In a shock comeback, longtime Seven Network programming boss Angus Ross has been appointed the new head of television of recently merged media company Southern Cross Media/Seven.
The appointment, to be announced today, comes two months after the Seven veteran was made redundant from his position as group managing director of the television business in March.
Ross’s shock departure, after 27 years of service, followed the January merger of Seven and radio business Southern Cross Media.
Southern Cross is home to the Triple M and Hit radio networks.
Ross’s exit also coincided with two other senior Seven executive departures – Seven’s chief operating officer Trent Dickeson and chief people officer Lucinda Gemmell – and followed the axing of Seven’s CEO Jeff Howard and chief finance officer Craig Haskins in January.
Described in some parts as Seven’s “red wedding” (a reference to the brutal annihilation of the House of Stark in TV drama Game of Thrones), the business restructure coincided with the promotion of senior radio bosses within the merged company.
The return of Ross, a programmer for the bulk of his career, follows the appointment of a new company CEO four weeks ago.
Rohan Lund, a former Seven chief operating officer, became the third CEO to helm the company since January when Howard was replaced by acting CEO, John Kelly, the former CEO of radio company Southern Cross.
The recent power swing away from radio and back to television comes on the heels of news Seven’s former commercial director Bruce McWilliam has increased his stake in the business to just under 10 per cent making him the company’s second biggest shareholder behind former major shareholder and longtime chair Kerry Stokes.
McWilliam, a long-time adviser to former Stokes, was a surprise departure from Seven in 2024 during a widespread cost cutting campaign.
Insiders have told this column longtime Stokes adviser McWilliam has emerged in a rapidly changing media environment as the dark horse who should not be underestimated and is no longer beholding to his ex boss.
Can iconic ABC show survive?
ABC boss Hugh Marks opened a can of worms last week when he postured that a “legacy television show that has been around for 40 years” could soon be on the chopping block at the national broadcaster.
Days later, the ABC, which did not return this column’s call, sought to head off widespread speculation about program cuts and associated employment fears from staff.
“Hugh was not referring to one particular show,” ABC Director Screen Jennifer Collins later told one media outlet.
“What Hugh was referring to was that we’re constantly reviewing our slate of content and making an assessment.”
A look at the ratings of a clutch of ABC legacy programs reveals two have fallen behind in the year-on-year ratings race while one beloved program barely has a pulse.
The first of these is faith-based news documentary program Compass, a weekly show that examines values, ethics and religion from around the world and has been on air for 38 years.
Compass has shed 13 per cent of its total national audience in the first three months of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025 as viewers, so we presume, ditch traditional religion in favour of celebrity worship.
The program’s ratings have dropped from 262,700 average viewers last year to 228,700 in 2026.
Also shedding audience, but to a lesser degree, is Media Watch, which is down 6 per cent on 2025.
In 2025, with Paul Barry hosting the 37-year-old program, Media Watch attracted 619,300 national viewers. By comparison, this figure is 581,900 in 2026 with Linton Besser at the helm.
Behind the News or BTN, which has been on air for 58 years, has lifted by 196 per cent from 14,100 in 2025 to 41,800 in 2006.
Foreign Correspondent, a 34-year veteran, is also up 15 per cent from 534,600 to 616,600.
Weeknight news program 7.30 is the only program in the ABC schedule that has been on air for precisely 40 years.
Its ratings have also lifted, year-on-year, by 6 per cent, to 742,900 from 704,000.
Gardening Australia, in its 37th year, also would appear to be safe from Marks’ cost-cutting.
It would be illogical to cut a show that has experienced an 18 per cent audience hike from 433,800 to 510,700 viewers.
It’s harder to be confident of the future of Gen X institution Rage, which despite registering a 9 per cent year-on-year rise, has a tiny audience of just 35,600 insomniacs compared to 32,700 in 2025.
Meanwhile, it would surely be anathema to news and youth-focused ABC chairman Kim Williams to touch either Four Corners, on air for 64 years, or Play School, 59 years.
Lawyer’s cup overflows on eve of wedding
Over-achieving Sydney lawyer Rebekah Giles currently has a full plate.
Alongside barrister Sue Chrysanthou, Giles has been recruited to represent one-time Melbourne AFL spouse Cate Sayers in her defamation case against her estranged husband, former Carlton and PwC boss Luke Sayers.
The matter, and rather too much information about his 2025 d**k pic and allegations she was defamed in a statutory declaration the AFL requested from her husband, is headed to the Victorian Supreme Court where it promises to hold much of the nation’s media in its thrall.
Then there’s Giles’ ongoing battle in the NSW Supreme Court for $1.2 million in costs relating to her former client, cavoodle owner Gina Edwards.
In 2024, with Giles’s help, Edwards won a defamation case – and with it a payment of $150,000 – for being depicted as a “dog thief” by Nine’s A Current Affair in a series of reports aired in 2021.
Giles was due to be back before the court on Thursday for a directions hearing on that matter.
And last but not least is her forthcoming wedding to Melbourne property developer Tim Price.
Giles had to find some time in her busy schedule at the weekend to don a showstopping Rachel Gilbert lilac dress for her glamorous hens lunch.
Some 70 guests descended on Potts Point hotspot Lady Chu for the celebration on Sunday.
Giles’ wedding, expected to be held within weeks, will be her third, his second.
Giles was previously married to Damien Rivkin, son of flamboyant stockbroker Rene.
Her second marriage was to packaging and print executive and heir Jack Malki.
Sources for Giles have scotched rumours she and Price will marry at favourite Italian holiday destination Forte dei Marmi in July, though they may honeymoon there given they make an annual pilgrimage to the resort town.
Home for the couple, so we hear, continues to be a work in progress, with Giles based in Sydney and Price in Melbourne and the couple living between the two cities.
Lawsie’s last great loves go under hammer
“It used to be wives, but collecting cars is better and slightly cheaper,” legendary radio broadcaster John Laws said in 2001 as he prepared to part with 17 luxury cars at auction.
Six months on from Laws’ death last November at age 90, his last great automotive loves, all three of them, are set to go under the hammer.
The vehicles form part of a 1000-item collection of fine art, 18th Century French furniture, antiquities, jewellery, clothing and first edition books owned by Laws and wife Caroline that are to be sold by Bonhams auction house in five separate sales from June 2.
Having collected and loved a wide variety of cars during a media career spanning 70 years – Bentleys, Aston Martins, Rolls Royces, Jaguars, even humble Volkswagens – only three gleaming saloons graced Laws’s large six-car garage at Sydney’s Woollomooloo Finger Wharf at the time of his death.
A 2016 Bentley Mulsanne Speed Saloon with 25,000km on the clock, a 2020 Mercedes-Maybach S650 Saloon that has done 13,000km, and a 2007 Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé, the first delivered to Australia, that has just 18,624km on the dial.
For a man who famously loved driving, The Golden Tonsils did remarkably little of it during the last two decades of his life in his much reduced and cherished fleet.
Expectations for the Bentley range from $180,000 – $250,000.
The Maybach and Roller are both expected to bring in between $200,000 to $300,000.
Should the immaculately maintained cars (and one classic number plate, 123123, which is expected to fetch between $120,000 and $160,000) realise the top end of estimates, Laws’s estate – which is being divided between his five surviving natural children and four stepdaughters – will get a $1 million injection.
Other highly prized possessions in the collection include a 1978 onyx sculpture by Australian artist Joel Elenberg which has expectations of between $300,000 and $400,000 and four bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin.
There are also artworks by Australian artists Brett Whiteley, Margaret Olley, Ray Crooke and Tim Storrier and the largest single owner collection of prestige watches ever to go on the market in Australia.
Among Laws’s 55 prized timepieces, to be auctioned on June 3, is a yellow gold Patek Philippe Nautilus “Jumbo” timepiece, circa 1985, estimated from $150,000 –$250,000 and plentiful other Patek Philippes, Rolexes, Cartiers and Bulgaris – the total value of which, based on top estimates, could outstrip his cars.
At the lower end of auction lots, though no less treasured, is an unbranded 18 carat gold ring featuring a lion’s head (estimate $2500 – $3500), a favourite of the star dubbed Golden Tonsils and said to have been a gift from his “princess”, wife Caroline, over 30 years ago.
Karl’s free-to-air TV ratings not a patch on King Kyle’s
ARN executives in a rush to sign stars Karl Stefanovic and Eddie McGuire to help plug the talent crater left by the cancellation of Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson’s KIIS FM breakfast show seem to have overlooked one measurement standard that has always paved the way in free-to-air television.
The ratings.
A look at Stefanovic’s ratings for Nine’s Today shows the program is just scraping over the 300,000 mark for total people nationally – a figure that sees the program thoroughly eviscerated by Seven’s Sunrise.
The results for the first three days of this week were Today (309,000) to Sunrise (457,000) on Monday; Today (317,000) to Sunrise (424,000) on Tuesday and Today (314,000) to Sunrise (464,000) on Wednesday.
With figures like those, surely ARN CEO Michael Stephenson should be trying to sign Matt Shirvington and Natalie Barr to his radio shop.
Even at their worst, Sandilands and Henderson were still pulling in a cumulative audience of 403,000 in the embattled Melbourne market in their final two radio surveys.
In Sydney, this figure was 636,000 for Survey 1 2026, down on their former glory days when they regularly attracted 850,000 listeners.
These figures make a mockery of Stefanovic’s current 300,000-odd national audience on Today, a figure which owes much to the popularity of his breakfast offsider, Melbourne personality Sarah Abo, who is set to welcome a new baby any day now.
