They influence media.

Animals Australia are quite open about their advocacy work.

They're an activist group.

They openly campaigned in support of the Labor Party, and the Greens at the last federal election campaigned against the coalition.

They are open and honest about all that.

The film- If, you know, you're interested in this, and e- even if you would like to know more about live testing on primates and monkeys, very educational.

They have the pros and cons.

If this journalism is important, and this really is the new slavery, does the ABC as a public broadcaster have an obligation to bring this to Australians?

Can you ta- how did The Pietasters come about?

Yeah.

We were, um, we were all students at, uh, Virginia Tech out in the, in the hills of Virginia, and we were a bad punk band, and, uh, we tried different variations of things.

And then a friend of ours, Tal, uh, Bear, who was one of the founders of The Pietasters, moved back.

He was going to school in Nebraska.

He showed up in town and was like, "Hey, we listen to The Specials, we listen to Bad Manners.

Let's play some of those songs.

Sure.

So talk to us a little bit about what they've added to the event in terms of the event as a whole.

Yeah, I mean, I think the legacy of the original event was obviously providing a stunning yet challenging 50K event that was point-to-point, had so many iconic factors to it.

But the evolution of trail running has seen more and more people get into the sport.

And not everybody's got that on their agenda or certainly not yet.

So I think having the crunch initially was like really good at just getting that next level of athlete involved.

They still see, I call it the crunch because I love alliteration for the first point.

But also it crunches a lot of like the highlights of the course into that So you've got a section at Binnaburra because we were originally doing caves before we went down the valley.

particular for the 7K,

Yeah, he said, yeah.

Yeah, but he has negotiated this deal where he remains the highest paid personality in the country until the end of the decade.

Let's not forget, he gets monthly installments, a $3 million salary paid to him in monthly installments for the next three years up until the end of, uh, you know, the '28, '29 financial year.

So he has this money coming in where he can design a product and continue to pay his staff.

I think it's quite savvy.

It's in stark contrast to what Karl Stefanovic did, and maybe that's because, uh, Karl's was a little bit ad hoc and has grown along the way, but whereas Kyle's got this dedicated business plan.

But you would like to see him succeed.

Mm

He was incredibly wealthy, wasn't he, Jacko?

Well, one of the highest paid broadcasters in the history of Australian media, and for a long period of time he was so influential, he was such a dominant force in the ratings, that he commanded a really high salary and, you know, uh, personal sponsorships, et cetera.

As this court battle plays out on Monday, I hear that there is a second potential front that's about to open up for him.

So all this exposure or focus on Alan Jones has had the ATO, I hear from my sources in there, having a look at him again and going over their books.

Now, there's no suggestion of any wrongdoing, but he's in the limelight.

The ATO's going, "Hang on.

Let's just have a second look at it." I think he will find at some point in the coming weeks he is going to have a second battlefront open up and the ATO's gonna start asking him questions as well.

He couldn't let that court case drag on.

But I'm very grateful that I got to have a career in newspapers.

It's easy to forget where Mamamia started.

I remember 15 years ago, it was basically a blog, right? It was Mia Freedman's thoughts.

I remember in magazines people were like, "Oh, Mia Freedman, she's got a blog.

She's not gonna take over the magazines.

What's she..." It's now the behemoth.

The magazines are on the wane.

Well, host a very high-rating TV show that makes a lot of money.

Times are tough at Channel 7, but is it stabilizing a little, do you think? Is the latest round of cuts going to mean that 7 does have a sustainable TV news business?

Well, you'd like to think so because when we look at the local industry, you kind of go, "All right, there's the international streamers and Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple TV.

They're coming, and they've, let's face it, they've got the best drama.

They've got the biggest budgets.

What can't they do? What can't they offer?" And what they can't offer, and they're never going to offer, is domestic news and current affairs.

So that's really important.

It's also much cheaper.

It's sad, isn't it?

[laughs]

But the thing with Karl, and anyone who's watched his style that he's developed in 60 Minutes, he's very good at...

And look, as I revealed in diary, I've, I produced half a dozen stories for Karl, and he was very good at coaxing information out of people.

I remember once doing a story with Karl, and we're walking through the people's house, and he turns to me and he goes, "Jacko, what, uh, what is this story about?" And I go, "Oh, he hasn't read the 40-page brief I've prepared.

Hey, Karl, it's about...

Don't worry.

Just let me do it." And he sat down and he goes, "So just tell me everything from when it started up until this moment right now." And Karl very good at just coaxing it out of them and going, "Hmm, all right.

[laughs]

[laughs]

We, we needed our hardworking journalists to tell us that.

But it's not like they're making anything, they're, they're figureheads.

So I think $670,000, which is equivalent to what the people get paid in commercial TV.

The difference with commercial TV is you have the added drama of advertisers, and there is this little window at the moment while Justin's taking his taxpayer-funded holiday, uh, hopefully s- spending it somewhere nicer than Sydney at the moment, which has just been drizzling, and Simon's not starting until September.

But there's this little gap where, look, people are gonna be nervous, and the people who are gonna be nervous are the ones that were friends traditionally with the people in power at the ABC.

And it's been quite a conscious move, I think, and a savvy move by Hugh Marks, who is obviously the managing director and the editor-in-chief of the ABC, to go, "I want someone who's not friends with anyone." Not to say you can't be friends with your employees, but he wants someone to come in and go, "Look, I'm not here to look after my mates.

But, um, before we move on with the positive stuff, 'cause there is a lot, what's the hardest thing if someone Googles Charlie Teo for you?

And she implied in her comment that Karl Stefanovic had put his employment at Channel Nine at risk by publishing this episode at all.

She said he was in the process of potentially getting sacked.

We know, as we've been reporting and talking about on The Front since last October, before anyone else was even discussing it, we've been saying Karl Stefanovic, year left on his contract.

He's been given permission to do this podcast, reinvent himself.

And since then, you know, at first everyone wanted to pretend, "No, no, it's all business as usual." But as soon as it launched, quite clearly it wasn't business as usual.

There was progressive woke Channel Nine cultivated personality Karl Stefanovic on The Today Show, and there was quite in your face reinvented all of a sudden I'm a knocker bloke who swears a lot and doesn't wear glasses Karl Stefanovic in your face on the podcast.

And it, it was clear that there were two Karl Stefanovics.

That's not a bad thing, is it?

But if you want to give us an overview of that book, I certainly appreciate it.

Sure.

GURPS Ring of Fire is a licensed game based on the 1632 series, which was started by Eric Flint.

And since he passed away, it is being continued by a consortium of the writers, many of whom he helped bring along.

Eric was not just a fantastic author.

As a matter of fact, he came to that very late in life.

He was an organizer.

It

What's happening to Sonia Kruger now, Jacko?

Well, Sonia's going global.

So what I've found out is she's recently cut a show reel of everything she's done in the industry so that she can entice, well, her agents can entice global offers for her.

So she's had years of hosting pretty much everything that has been on Seven, whether it be from Dancing With The Stars, The Voice, that mini putt-putt game show, Holey Moley, that somehow made its way onto television.

After years of that, she's now branching out and saying, "Hey, I've done Australia.

Not much else I can do here.

I'm gonna go international." So I hear she's cut a, a show reel, a sizzle reel, shows how good she is and with a view of, you know, maybe looking at gigs in UK emulating the success of Kylie and Dannii Minogue there.

But in these s- straightened economic times, when everyone's [laughs] struggling with advertising revenue, is there any risk that a Nine or a Ten is gonna come and get Sonia Kruger? You know, how can they justify paying her a million dollars plus?

Oh.

[laughs] Yeah.

We all live in those.

Gone for a meeting.

As they leave, talk about sliding door moment, Hamish comes out to see Kyle off.

All of a sudden there's paps standing in the street filming, and you can see the look on Hamish's face.

It's pure disgust basically that details have been leaked, and he pulls back inside, shuts the door.

[laughs]

We'll begin with that and then we'll go to the Packers a week one opponent.

So if you're a Viking fan and you have no allegiances in this World Cup.

your Viking team that you should adopt for the summer is the Netherlands.

So the Netherlands, they have unquestionably some of the best fans in the world.

They have their own unique color.

They're all orange all the time instead of purple, but they're an orange army.

And they are the best team to not win a title.

What about the green Bay Packers, Steve, who is your world cup team comp for them?

Why don't you explain that and then, uh, we'll, we'll get into the exercise here with the Vikings opponents.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of people don't understand the World Cup like you, Thor, and I wanted to- Bring it to them in a language that I speak, and my, my primary language is college football.

And so I said, "H- hey, let's, you know, explain the regional rivalries, explain the d- the chaos agents, uh, explain the teams that have great brand but not great performance, and just pull all of this together, um, in kind of a fun way." And so we're gonna see if I can't do the NFL edition for your audience today.

And lastly, uh, before we let you go, the, you did it with the college football side too, just because, uh, our audience here in Minnesota, give us your World Cup comp for the Minnesota Gophers and tell the folks where, why you landed there.

So I tried to have regional things, so I got most of my SEC was in Europe, and, you know, all the North American teams were in Texas, a lot of ACC teams in Africa.

Um, but both the Vikings, or sorry, both Minnesota and Wisconsin ended up being up in, with Norway and, uh, Sweden, uh, kind of.

They're, they're kind of their own thing, separate from the rest of the college football universe.

It's like getting a car park out the front.

Well, better than a car park.

It comes with international business class airfares to the far side of the globe and, traditionally with that show, to somewhere amazing, meeting the most amazing people in the world in the most amazing places.

Of course, their mantra has long been, "Show us, don't tell us." So all about being there.

And so Tracy's come in at an era, though, where we've seen the big money go out of 60 Minutes.

It's not the powerhouse it used to be.

In many ways, A Current Affair now being a nightly news show that is phenomenally successful every night, particularly now that Seven's Today Tonight, the rival show, was axed a few years ago.

Why is that, and what are they gonna do with him?

But it didn't, I didn't let it infect my reporting, Jacko.

Well, but there were concerns, and we saw while that two-part, uh, dramatization was rolled out across the country for audiences, in 1995 I think it was filmed, uh, in New South Wales, it actually was suppressed.

There was an injunction against it because Neddy Smith, who was a underworld figure, strong-arm man, but he had appeals against his murder convictions going through the Supreme Court.

So the New South Wales Supreme Court said, "In New South Wales, we don't want it to impact, uh, his appeal process, so in New South Wales no one's allowed to watch it." So while people are, are watching it interstate, and presumably sending your family a, a VHS or beta cassette tape of it, that was the reason for it.

And we see this happening again now with the Ben Robert-Smith case, is his supporters, or some of his supporters at least, are crying Blue Murder, going, "Well, hang on, there's stuff out there online now," in particular a Channel Nine Stan subscriber documentary, Ben Robert-Smith: The Truth on Trial, which very much says in it Ben Robert-Smith is a war criminal.

[gunshots]

Nowadays, I'd be putting them on TikTok.

Yeah, and I mean, that's probably part of the argument.

Yeah

... that he'd been collecting $1 coins in out by the bus stop.

Now they wanna have the Bananas in Pyjamas costumes in the back of the convertible now.

But it's not a bad thing, and she is right to push for this because you look at children's content in Australia, we know that the commercial networks, they're not making it.

They can't afford to make it 'cause there's not the returns in it, unless you strike gold with a Bluey.

And the ABC's new managing director, or I should say new-ish, he's been there a year, so I, I can't keep calling him new.

But Hugh Marks has talked about that's one of the things he's also passionate about is seeing that as a, as a big social responsibility to ensure that Aussie kids have Aussie-made, Aussie-focused children's content.

They don't have that kind of amount of money sitting in the bank, and they can't make that money if they don't have Kyle and Jackie O on air earning the revenue.

How does this actually happen? [laughs]

Well, [laughs] nine times out of 10, it's, uh, the old expression is, uh, it's better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.

So quite often you see media outlets, they take a picture from here, steal it from there, and hope that no one notices.

And if people go, "Oh, hey, hang on, that's our picture," then you pay.

Now, with the rise of social media and images getting thrown around, there quite often is this mentality in the heat of the battle, "Hey, it's online now, it's in the public domain." Of course, that isn't true.

There are still copyrights holders.

A lot of media outlets spend a lot of money, not as much as they used to, but a lot of money on getting exclusive images to sell their product.

If you don't pay, it is stealing.

What they really needed to do, obviously, back in February was get these two in a room and say, at all costs, you guys have to work it out.

Yeah.

And the thing is, I think, ideally, look, I think you'd almost underestimate the abuse I would receive for $100 million over 10 years.

Whatever Kyle had said, that'd just be the tip of the iceberg for what I'd accept.

But also, the thing is, tell me, like, if we have a Barney...

And I say, oh, jeez, to our editor, Claire, she's a nightmare today.

Does that actually – is that the start of an HR process or is that just venting or is it letting off steam? After 20 years together, for it to be regular chat – and just go, oh, that's your guy's regular banter.

I don't know about your interpretation of this, but in my view, this is Chris Bowen walking into Liam Bartlett's trap.

It's quite remarkable.

Well, Milligan actually, she actually managed to get, I think, three...

Maybe even for people who were still working at Seven, having spoken to employment lawyers, they often say that the worst contracts in Australia are ones that you sign with a television network.

You sign away all your rights and...

And you get very little in return.

So great get for her.

Strong story.

What's happening there? Oh,

Well,

yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what she does there because...

Her contract also torn up.

She's missing out on the better part of $100 million, paid over 10 years as well.

The difference is ARN is going, all right, Kyle, we're going to just tell everyone you're reckless and that serious misconduct, because they know that'll play to a large portion of the community who already hate him and have made up their mind, even though they're not his listeners.

But for Jackie, they're going, hey...

Stick with us.

Plus interest.

He's actually nearly former, isn't he, Jacko? He's on his last legs.

Well, it certainly sounds like it.

And the interesting thing for me, the astonishing thing for me, is the way this has been handled by Nine.

Look...

We've been talking about this last year.

We know we revealed that initially they wanted to get rid of Sarah Arbo unofficially.

They've never confirmed that, but they wanted to parachute Samantha Armitage into that role because they know that she's got a following and they thought, let's spice it up because the Today Show has lost in the national ratings for as long as Carl's been there.

He is stepping into the far right of Australian politics now.

Firstly, would anyone listen to the Jackie O show?

I think that ARN is in a real spot of bother.

I don't think that there is a commercial market for a Jackie O show by herself.

I don't think there is a particularly strong commercial market for a Jackie O show with a different co-host.

Unfortunately, and I get that she has been the highest paid woman in media, I don't think there is an appetite for that outside of the Kyle and Jackie O show for a major commercial mainstream show.

audience.

Yes, the podcast has done quite well, but as you say, that is a very niche specific audience that she's talking to.

We're over it.

You get a picture of Donald Trump as a much more kind of complex political individual, rather than the kind of brash, one-note, you know, demagogue who we see on the TV news, and that's part of the Donald Trump story, isn't it? You know, if you just see those short grabs, you think, "Why would anyone vote for this guy?" If you actually listen to what he's saying, you're like, "Oh, I see why people find him appealing, avuncular, warm, charming in ways that maybe the rest of us don't."

I mean, that's the beauty from an editorial point of view of Donald Trump.

He's a grab machine.

You turn up to any event he's at, and you know you can splice that up into something interesting.

We've seen the commercial TV networks who didn't have Washington-based bureaus, they're all moving to operating largely out of LA, Hollywood stars, you know, and traveling to Washington when they needed to do something at the White House.

Donald Trump comes in.

"Mate, this guy is more entertaining than Hollywood.

[laughs] What does it tell you about the internal dynamics at the ABC? You know, who's really in charge? Who's really got the power?