The exit of Mike Sneesby
The after-hours call that spelled Sneesby’s end at Nine
Nine Publishing’s Calum Jaspan: After months of mounting pressure at Nine Entertainment, the valve was finally released on Wednesday evening with a call between Mike Sneesby and the board after the market closed, confirming he would exit in three weeks.
Sneesby has been the public face of a bruising five months for Nine, the owner of this masthead. Tabloid paparazzi had been stationed outside his house for months, and he had often had to enter the company’s North Sydney offices from the basement car park. He cut an emotional figure on Thursday morning after sharing the news he will leave Nine after three and half years as chief executive, according to colleagues who spoke to this masthead privately.
Four current and former colleagues of Matt Stanton, who replaces Sneesby in the interim, described him as a “decisive” leader, a quality which contributed to his recent appointment to the board of Domain.
Armed with cross-industry commercial experience, an ally of Stanton’s, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested he would take the job if offered.
Other early contenders, according to Nine insiders with knowledge of the candidates, include former Foxtel executive Amanda Laing and Nine’s chief sales officer Michael Stephenson, who applied in 2021.
The board may also consider influential director and WIN Corporation chief executive Andrew Lancaster, who acts as a representative for the board’s largest shareholder, Bruce Gordon.
Nine farewells Mike Sneesby after three years and $3b share price slide
Zoe Samios in The AFR: His legacy will likely be remembered in two parts: what he did do at Stan and what he didn’t do when he took charge of the publishing and broadcast giant.
Nine’s next chief executive must fix Sneesby’s strategic paralysis
James Thomson in The AFR: A sagging share price and a torrid last five months led to investors losing confidence. Chairwoman Catherine West and her new CEO face a tough turnaround.
Mike Sneesby steps down as Nine CEO
Zoe Samios in The AFR: Mike Sneesby announced his resignation on Thursday morning after losing the confidence of Nine’s chairwoman, Catherine West, and with major shareholders unhappy about the pace of strategic changes at the television, publishing, streaming and radio company, according to people close to the matter not authorised to speak publicly.
Top institutional investor in Nine backs Mike Sneesby’s exit
James Madden in The Australian: Nine Entertainment boss Mike Sneesby had to leave the media company because of cultural issues, revenue challenges and questions over its Domain listings business, according to one of its institutional shareholders, Martin Currie.
Nine’s rotten-culture scandal torches CEO Mike Sneesby … other dominos teetering
James Madden in The Australian: In May 2021, at the formal farewell for outgoing Nine CEO Hugh Marks, the departing boss offered some frank advice to a room full of company executives, including then chair Peter Costello and newly appointed chief executive Mike Sneesby.
“Don’t f..k it up!” Marks said.
At Nine, culture eats CEOs for breakfast as Mike Sneesby exits
Eric Johnston in The Australian: Nine has now lost two chief executives and one chairman in a little over three years, bringing new life to the modern management phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
Nine CEO Mike Sneesby had no choice but to step down from the top job
James Madden in The Australian: Sneesby can’t distance himself from Nine’s rotten company culture, even though it had set in well before he took the CEO’s reins in April 2021.
Mike Sneesby stands down as Nine CEO after ‘challenging’ year
Sophie Elsworth in The Australian: Mike Sneesby will finish at Nine on September 30 and chief finance and strategy officer Matt Stanton has been appointed as acting CEO. He begins on October 1. Sneesby was appointed CEO of Nine in April 2021 and replaced Hugh Marks.
In Nine’s 2024 annual report Sneesby forfeited 77.5 per cent of his target short-term incentive for the year, but took home total remuneration of $2.1m, including a base salary of $1.5m.
Stanton’s total remuneration during this period was $1.07m, including a base salary of $791,300.
Nine boss Mike Sneesby steps down after ‘challenging’ year
Nine Publishing’s Calum Jaspan: Appointed in early 2021 after a lengthy recruitment process to replace Hugh Marks, Mike Sneesby was favoured over several internal and external candidates, including then-publishing boss Chris Janz and Carl Fennessy, the former head of production house Endemol Shine.
Nine CEO is out the door and it was only a matter of time
Nine’s Publishing’s Elizabeth Knight: As the Bette Midler song goes, “You got to have friends”, and in the end, it looks like outgoing Nine Entertainment boss Mike Sneesby just didn’t have enough of them.
The countdown to his exit started the minute Sneesby’s greatest board ally – former chairman Peter Costello – left in June following the alleged scuffle with a News Corp reporter at Canberra Airport.
Business of Media
The family rift driving Rupert Murdoch to redo his ‘irrevocable’ trust
The Murdoch family had cause to celebrate in the spring of 2019. Patriarch Rupert Murdoch’s sale of Fox Entertainment assets to Disney had netted some $US12bn to be split up among his children.
The media titan had an unusual request: He wanted each of his four oldest children to give him upward of $US100m from their payouts. Three of them — Lachlan, Elisabeth and Prudence — agreed to do so, people familiar with the situation said, in a sign of respect for the fortune he had earned over the years.
Murdoch’s younger son, James, who was increasingly at odds with his father, refused to go along, those people said.
ABC launches legal action against Aboriginal body over Blayney goldmine claims
The ABC has launched unprecedented legal action against an Aboriginal land council that abandoned its opposition to the $1bn Regis gold mine at Blayney, demanding documents that Wiradjuri elders say will reveal confidential traditional knowledge, reports The Australian’s Stephen Rice.
The national broadcaster lodged an application with the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal to force the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council to produce documents showing why it changed its position on the mine to neutral, having previously opposed it.
The land council said it had repeatedly told the ABC why it changed its position – namely, that it discovered information it had been given was false – and that the broadcaster had failed to properly report that response to its audience.
Theatre
Trent Dalton takes journalism to the stage in adaptation of Love Stories
Journalism runs in Trent Dalton’s veins and he knows how important it is to tell a story right, reports The Australian’s Mackenzie Scott.
That is why the adaptation of his best-selling 2021 book, Love Stories, for the stage needed to keep the stories of everyday Australians near word-perfect.
“The thing I love most of all about this is that it’s verbatim … it’s just love quotes and we’ve just strung them into theatre,” Dalton said.
“I’ve never seen real-life journalism put on stage.”
The award-winning author and writer for The Weekend Australian Magazine sat on a busy Brisbane street corner in 2021 with a gifted Olivetti typewriter and asked 150 strangers for a love story.
Love Stories will run from September 13 to 29 at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Tickets are on sale now.
Television
Sport and racing media icon Graham McNeice dies after short illness
Graham McNeice, an icon of Australian sports broadcasting and an acclaimed documentary producer, passed away after a short battle with illness on Thursday, reports News Corp’s Ray Thomas.
He was 76. McNeice had an extraordinary career in the media and his passing touched many people.
Sydney entrepreneur John Singleton described his close friend as a “special man”. “It’s a very sad day, we have lost a beautiful soul,’’ Singleton said.
“No one has a bad word to say about Graham and that is so rare in the media industry.’’
McNeice, who was known as “Shadow” to his friends, began his broadcasting career as a 17-year-old alongside legendary greyhound caller Frank Kennedy at radio station 2KA. After calling races for nearly a decade, McNeice became a consummate presenter on radio and television.
In 1977, McNeice joined Channel 10 where he eventually became the network’s sports newsreader working alongside another broadcasting icon, Ray Warren. “Graham was a great friend, rich in sincerity,’’ Warren said. “He was meaningful, helpful, charitable and highly ambitious. His work ethic was incredible, he was prepared to work eight days in seven.’’
In 2005, he was commissioned by the newly established Foxtel Crime Investigations Channel to develop a documentary series on true Australian crime called Crime Investigation Australia.
Can a box office bomb become a streaming hit?
In the brave new world of movie and television economics, exactly what constitutes success or failure lives on either side of a set of goalposts that seem to move weekly, reports Nine Publishing’s Michael Idato.
There are some clear wins and losses, and streamers (mostly) don’t even release audience data. But it is also true that one man’s failure can be another man’s triumph.
Which may turn out to be the story of Kevin Costner’s costly flop, Horizon: An American Saga. The first of a planned series of four films landed in cinemas with enormous fanfare in June but was met with a brutal reception of just $US36 million in box office takings, against a budget of $US100 million-plus marketing and exhibition costs.
Set in a 15-year-long period during the American Civil War, Horizon: An American Saga was conceived as a four-part story, each a motion picture and streaming original.
At this point, however, only one thing is certain: the second film is finished, and a third and fourth are expected to follow. “I have to hurry and not let the rock fall back downhill,” Costner said. “I’ve gotta go put my hands on it again and start to push it up. It’s a rope that I cannot let go of.
“I don’t know how I’m gonna make [the third film] right now, but I’m gonna make it,” Costner added.
Filming on Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 3 began in May and is expected to continue into early 2025.
The six-minute solution: how next-generation showrunners get a start
Like everyone in the culture industries, Screen Australia’s Lee Naimo wants to work with the best creative talent. Ideally, however, the collaboration would not only be successful, it would be a one-off.
“The dream scenario for us is that we fund someone once and then they go off and don’t need our support,” says Naimo, who as the head of online and games for the federal government’s screen production funding body is tasked with helping the next generation of Australian talent find their path online.
For actor and writer Miriam Glaser, whose guest roles include Utopia and Fires, Screen Australia’s Online Production fund is the reason she and her collaborator, director Charlotte George (Surviving Summer), can call themselves showrunners. The duo’s new YouTube series, Buried, is a seditious black comedy that unfolds over five micro-episodes, each approximately six minutes in length. It’s a broadcast-quality calling card.
Sports Media
Kane Cornes called out by future Seven colleague Daisy Thomas
The tension is simmering between Dale Thomas and his future TV colleague Kane Cornes, reports News Corp’s Jackie Epstein.
Already the pair have some well reported beef to overcome before Cornes jumps ship from Channel 9 to Channel 7.
Now Thomas has called out Cornes for his controversial commentary surrounding Port Adelaide star Zak Butters where he effectively told him to toughen up.
“Which is complete bulls**t,’’ Thomas said on Triple M’s Midweek Rub.
“And if (Cornes) was sitting direct to me at any stage in front of a microphone or in front of me at the pub, I’d tell him that is the dumbest thing I’ve heard for a long while.”