Nine insiders reveal the shock frontrunners for the coveted role as one TV personality’s future hangs in the balance.
Understudy-in-waiting Sam Armytage is not guaranteed a spot on the Todayshow couch when anchor Sarah Abo takes maternity leave later this year, this column hears.
Insiders at Nine say the favourites to replace Abo are Today Extra anchor Sylvia Jeffreys who won hearts and fans co-hosting Nine’s morning wrap of the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympic Games last month and Weekend Today host Alison Piotrowski.
Sylvia Jeffreys. Picture: Instagram
Sam Armytage. Picture: Christian Gilles / NewsWire
Armytage’s future at Nine has plenty riding on season two of The Golden Bachelor, which is expected to go to air in the second half of the year.
Armytage is under contract to Nine until the end of the year however the first season of The Golden Bachelor proved a ratings flop for the broadcaster, the program regularly beaten by 7’s My Kitchen Rules by a margin of around 300,000 people nationally.
Sarah Abo and husband Cyrus Moran. Picture: Tennis Australia/Fiona Hamilton
Abo revealed she is expecting a baby boy. Picture: Instagram
Meanwhile Abo’s pregnancy announcement on Wednesday has to have been the most compelling and moving moment on Today in many years.
A nervous Abo spoke briefly and tearily of her fertility journey revealing she’s expecting a son with husband Cyrus Moran.
The 40-year-old later posted to Instagram saying she’s “still pretty terrified” having suffered two miscarriages in recent years.
RADIO BOSSES TERRIFIED BY KYLE MOVE
Two hours after the deadline lapses on Kyle Sandilands’ KIIS FM radio suspension the shock jock is scheduled to appear live on TV’s Australian Idol.
The Tuesday night appearance will provide the famously provocative commentator with a national prime time platform upon which to take a public swing at the employer who pulled him from the airwaves this month.
That employer, ARN, gave Sandilands 14 days to “remedy” his ugly break-up with radio partner Jackie “O” Henderson.
Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O in happier times. Picture: Facebook
Australian Idol judges Kyle Sandilands, Amy Shark and Marcia Hines.
ARN’s deadline lapses at 5.30pm on Tuesday March 17.
Making matters more interesting, Idol is broadcast on Channel 7, now majority owned by radio company Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), ARN’s long-time traditional rival.
To date, episodes of the current season of Idol have been prerecorded.
Sandilands, typically, has missed many of them leaving Jessica Mauboy to stand in for him.
From Sunday however the series will be broadcast live as the program enters the finals and contestants are required to perform live in front of a studio audience and the program’s three judges, Sandilands, Marcia Hines and Amy Shark.
Jess Mauboy fills in for an absent Kyle Sandilands on the Australian Idol judges’ panel alongside Marcia Hines and Amy Shark.
Sandilands has already flaunted a demand he stay silent issued by his employer ARN on March 3.
On Wednesday he issued a lengthy statement taking aim at his employer for not dealing with the breakdown of his relationship with Henderson via “genuine process”.
He then threw down the gauntlet and pluckily called for his bosses including CEO Michael Stephenson to reinstate him: “I want to be on air. I want to be with my audience. I want to do the job I have done my entire adult life.
“I am asking ARN to do the right thing: honour our agreement.”
ARN executives, so this column hears, have now begun to fret about what bombastic verbal gunslinger Sandilands might do when the Hollywood Western-styled “sunset deadline” lapses on Tuesday, should matters not be resolved before then and it seems unlikely they will.
Such a moment would prove a boon to Sandilands’ other employer Channel 7 which saw its CEO replaced with SCA boss John Kelly last month following the two companies’ merger.
SCA has in its stable of radio stations 2 DAY FM, the station Sandilands and Henderson worked for until 2014 when they stormed out taking their program to ARN.
Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O. Picture: Instagram
Australian Idol goes live next week. Kyle Sandilands to star hours after suspension lifts.
Despite the synergy with 7, SCA sources don’t believe that company has any plans of rehiring Sandilands for its radio division, the $10-million-a-year star’s asking price too rich for the company.
Renowned for pushing the boundaries concerning radio and television, Sandilands is also scheduled to appear live on Idol on Sunday night, a second opportunity to embarrass his ARN radio bosses.
Sandilands appears to be sticking firmly to his position he committed no breach by feuding with Henderson on February 20.
“If it comes out of the speakers then the censors have signed off on it and it has management approval,” one radio insider said this week.
“It’s his job to push the limits as far as he can go and the censors to determine what is okay.”
And brother, have Sandilands and Henderson pushed the limits through the years without ARN’s censors seemingly batting an eyelid.
Kyle Sandilands: Hard man to censor.
ARN boss Michael Stephenson. Picture: Britta Campion
A highlights package broadcast in the breakfast slot on August 23, 2022 recapped the duo discussing the goings on at bukkake sex parties, Sandilands’ implied participation in a “three-way” with “two blonde rats”, an attempt to score “coke”, Sandilands’ view women with lip fillers look like “prostitutes” “with mental health issues”, a gay colleague’s suggested use of the monkeypox vaccine, racial stereotyping and sex acts too lewd to print here.
An ARN-appointed censor seemed to be asleep at the wheel for much of it, ensuring the bar dropped about as low as it can go in terms of broadcasting content.
ARN’s response – to sign the duo to joint $100 million 10-year contracts the following year.
BEATRICE’S HUSBAND SHIFTS GEAR TO SYDNEY
The Italian-born husband of Princess Beatrice, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, is leaving his fingerprints on Sydney’s skyline.
The aristocrat married to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s and Sarah Ferguson’s eldest daughter and father to two of their grandchildren is a property developer of some renown.
His company, Banda, which he founded at 23, is attached to Darling Point glamour-project 81 Yarranabbe.
Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. Picture: Getty
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor in 2018 with daughter Beatrice. Picture: Getty
Banda is responsible for the interiors on the project designed by architect Alec Tzannes.
The development features eight single-level apartments on the Sydney harbourfront with expansive views, a 25m pool and gardens.
They are expected to sell for upwards of $40 million each.
The project site, which Mapelli Mozzi has visited, is just one of the many keeping him in flight around the globe at present while his wife’s father continues his fall from grace in the UK where he currently faces an allegation of suspicion of misconduct in public office having been stripped of his titles due to his involvement with Geoffrey Epstein.
Artist’s impression of 81 Yarranabbe, Darling Point, development designed in conjunction with Princess Beatrice’s husband Edo Mapelli Mozzi. Picture: Instagram
Last week Mapelli Mozzi reportedly flew to Florida to visit an exclusive island frequented by Julia Roberts and Oprah Winfrey.
Home is in England’s Cotswolds where he lives with Beatrice and the couple’s two daughters, Sienna, 3, and Athena, 1.
“EVERYONE WAS MISERABLE” REID RE TODAY
Former Today show Hollywood reporter Richard Reid this week opened about working on the Today show.
On a podcast Reid revealed he remained friends with fellow entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins, with whom he appeared on the breakfast show for seven years until 2014, but has no love for host Karl Stefanovic.
Richard Reid. Picture: Cliff Philipiah
Richard Wilkins with Richard Reid. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis
“I was going to say I have nothing but fond memories of Today but that was going to be a lie …” the vivacious media all-rounder told A Bit Rogue podcast host Skye Sydenham.
“The last year of that show … I hated it. I hated working, not with Richard Wilkins. I hated working with Karl.
“Everyone was unhappy, everyone was miserable, everyone hated each other.”
Reid, who later moved to Ten and in 2019 won I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, no longer watches the breakfast show: “I would never listen to the show because … I can’t stand his voice but that’s just me.”
Karl Stefanovic.
Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche. Picture: AFP/Lucy Nicholson.
Reid suggested Stefanovic may be unaware of any ill-feeling.
“On his side of the street I’m sure it’s all fine because he had all the power. I did not have the power,” he continued.
Reid once fell foul of Ellen DeGeneres after flying to LA to interview her then girlfriend Anne Heche who he playfully chided for her boho-chic attire invoking the scorn of DeGeneres.