Kyle Sandilands are leaving Southern Cross-Austereo’s 2DayFM (let the grief be unconfined) to join Mix 106.5, apparently for altruistic reasons and a minimum of $1 million a year apiece.

Their time at 2DayFM had many features. Like this one, when they hooked up a 14-year-old girl to a lie detector in July 2009. To be clear here, the girl was accompanied by her mother, but clearly appeared an unwilling participant. She explicitly said she was afraid and that this was not fair. She was then asked about her personal sexual history, with the clear message that if she was not truthful she would be branded a liar. She said she was raped when she was 12 years old.

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How committed is Rupert Murdoch to his children succeeding him to control News Corporation and 21st Century Fox? Seven years ago he agreed to give up the one successful big investment he has made in the last 17 years–his only success since launching Fox News in 1996. Walked away from it. But he wasn’t always so family minded… Continue reading →

Just over an hour after Tony Abbott had given his victory speech on Saturday night, one of his warmest admirers joined the chorus of praise. In the process Rupert Murdoch cleared up some little confusion over where the editorial line at News Corp Australia newspapers might head after the election. Who would they target now?

There were some very solid suggestions from the executive chairman: Continue reading →

WHEN MURDOCH IS THE MESSAGE 

How much power does Rupert Murdoch have over political leaders? Not a jot. Nary a skerrick. Not a sausage. Nada. Zippo. Rien du tout. Nuffink. None. Gedouttahere! Rupert who?

They all say so. Every single one. Well that’s a relief.

So how much power does he have over corporate leaders, who have the advantage that they don’t need to get re-elected by popular vote? Would he be able, say, to get Australia’s commercial television stations to refuse to run an anti-Murdoch ad days before an election? How implausible. Continue reading →

London, January 1998

Semen spunked out over the steering wheel and dripped down to mingle with the Campbell of Argyll tartan.

‘Have you read any of it? You should have a look, some of it is very very good,’ Mark Thomas told the policeman outside 10 Downing Street. Continue reading →

‘Toffs for toffs, hell to public.’

Disappointing news on the Toff touting front. There’s been no sightings since April. The Toff Total-Tallier-in-Chief has been missing in action for four months now. And we’re the poorer for it. Updating our story so far:

Let’s be frank. You don’t see a lot of Toffs around these days. You don’t run into them in the suburbs. Or around the shopping mall. They don’t go bowling. They’re shy creatures. I thought I saw a small one last week, but he ducked off into the shrubbery before I could be sure. Continue reading →

Col Allan has six Australian papers to play with but only one style of muscular journalism. It doesn’t really matter which government is in power. He has no other model and he’s not going anywhere. So he’ll be coming for you too, Tony. It’s what he does.

At some point the operational centre running the Liberal Party’s federal election campaign has to consider the mess that Tony Abbott has got himself into with Rupert Murdoch. Continue reading →