescue series doesn’t denounce hero life savers… or that Seven’s Border Security won’t censure frontline immigration and customs officials? 

Are Media’s witch hunt for the ‘Flying Monkey’

Toto, we’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore… because once again we’ve been transported to the fantastical world of Park Street, home to the land of Oz mags such as Woman’s Day, New Idea, Who Weekly, TV Week and Australian Women’s Weekly. 

We last week revealed that one of Are Media chief Jane Huxley‘s faithful lieutenants had been causing major dramas amid claims she’s been endowed with ‘too much power’.

What’s more, she was openly referred to as ‘The Flying Monkey’ throughout No. 54 because of her peculiar penchant for reporting everything back to the boss.

Now, we’re hearing the powers-that-be at Are Media have launched something of a witch hunt for the insiders who dropped off a dossier of magland dirt on our front porch. 

It never ceases to amaze us when outlets try to root out the sources of disparaging stories about their newsrooms… rather than tackle the underlying problems behind them. 

Besides, if they really want us to stop publishing details about their internal dramas, they should just ask their staff to kindly stop calling us… we honestly don’t like that anymore than they do. 

Instead, they should email us at steven.jackson@mailonline.com – that would be far more efficient! 

What’s not to love? 

Speaking of magland, it’s not just the dedicated editors being given the chop over at Are Media: we can reveal it’s also the cash-strapped company’s ridiculously confusing online strategy, too.

For those not up to date with the latest comings but mostly goings at the publisher, we this month revealed a string of the outfit’s best editors were given their marching orders amid a cost-cutting purge, with little more than a slap on the back and some murmuring about receiving the business’ ‘sincere thanks’.

Apparently, it seems, magazines don’t need editors anymore. 

But then, they’re not even magazines anymore either – those old things?!? Heavens no – they’re omnichannels!

Of course, regular readers will know Are Media’s stubborn determination to rebrand itself and transition from magazine business to omnichannel enterprise is just about the stupidest idea to ever emanate from Park St… 

But not the stupidest.  

No, that honour would have to go to the company’s ‘Now to Love’ website.

Now to what now, we hear you say? 

Well, bear with us: As part of a baffling strategy launched back in 2017, the mag outfit decided to overlook the brand loyalty their best-selling titles had won over decades, and plonk all their content under a merged website called ‘nowtolove’.

Cue mass confusion as the magazines’ few remaining readers searched for their fav glossies on the information super highway, only to find themselves on strange page that sounded eerily like a dating website.

In its prime, the nowtolove ‘ecosystem’ was ‘powered by’ The Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, NW, OK!, Take 5, TV Week, Yours, Good Health, Mother & Baby, and Shop Til You Drop. 

Bauer ‘Xcel Media’ boss Christian Frickle boasted at the time that: ‘Now To Love will complete Bauer’s digital ecosystem of powerful female content from Australia’s most loved magazine brands.

‘It reflects our strategy to put the consumer at the heart of what we do by aligning our brands under our key consumer segments across Women’s Entertainment & Lifestyle, Food, Homes, Fashion & Beauty.’

It sounded like a complete load of nonsense then, and it sounds like a complete load of nonsense now. (None the least because it actually is a completely load of nonsense – particularly the ‘ecosystem’ part). 

Fortunately, almost a decade on, we hear the company is poised to belatedly kill off the ill-conceived – and quite frankly nonsensical – concept.  

And while Woman’s Day, TV Week and Take 5 magazines still redirect to the nowtolove page, apparently that won’t be the case much longer with the titles finally about to get their own dedicated websites…

Oops. We mean, finally about to get their own dedicated omnichannels.   

Bad sign for the Coalition?

Campaigns pride themselves on winning the key battlegrounds at elections with targeted seat-by-seat professional operations. Which is why we were surprised to see these campaign ads so far from home.

The Liberal candidate for the marginal Sydney seat of Reid, Grange Chung (there’s a name we can toast), left one of his mobile billboards waterside in the affluent teal seat of Mackellar, parked at Church Point.

One of our eagle eyed readers spotted it and passed the photographs on to us.

Perhaps team Chung got lost trying to make their way from the traditional Liberal heartland to the more working class digs in Reid. Or maybe they think the good folk in Reid like to holiday in the Palm Beach area during Easter.

Either way the signage was far from home.

Jacinta who? 

Not as far from home as this billboard in the seat of Brisbane. The Liberal attack ad features Prime Minister Anthony Albanese alongside Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan emblazoned with the words ‘double trouble’.

How many Queenslanders would even recognise the relatively new Vic Premier? Much less conclude that she’s trouble?

Besides, Labor doesn’t even hold the seat of Brisbane, the Greens do.

From what we can tell it’s a fixed billboard, the sort of which usually costs around $10k. Money well spent? Not really….

Voice activist uses Dutton line against him 

Pro-Voice activist and Maritime Union of Australia official Thomas Mayo – who has repeatedly attacked Peter Dutton in the past – has launched a fresh attack on the Opposition leader, borrowing a slogan from his opponents in the Voice campaign.

In an election advertisement for far-left campaign vehicle It’s Not A Race (run by the generally unfunny comedian and former ABC host Dan Ilic) Mayo had the following message for voters:

‘If you don’t know the details about Peter Dutton’s policies and if you don’t trust the man, put his candidates last, vote no to the Liberal National Party.’

Mayo must have been so enthralled with the effectiveness of the anti-Voice campaign slogan ‘if you don’t know, vote no’ that he’s decided to roll it out for the federal election.

They do say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. 

Campaign fail

Here’s something we never thought we’d write: Labor’s candidate for the safe Victorian seat of Gorton, Alice Jordan-Baird, has hit the campaign hustings with a polygamy advocate.

Yep that’s right, Gabriel Uchala Kwar Bak was photographed with Jordan-Baird at her campaign launch in March, also attending various other campaign events. 

In October last year he posted on social media that ‘marrying more wives in South Sudan mean compensation of those whose lives lost in struggle for independence. I recommend polygamy’.

We’re not going to get into the weeds debating the complex issues in South Sudan, other than to say his stance probably doesn’t gel too well with Labor’s affirmative action policies.

Bak is a well-known Labor supporter in the Gorton area who is close to a number of other Victorian Labor MPs.

What’s that saying about dogs and fleas? 

All aboard the Dutton bus 

On Tuesday both major party leaders suspended their campaigns ever so briefly to honour the passing of Pope Francis, before just hours later using the third leaders debate to lay into one another in the most un-Christian of ways. 

Not that we’re being judgemental, that’s politics right?

The debate was largely uneventful, unlike last week’s second leaders debate which resulted in a war of words in its aftermath between Team Dutton and its travelling media pack.

As soon as the debate was over the Dutton campaign bus looked to move on, but only after Liberal campaign spokesman James Paterson gave some quick thoughts on why Dutton won the debate. 

When Treasurer Jim Chalmers took to the mic to claim otherwise, the journalists were told they needed to board the bus and move on. Some of them weren’t so happy, and neither were the Labor minders who insisted on Jim getting a right of reply.

It wasn’t to be. With the bus leaving the journos reluctantly took their seats after some grumbling. But they did leave a cameraman behind to film Jim’s no doubt searing insights, in case there was anything worth quoting.

There wasn’t by the way.

Tale of two elections 

Here is a fun fact for the week. Singapore is holding its election on the same day as Australia. 

Not that you’d know it when touring the island nation. There are no signs and no sign of any campaigning. That’s because under Singaporean law campaigning is curtailed in ways Australians might not mind after this year’s showdown.

While Australians are buckling in for a tight contest where the government may only scrape home in minority, Singapore’s government (which has never lost) is unlikely to lose more than a couple of seats.