A surprising frontrunner has emerged in the race for one of Nine’s most coveted gigs – Sarah Abo’s Today maternity leave cover.
Jayne Azzopardi has emerged as favourite in the race to fill in for Today show host Sarah Abo when the Today show anchor takes maternity leave in future weeks.
The program’s regular newsreader is seen, say Nine insiders, as the best like-for-like substitute for Abo and lower risk than Today Extra co-host Sylvia Jeffreys who, executives fear, may suffer professionally from being paired with her sometimes OTT and loose-lipped brother-in-law Karl Stefanovic.
While Stefanovic and Jeffreys have a good relationship Nine execs are said to be mindful of not linking their golden girl too closely to the Stefanovic brand.
Karl Stefanovic with Today co-host Sarah Abo who is due to go on maternity leave soon. Picture: Lexus
Jayne Azzopardi has emerged as favourite in the race to fill in for Today show host Sarah Abo. Picture: Supplied
Additionally Jeffreys commands a higher salary than Azzopardi so it suits Nine’s number crunchers to play to their strengths – and their budget – by tapping the newsreader for the mat leave role.
Executives are said to be reluctant to bring in Samantha Armytage for more than a casual stint on the breakfast show – possibly to promote the launch of season 2 of The Golden Bachelor which returns to air later in the year.
This is as much due to Armytage’s princely rate as well as mediocre ratings that have plagued the projects she has hosted during her much-hyped stint with Nine.
Following the softening of Nine’s news ratings and the poor reception given new latest family entertainment offering Shark!, Nine bosses are under renewed pressure to shore up ratings.
Abo meanwhile is expected to take maternity leave next month.
A Nine rep declined to comment when approached.
BEAUTY QUEEN’S BIG MOVE
Beauty entrepreneur Shelley Sullivan has taken a serious step towards growing her beauty fortune by recruiting one of the nation’s most in-demand accountants.
Eighteen months after selling out of MCoBeauty, the beauty brand she founded that was later valued at a billion dollars, Sullivan has entrusted her fortune to James Packer’s lieutenant Lawrence Myers.
Myers is billionaire Packer’s adviser and chief executive of his private investment vehicle Consolidated Press Holdings.
According to well-placed sources Sullivan brought Myers on board some months ago after finally separating her financial interests from those of her ex-husband Anthony Sullivan, her former accountant and business partner in MCoBeauty.
Beauty entrepreneur Shelley Sullivan has recruited one of the nation’s most in-demand accountants.
Sullivan has entrusted her fortune to James Packer’s lieutenant Lawrence Myers.
Anthony splurged on a $41 million waterfront house in Kirribilli last year, his cash purchase generating column inches and symbolically ringing in a new chapter in his life following his recent divorce from Sullivan.
Sullivan meanwhile looks to be playing a longer game in real estate after becoming the rumoured buyer of a $20 million grand homestead, Element Hill, on Hamilton Island at the start of the year and expressing a desire to buy a trophy home in one of Sydney’s most affluent suburbs.
Myers too has been investing in real estate.
He and wife Sylvia offloaded their Rose Bay mansion before Christmas for $85 million after buying a Barangaroo Crown penthouse for around $70 million that same year.
Myers’ other current clients include fashion label Cue founder Rod Levis and he formerly advised fashion retailer Mark Keighery of Marcs fashion label and investor and art collector (and one-time Mr Annaliese Braakensiek) Danny Goldberg.
MARKS OFF FOR HOLLYWOOD HUGH
ABC managing director “Hollywood” Hugh Marks has been criticised for speaking at the public memorial for presenter James Valentine with ABC insiders saying it was inappropriate.
Sources close to Valentine say Marks’ appearance at the memorial was “tin-eared” given he admits he didn’t know the broadcaster.
Just hours before the May 29 appearance, the media executive was dragged over the coals at a Senate estimates meeting over the shock departure of ABC news director Justin Stevens and Marks’s hush-hush recruitment of successor Simon Robinson.
A day later Marks stepped onto the stage at Sydney Town Hall to address a capacity audience including Valentine’s family and friends, a congregation of devoted listeners and some unimpressed longtime ABC staffers.
ABC MD Hugh Marks leaves the memorial for broadcaster James Valentine at Town Hall on May 29. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short
The assembly packed the historic civic centre to celebrate the beloved broadcaster, host of ABC702’s afternoon radio program, former Models’ saxophonist and a long-time member of the national broadcaster’s staff, who died via voluntary assisted dying in April two years after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
With the ABC news director appointment dominating the news cycle in the preceding 48 hours and media outlets rounding on Marks claiming he’d “seized control” of the ABC newsroom, many interpreted the executive’s appearance at the memorial – alongside Valentine’s children and popular singers Paul Kelly, Kate Ceberano and Jimmy Barnes, as well as ABC broadcasters – as “tin-eared”.
Roy Valentine, son of broadcaster James Valentine, speaking at his father’s memorial at Sydney Town Hall, May 29. Picture: Instagram
ABC Presenter James Valentine died in April. Picture: ABC
This was despite Valentine’s son Roy acknowledging in his speech that the ABC had played a major role in organising the 90-minute memorial.
“Dad would be shocked that the ABC could organise this,” Roy Valentine conceded prompting laughter from the audience.
Marks opened his address by broadly addressing the rough reception he has received while attempting to transform the ABC’s culture during his first year in the job.
During his short tenure he has presided over the axing of 50 digital staff, axed TV program Q&A and raised the prospect of cancelling other “legacy” shows, something likely to result in more job losses, and rejected a bid for improved pay and conditions from unionised staff leading to strike action, the first in 20 years at the national broadcaster.
“It’s so lovely to be in a room full of love today. Isn’t it wonderful. I wish I was in more rooms of love all the time,” Marks opened.
His follow-up comment – about the props on stage at the Town Hall – fell flat.
“I do want to know, as a family – sorry, I’m looking at the clothesline here with the matching clothes and pegs – how you allowed this to happen. Frankly, that would not last in my house. It’s a tribute to James and his personality.”
The problem was the props weren’t a tribute to Valentine at all.
The clothesline – hung with clothing attached by pegs in the same colour – was in fact a nod to the quirky annoying obsessions reported by Valentine’s listeners in his popular This Is What I Live With radio segment.
Memorial MC Richard Glover kicked off proceedings explaining the relevance of the household props – among which was also a couch covered in throw cushions.
This was seemingly lost on Marks.
Memorial MC Richard Glover Picture: ABC
After conceding he hadn’t personally known Valentine, the ABC MD rolled into his pitch.
“I like to think of the ABC as a national institution. And as a national institution it’s really nothing but the sum of its people – of course all the people who work at the ABC now, but just as importantly all of the people who have shaped and influenced the ABC over the years. We all benefit from that legacy of work,” he said in a comment that seemed at odds with earlier statements he has made concerning the broadcaster’s culture.
He then signed off by bungling Valentine’s children’s names and calling Ruby and Roy Valentine “Ruby and James”.
On Thursday an ABC spokeswoman said Marks was included in the ceremony’s running order at the request of the events team.
“The corporate events team that produced ‘A Celebration of Life: James Valentine AM’ suggested either Hugh Marks as ABC managing director of Kim Williams as ABC chair speak on behalf of the ABC, given James’ 30 years of service to the ABC,” the spokeswoman said.
“At no time did either Mr Marks or Mrs Williams suggest speaking at the memorial.”
SECURITY UPGRADE FOR CRANBROOK
Prestigious former Sydney boys schools Cranbrook, alma mater of Kerry Packer, David Gyngell and Norman Gunston (aka actor Garry McDonald), is in the midst of a major security upgrade following the arrival of the first intake of female students at the start of the year.
This column hears a team has been working around the clock installing CCTV cameras near locker rooms, toilets and in corridors to reduce the likelihood of “untoward cohabitation” between male and female students
Cranbrook School in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill
In January the school welcomed its first intake of girls into years 7 and 11.
By 2029 the school will be fully co-ed.
While its unclear whether there have been any antics that may have necessitated the need for greater surveillance in the school’s common areas, sources say the school executive has recognised the potential for such antics to occur.
With them, the executive fears, could also come the risk of threatened legal action from some of Sydney’s richest parents, a number of whom were resolutely against the school going co-ed in the first place.