In this week’s On Background, Kyle and Jackie O’s boss breaks bread with unusual companions, a new challenger to Sky News’ rebrand enters the arena and a wannabe conservative media powerhouse staves off bankruptcy.
Making friends out of enemies
Just weeks before The Kyle and Jackie O Show imploded on February 20, On Background can reveal a most curious meeting took place. The new chief executive of ARN, Michael Stephenson, who had been left holding the can for the pair’s $200 million contracts, met the duo’s fiercest critics: the activist group Mad F—ing Witches.
The meeting between Stephenson and the Witches’ founder Jennie Hill was the result of months of correspondence, said three sources with knowledge of the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Witches had spent the past 18 months railing against what they called Kyle Sandilands’ “verbal violence”.
And as anyone reading this media column will know by now, the Witches’ campaign had been working. Their constant monitoring of the show’s content and barrages of emails to advertisers (along with the show’s tanking ratings in Melbourne) led to companies avoiding the program.
Having only taken over as CEO from long-time boss Ciaran Davis in October, fixing ARN’s many broken relationships was the top of Stephenson’s list. There could be almost nothing more alarming for a man who ran Nine’s sales operation for a decade than advertising clients abandoning the ship.
So smoothing things over with the mob doing everything possible to ensure more brands ditched ARN seems reasonable.
What Stephenson and Hill talked about is another matter. Neither “Stepho”, as he is known, nor the Witches responded to a request for comment.
While he has made a start on fixing some of the concerns hanging over the future of the company, ARN’s share price has tanked by 39 per cent in 2026 alone as it grapples with the lawsuits from Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson, challenging their contract terminations.
It’s going to take a lot more than a coffee catch-up for Stepho to smooth over that mess.
You can’t call me that
First it was the old enemy, the ABC, disputing its copyright application, but now Sky News Australia’s super memorable new name, News24, has a new challenger.
Enter South African media company Media24, which operates the news outlet News24. The company’s chief executive, Minette Ferreira, confirmed to On Background that it has filed its own copyright application for the News24 branding in Australia last month, just two weeks after the News Corp broadcaster applied for rights to the name.
“We also voiced our obligation against the use of the News24 trademark in a letter to the Australian News Channel (Pty) Ltd (which operates Sky News Australia) directly,” Ferreira said. They’re still waiting to hear back from the Sky honchos as of this week, she added.
News24 isn’t some tin-pot organisation either. It’s South Africa’s largest subscription-led news website and has a combined following of about 15 million across its various social channels.
It isn’t just the name that the South African organisation would share with Sky Australia. Sky’s planned new logo has the same three colours: blue, red and white, and in the same colour progression. News24 also already owns the domain news24.com, which must have hurt the News Corp company when they were forced to slap .au onto their own domain, having designed their rebranding specifically to remove any mention of the country they operate out of due to their burgeoning overseas online audience.
All this amounts to quite the headache for Sky boss Paul Whittaker. And it all could’ve been avoided by a bit of pre-planning. Instead, they didn’t want the name leaking until they could announce it to the rich and powerful at their own event in Surry Hills in February.
They went to quite a few lengths to keep it secret, including imposing a lockdown of Holt Street the night before the event.
The challenge, both from the real News24 and the ABC, could force Sky to push back the change from what was expected to be July 1 to later this year. What a nightmare!
What did he say … again?
Former Brownlow medallist Jason Akermanis, or “Aka” as he is more commonly known, is no stranger to an odd, or even offensive, comment.
So when we heard that he had not been on air for a few weeks after a bizarre comment about the Women’s Asian Cup last month, it wasn’t too much of a surprise.
This time round, the former Brisbane Lions and Western Bulldogs star asked when the “caucasian cup” would be taking place after commentator Corbin Middlemas’ news update on the Women’s Asian Cup on ABC Sport Grandstand during an Opening Round broadcast last month.
“There’s a lot on. Is there gonna be a caucasian cup?” Akermanis asked, with a stumped Middlemas trying to work his way out of a sticky situation. “Caucasian cup?” Middlemas asked, before explaining there are plenty of predominantly caucasian teams in the Asian Cup.
“What about caucasian?” Akermanis asked again. “Or is that just European …?”
“Asia includes Australasia … there’s plenty of people from … all different backgrounds competing in the Asian Cup as that rolls on,” Middlemas said before swiftly returning to the footy like a true professional.
An ABC spokesperson said the comments “made by an expert during a live sports broadcast did not meet the ABC’s editorial standards”, but that the issue had been addressed and Aka would be back on air as a contributor during the ABC’s coverage of the Brisbane Lions home game against Collingwood on Thursday night.
Regardless, it’s hard to make sense of the comment. What was he even trying to say?
Nonetheless, Akermanis has a spotted history off the field. He was sacked by both clubs he played for in his 325-game career. His second club, the Bulldogs, let him go in 2010 when he urged gay AFL players to stay in the closet. In a column for the Herald Sun he said he would “have a problem” with sharing a change room with a gay player.
And yes, that was 16 years ago. But he didn’t exactly disown the comments in 2023 when he came in for criticism, particularly from former Bulldogs teammate and current ABC radio host Bob Murphy, after a Four Corners episode examined why there were no openly gay current or former AFL players.
“Just because I write about it and you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean [that] I’m scared of gay people,” Akermanis said. “[That’s just] complete crap. Look, I personally don’t care one way or the other. As long as you don’t sort of throw it in my face or try and tell me where I’m not interested. I don’t go around telling people what I do in my private life.”
He has also been banned from three separate golf clubs for his behaviour, and in 2005 had his radio show (co-hosted with current Collingwood coach Craig McRae) on an indigenous Brisbane station dumped for calling its producers “monkeys”.
Now spending most of his time as a real estate agent, Akermanis courted controversy again in late-2023 after A Current Affair revealed he had released the personal details of a domestic violence victim, one of his clients, to potential investors during an open home. “It’s a long story, the lady’s ex went to jail,” the former footy player was reported as saying, and that she now needed “a bit of extra cash”.
Pretty grim stuff. And to think real estate agents get a bad rap!
On Background contacted Akermanis, but we couldn’t get through to him. But with Aka back on the ABC on Thursday night, it seems his casual employment is as safe as houses.
Maxed out
It has been a rough year for the kind folk behind Australian Digital Holdings, the broadcaster once home to disgraced broadcaster Alan Jones and investment from James Packer.
It all looked so promising when they were announced as the local licensees for MAGA-broadcaster Newsmax in Australia for 2025. The channel never went live – its executives turned their attention to bigger things, initially agreeing on a deal to buy Southern Cross Austereo’s regional television stations.
That deal fell over, with Seven snapping up the stations instead. But ADH wasn’t done. Next, it turned its attention to Nine Radio, reportedly offering a cash deal to buy 2GB and 3AW among other bits and pieces. That, too, went nowhere.
This week, an application for the winding up of the company was commenced by ADH’s creditors, BDO Corporate Finance Australia, and heard in the NSW Supreme Court. But before proceedings kicked off, founder and chief executive Jack Bulfin stood up to tell the court that the parties had reached an out-of-court settlement.
As it turns out, BDO was attempting to recover debts owed to it by ADH, and was joined on the claim by icare, the NSW government insurer. That debt was ultimately paid the morning of the hearing.
Bulfin was contacted about the whole debacle this week, but we didn’t hear back from him.
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