Network 10’s Resident rose wrangler and celebrity unmasker, Osher Günsberg has been a part of the Australian media landscape since he was 16 years old and now he’s revealed an exciting new career move.
The 49-year-old, who has been nominated for a Gold Logie at this year’s TV Week Logie Awards, has started a new production company with Ben Richardson, who was formally his boss at Channel V.
Speaking on Mediaweek and Chattr’s The Entertainment Hotline Podcast, Günsberg said the move was due to the fact he chose a job where he is going to eventually “age out of” and he wanted security for his son Wolfie, almost four, as well as his step-daughter Georgina Griffen, 19.
“I realised, ‘Oh my gosh’, I’ve got to build something that’s mine because I need to make sure that this kid [Wolfie] is going to be okay and has every opportunity that he needs to have or wants to have,” he said.
Günsberg on the set of The Masked Singer. Ten
The podcaster and TV personality further added that he wanted to “insulate” himself from “for some, the most terrifying time to be in broadcasting”.
“It’s also the most exciting time to be in broadcasting,” he added. “I choose to look at it in the latter and so I am just fundamentally focused on creating and building.”
The project is in “alignment” with the kind of work that he already does in TV, and beyond that, married his love of “developing and working with people who are developing talent.”
Günsberg also said they’ve got a couple of things that they’re “building and developing”, including scripted drama.
“This is all part of it,” he said. “This is what I’m trying to achieve here. This is the only thing I’ve ever been able to do. I don’t know how to do anything else. How can I be sure that whatever happens in my business, I’m in and that we’re all in?
“How can I be the most ready for it? And I think that is what I’m trying to do.”
Osher Günsberg explains “aging out” of his job
During the interview, Günsberg explained that he’d “chosen this job that I’m going to age out of” and when given an example of the late Bert Newton, whose career in broadcasting spanned six decades, he said that technology played a huge part in the difference between their careers.
“When you speak about someone like Bert Newton, essentially, the only disruption that showed up was VHS recorders and then maybe
cable,” he said. “That’s the only technological disruption in his career that he dealt with. I started TV in four by three with no internet, really. Dial-up. The internet made a noise.”
The Bachelor Australia franchise host then gave an example about a shoot he had done the night before the interview in Melbourne for the upcoming The Bachelors season.
“I was saying to the crew around me, when I started we technologically could not have done this without it being a quarter of a million bucks,” he said. “Because we’re walking down alleyways and I had people holding lights and huge amounts of photons coming out at me to light me in these dark alleyways in a beautiful black suit.
Osher Günsberg on The Bachelor. Ten
“But that would have taken a generator parked around the corner, lights on tracks, a gigantic Steadicam. We would have locked down the street because it would have been dangerous. The technological disruption of how we make television is bonkers, let alone the disruption of widely available mobile broadband, where people can literally watch any content, any time of day from anywhere in the world.”
The TV personality, who was also named number six in Mediaweek’s Star Power 25 list in 2022 further explained that Newton didn’t have to compete with “Game of Thrones, where you could sit on your couch and decide to watch instead of Good Morning Australia.”
“That is what our business is now and that is only going to get more,” he said. “And when I say I’m going to age out, I’ll be doing my best to try to keep up because more people are watching more stuff than ever before.
“It’s not like eyeballs have stopped watching. It’s how can I just be sure that I might age out of the kind of television that I’m making and the kind of television that I’m making at the moment. But who’s to know what new format shows up.”
Osher Günsberg on his TV Week Gold Logie Nomination
Being first nominated for a Star Power Award was an “important” milestone in Günsberg’s life, particularly through his journey with sobriety and mental health.
“My career is divided into two real clear parts,” he admitted. “Before I got sober and after I got sober. I had just tried to go off of the sheer power of what it is that I was doing when the mic or the camera was on as a way to carry me forward.
“But everything else that surrounded that I was not doing properly or not doing well, or doing to my own detriment…to the point where it didn’t matter what I was doing on the mic or on camera. I didn’t mean enough to the people who were making the decisions about who was going to be on a TV show and who was going to be on the radio and then there was a moment where it all ended.
“I was like ‘Whoa.’ I clearly needed to stop drinking and using and I had to have a long hard look at myself in the magical, amazing mirrors and stare deeply into my own soul and then beyond that, past my ego to actually look what was really going on.”
Seven
As for his TV Week Gold Logie nomination, Günsberg (who has been working in the industry since 1994) called it “amazing”, finally able to say to himself, “You deserve to be in this same category as these people.”
“Two of which I can legitimately compare myself to because they’re both male and they both do my job, which is Hamish Blake and Shaun Micallef. Two people who are the greatest to have ever done it, ever in the history of my country. Heroes that I watch and think, ‘How can you be so good and funny? How can you do that?’ That is impossible. It’s inhuman.
“And that I’m standing there in a photo with these guys going, ‘This is amazing’. And it’s wild because it’s a testament to the work that I literally do every day to be sure that I’m physically and mentally healthy… trying to be as authentic as I possibly can be where possible, and it’s unbelievable.”
Osher Günsberg has been nominated for a Gold Logie at the TV WEEK Logie Awards, airing at 7.00 pm on Sunday, July 30 on 7 and 7Plus.
Listen to the full interview with Osher Günsberg on The Entertainment Hotline Podcast here.