In this week’s edition of On Background, Hamish McLennan’s chairmanship of ARN comes under threat, Karl Stefanovic and Eddie McGuire could be on a Gold hunt, and Bruce Lehrmann decides to try his hand at lecturing the media on ethics.
Hammer time
Hamish McLennan’s ARN Media chairmanship is under threat ahead of its annual general meeting next month, where he is up for re-election after two terms.
On Background has learnt several high-profile shareholders are voicing their displeasure over ARN’s handling of not only the ongoing Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson saga, but a suite of other major decisions on “The Hammer’s” watch.
“If I was Hamish, I’d see the writing on the wall,” one shareholder told On Background on Thursday afternoon as the company’s share price hit another low of just 18¢, down from a high of $2 at the end of 2021. Another said ominously that it was worth “making plans to attend the AGM”.
From handing Henderson and Sandilands a “too long and too much” contract that left ARN bearing almost all the risk if their show tanked, to paying a staggering $307 million for regional broadcaster Grant Broadcasters in 2021 (just shy of six times the current value of ARN), and the handling of the Sandilands-Henderson contractual fallout, some investors have had enough. At the same time, ARN has failed to find a buyer for Hong Kong-based outdoor media business Cody, a relic of the company’s history as a billboard firm, in the year since McLennan flagged its intentions to sell it off.
This week, we learnt that McLennan and former chief executive Ciaran Davis had been informed of Henderson’s concerns about Sandilands as far back as August last year. ARN is expected to file its response to Henderson’s statement of claim in the coming week, when we will learn just what measures the company had put in place since then.
But staggeringly, despite the disaster at ARN, one person who has managed to avoid any financial headache is McLennan himself. After eight years as chair, McLennan’s total shareholding in ARN sat at 73,000 shares in the company as of February 3, according to ARN’s recent annual report, worth just a nudge over $13,000 on Thursday. Combined, Sandilands and Henderson have about 100 times more of a financial stake in ARN via their shareholdings, and they’re suing the company!
McLennan didn’t respond to questions. But his, ahem, eventful tenure at ARN (not to mention funds manager Magellan or Rugby Australia) didn’t stop him agreeing to become chair of one of Australia’s hottest stocks, defence company DroneShield, this week. Its shares are up 311 per cent in the past year alone.
With McLennan, there’s always hope.
Swing for the fences
Meanwhile, there are still radio networks to run over at ARN.
So naturally, its stations need a big swing or two. Among those appears to be a new show fronted by current Today host Karl Stefanovic and Mr Melbourne himself, Eddie McGuire, a jack of all trades who may be best known as former Who Wants to Be a Millionaire host and one-time chief executive of Nine (owner of this masthead).
On Background has heard the pair are close to signing a deal to present a new weekly show on ARN’s Gold network, sister station to the KIIS network that Sandilands and Henderson used to call home, after initial reports by this masthead last month.
Stefanovic is four months through a one-year contract at Nine, down from his usual three-year deals, leading to heavy speculation about an eventual exit from the network.
An initial show with McGuire could be part of a broader deal with ARN, potentially including sales representation for his newly launched, independent conservative podcast The Karl Stefanovic Show.
ARN, McGuire, Stefanovic and Nine didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A show featuring the two big personalities would certainly cover the bases of both Melbourne and Sydney radio, but the real strategy lies in its digital potential, company sources say.
The Gold Network is synonymous with non-political, inoffensive content. But under his new banner of “the Joe Bogan podcast”, Stefanovic has devoted a lot of time to big names on the populist right.
In just 32 episodes, he has quickly developed a loyal following by interviewing almost every high-profile figure associated with the disparate movement in Australia: Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce, (separately and together with his new boss), Clive Palmer, Bob Katter, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Gerard Rennick, Alex Antic, Matt Canavan and a series of other right-wing influencers.
Stefanovic also had Anthony Albanese on, though judging by the live comments section, the audience weren’t really that interested in hearing from the PM. There have also been apolitical figures too though, like Bluey creator Joe Brumm and celebrity chef Curtis Stone.
Karl and Eddie interviewing Bandit and Chilli about petrol prices. Who wouldn’t watch that?
Bruce Lehrmann goes back for his hat, again?
When it comes to media ethics in Australia, there are expert voices that come to mind. Bruce Lehrmann is not one of them.
The former Liberal Party staffer, who was found to a civil standard to have raped his colleague Brittany Higgins, is among the public personalities to lend support to Ben Roberts-Smith this week after the former soldier was arrested at Sydney Airport on five war crimes – murder charges.
Gina Rinehart, Tony Abbott and Pauline Hanson all voiced support for Roberts-Smith – as did a verified X account belonging to Lehrmann.
With almost 100 followers, @brucelehr95 fired off a number of posts in the immediate aftermath of BRS’s arrest, calling Commissioner of the National Anti Corruption Commission Paul Brereton “corrupt”, slinging mud at Liberal politician Andrew Hastie (a former commando who testified against BRS) and even our very own Nick McKenzie.
In one post, the Lehrmann account attacked what he described as McKenzie’s “rather loose and unethical approach to obtaining stories and that’s putting it nicely”. Really, Bruce?
On Background can recall someone once telling Lehrmann a thing or two about making the mistake of returning for your hat after having escaped the lion’s den.
Lehrmann – who had one of his rape trials aborted in 2023 for juror misconduct, and is currently awaiting a fresh trial for separate rape charges relating to another woman – managed to single-handedly get chequebook journalism banned from the Walkley Awards in 2023. He’s alleged to have billed Seven for sex workers, cocaine and a year’s luxury rent as part of agreeing to be interviewed on the Spotlight program – all of which was revealed in his own defamation trial against Network Ten.
Both Lehrmann and Roberts-Smith have always denied the claims against them.
Seven reporter’s stunt casts Spotlight on himself
Veteran reporter (and, by coincidence, the man who interviewed Lehrmann in that exclusive) Liam Bartlett turned a Chris Bowen press conference on Australia’s ongoing fuel issues into a two-man show on Wednesday.
Bartlett accused the federal energy minister of being a “hypocrite” and asked, rhetorically, whether the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has proved that Bowen’s “obsession” with renewables will lead us to another energy crisis.
“That’s a very loaded comment. What it shows is that we need to continue to work on energy security. I reject the premise of the question,” the Labor minister replied, before adding that renewable energy is a “secure” energy source which cannot be uninterrupted by a war, like oil.
This prompted a blow-up from Bartlett, also a former executive for oil giant Shell in the 2010s, asking whether Bowen would resign. The confrontation was duly picked up by news.com.au, Daily Mail Australia, Sky News and a handful of other outlets. But the whole thing appears to have been engineered for an upcoming investigation Bartlett is leading for Spotlight. Yes, them.
Apparently Bartlett has been chasing Bowen for a sit-down interview for months as part of his investigation into Australia’s energy policies, with numerous requests gone unanswered. He declined to comment when called by On Background.
Other journos present at the Sydney presser say the vibe in the room was “weird”, with one noting Bartlett was “really aggressive [in his questioning] straight out of the gates”.
It must have been pure luck Seven had a camera crew set up beside the stage pointing at its veteran journo sitting in the press pack to catch the whole encounter from his perspective, only to post it on its social channels as a promo.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.