Mark Ferguson boycotts Logies after nomination snub
According to network sources, Ferguson feels slighted Usher has been nominated over the prime time news anchor for a Logie in a new category, the Ray Martin Award for Most Popular News or Public Affairs Presenter.
The award will be presented for the first time on Sunday night and sees Usher, Seven's only nominee in the category, pitted against Nine's Ally Langdon, Tara Brown and Peter Overton and the ABC's Sarah Ferguson and David Speers.
The nomination comes after Usher was tapped to appear on the current series of Seven's reality program Dancing With The Stars where he has emerged as a fan-favourite and, remarkably, a finals contender.
On Thursday insiders told news.com.au that as a result of the simmering rivalry between the two veteran newsreaders, Ferguson had declined an invitation to attend the upcoming 65th Logie Awards which are set to screen on Seven.
The snub comes a week after Seven's commercial rival Nine claimed the news ratings in the Sydney market for 2025, a market Seven has not won since Ferguson was appointed anchor of its 6pm news bulletin in January 2014.
Nine also claimed the first half of the ratings year nationally in five capital cities.
Ferguson's tenure has long been debated internally at Seven as the network's year-on-year losses to Nine in the news hour have mounted up.
As far back as 2016 Seven's longtime director of news Craig McPherson publicly championed Ferguson, telling media outlets the Tamworth reporter with the film-star good looks could have the job 'for as long as he wanted it'.
However McPherson would come under increasing pressure from engaged Seven proprietor Kerry Stokes to introduce changes to the nightly news bulletin.
In September 2024, following McPherson's departure in April that year, Stokes persuaded Macpherson's acquiescent replacement Anthony De Ceglie to welcome a joint-anchor, Angela Cox, to the desk.
The decision is said to have bruised Ferguson.
According to sources the relationship between the two newsreaders has not been an easy one and now Stokes is once again agitating for change.
Sources are adamant the Seven chairman wants to see Usher, who now enjoys a national profile courtesy of his Dancing with the Stars turn, appointed to the plum role.
Seven of Foxtel's eight Real Housewives of Sydney (RHOS) are understood to be shattered at being informed just one member of the program's cast will be going to this year's Logie Awards.
Fashion-obsessed program stars Krissy Marsh, Nicole Gazal-O'Neil, Terry Biviano, Caroline Gaultier, Dr. Kate Adams, Victoria Montano, Martine Chippendale and Sally Obermeder had spent months contemplating their couture options for television's glamorous night of nights when a brief missive from an executive, the head of unscripted/development at RHOS co-production partner Matchbox, arrived in their inboxes.
In the letter, the executive begins by softening the women up with a note of congratulations.
'Congratulations to each of you on the Logies nomination for RHOS,'
she wrote.
'It's a show we are very proud of and we are grateful for all your hard work that helped make it such a great series.'
Then came the bitter pill.
'We have one ticket only available for a RHOS cast member … I know this will be disappointing news for many of you..' the email continued.
Rather than conduct a ballot or a random draw to determine who the golden ticket would go to, the producers announced they'd drawn a line under the lobbying begun months earlier and made the decision about a Logies representative themselves.
The ticket would go to the most anodyne of the group.
The woman least likely to cause offence.
The woman least likely to get ugly-drunk or hurl abuse should the trophy go to another in Best Structured Reality Program category, a category which sees RHOS in contention with Farmer Wants a Wife, Gogglebox Australia, Married At First Sight, Muster Dogs and Shark Tank.
The woman least likely to jump Hamish Blake on the red carpet or try to souvenir a Logie or a kelpie pup.
In short, it would go to the most unlikely and least intriguing Housewife of them all.
It would go to.... Sally Obermeder.
Victoria Montana spoke for her castmates when she took to social media this week to blast the decision to give two tickets to TV producers: 'I was under no misconceptions about the fact that production would prioritise themselves over the stars of the show. The ladies, who for almost no pay at all, open their lives to the public so that production can make money from our lives.'
Hamish schmoozes the room following ratings crash
Broadcaster and networker par excellence Hamish Macdonald looks confident of having a big bright future at the ABC despite shedding 16 per cent market share in the latest radio ratings survey.
Macdonald's sustained ratings nosedive on ABC Sydney was confirmed last week six-months after he replaced Sarah Macdonald at the microphone in January.
Given his losses were greater than any of his stablemates in the latest radio survey, there was a sense that Macdonald, renowned for moving on fast from media gigs, might prove a no-show at last weekend's Andrew Olle Media Lecture, held on Friday July 25, just three days after his latest ratings capitulation was exposed.
However it was an exuberant Macdonald who turned out for the Olle Lecture at the W (Hotel) Sydney, the ABC-hosted event perhaps too tasty a networking opportunity for Macdonald, who recently lost his lucrative sideline gig on Ten's cancelled The Project, to miss.
With a gig on ABC local radio and a second on the ABC's Radio National where he presents a program called Global Roaming on his CV, Macdonald has no lack of options at the ABC.
It allows him to choose the company he keeps.
And so it was with interest that our sources noted Macdonald's decision not to sit his colleagues from the struggling local radio division but instead with the stars and bosses of the national broadcaster's more prestigious counterpart, Radio National.
He looked at home, this column hears, sitting with the presenter of this year's Olle lecture Geraldine Doogue, a friend, and the controversial ABC executive who recruited Macdonald to local radio, Ben Latimer, the ABC's head of audio content who played a role in Antoinette Lattouf's unfair dismissal case.
Meanwhile Macdonald's ABC Sydney colleagues including breakfast host Craig Reucassel, drive presenter Chris Bath, retired drive host Richard Glover (Bath and Glover joined by spouses Jim Wilson and Debra Oswald), and a cast of execs and producers including the beloved Peter Wall sat at one of a series of tables earmarked for the local radio team.
Also eager to be associated with the high profile oration was ABC chairman Kim Williams and ABC managing director Hugh 'I've been rumoured to be linked to many women' Marks, the former Nine CEO who has said he was unaware Nine had a culture problem when he was running that shop.
On his arm at the Olle Lecture was the woman he romanced while playing culture captain at Nine, his former Nine subordinate Alexi Baker.
Hegarty spied at Nine
60 Minutes' reporter Adam Hegarty appears to have been welcomed back into the fold following a long interstate sabbatical.
Mystery surrounds the decision for Hegarty to up stumps and relocate from Sydney to Melbourne earlier this year though we're informed it followed his break-up with a girlfriend.
Hegarty was involved with fellow Nine staffer Amber Johnston in 2024 and into the early months of 2025.
According to sources Hegarty, one of only two male reporters still on the books at 60, then took extended leave from the show although few wanted to furnish us with details on what prompted it.
Sources initially claimed he wouldn't be returning to the current affairs program yet a week ago he was spotted back in the Nine bunker.
As previously reported by this columnist, not everyone was thrilled when Hegarty was recruited to 60 Minutes at the start of 2024 with some telling us Hegarty's appointment irked some colleagues.
Pub icon departs
Sydney publican Margaret Hargreaves was given a fond farewell at St Mary's Catholic Church in North Sydney on Tuesday following her death on July 15 at age 90.
The longtime proprietor of hotels The Strawberry Hills and The Shakespeare, Hargreaves' pubs were a home away from home for tribes of journalists through the years as well as detectives from the police fraud squad and an array Sydney identities who she collected through the decades and who thought of her as a surrogate mother.
Among those paying respects at her funeral was troubled former game show host Andrew O'Keefe, Foxtel chief Patrick Delany and Real Housewives of Sydney cast member Krissy Marsh.
Pallbearers included one-time real estate heavyweight James Dack and car salesman John Altomonte.
Hargreaves is survived by her husband John, and four children Elizabeth, Kelly, John-Paul and Angie.
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
The unassuming 71-year-old ‘ketamine queen' who changed Australia's drug scene forever
Kerrin Hofstrand used to have a foolproof ritual every time a package of ecstasy would arrive from the US. She'd head to a bar on Sydney's Oxford street, play the song California Dreamin', drink a Stoli and drop half a pill. If she wasn't high as a kite in 15 minutes, she'd know the drugs were no good. And if you think that's the most shocking thing you'll hear out of the mouth of a kindly-looking 71-year-old, you're in for a surprise. Known as the woman who introduced ketamine to Australia in the 1990s, Kerrin's life has been colourful enough to fill several books, and in this week's episode of Gary Jubelin's I Catch Killers podcast, she weaves a fascinating tale spanning decades - including stories of her time working as a stripper, selling cocaine in Hawaii, managing a brothel and taking LSD at the age of 12. 'It was just what we did in my group,' she explains candidly, referring to her childhood dalliance with LSD. 'I did acid before I ever even smoked a joint. It was very strange.' Despite the early indoctrination, Kerrin says her true 'drug days' didn't begin until she moved to the United States. An international move and an introduction to criminal life Kerrin's father, Gordon Stephen Piper was a household name in Australia. An actor, he was best known for playing Bob the plumber on the long-running television show A Country Practice. At 19, Kerrin's dad organised an opportunity for her to study at a prestigious New York acting school, a move she bankrolled with an inheritance she'd received from a great aunt the year prior. 'A girlfriend of mine, Sandra, was going to Hawaii,' she explains. 'She'd already been there, and she'd met this guy named Mark. She was in love with him. And I said, 'oh, well, I'll stop off in Hawaii with you' [en route to New York].' Mark, a semi-pro surfer with long blonde hair, lived in the penthouse of a 1930s building locals called 'the Hippie Hilton' in Hawaii. And as soon as Kerrin arrived, she fell for him. The pair quickly struck up a long-distance love affair between Hawaii and Sydney. 'Sandra went home after a month, I never went to acting school, and I ended up marrying Mark back here two years later,' she says. Once the pair moved together permanently to Hawaii, Kerrin began studying nursing by day, and working in a strip club by night, where she quickly progressed from cocktail waitress to fully fledged dancer. 'I was a tall leggy, good-looking person,' she explains. 'I was a size six on a 5'11 frame. I passed the audition.' Over the next few years, Kerrin achieved her nursing degree and made an extraordinary amount of money. In the process, she also developed a cocaine and quaaludes habit. Eventually, Kerrin's relationship with Mark ended, and she had to move temporarily back to Australia to nurse her mother, who died of cancer on Mother's Day in 1981. Cocaine, cruise ships and ecstasy Over the following decade, what Kerrin describes as her 'unusual' lifestyle took her through a career working on cruise ships around Hawaii (during which time she sold cocaine to 'everyone onboard, from the Captain down') to her eventual firing (because a guest saw her exit the bathroom without washing her hands, none the wiser that she'd actually been doing drugs), to her return to Australia, determined to detox. And it was here, in 1990, that Kerrin's role as a key player in Sydney's drug scene took off. During a night out on Oxford Street, a friend visiting from the States had suggested he begin sending her ecstasy from overseas. 'He said to me, 'Kerrin, if I sent you over 300 ecstasy a week, would you send me the money back?' I was like, 'yeah, sure, of course I will!' I was high as a kite! At the time, I just thought it was post-Mardi Gras, ecstasy talk.' 'About a week later, I get a phone call from the United States. And he goes, 'OK, so I need you to go to Bondi post office, you're going to take this letter saying you are who you are, and you have the authority to pick this up, and there's going to be six macadamia nut canisters'.' And so it began. Soon, Kerrin was doing a roaring trade. 'Every couple of weeks I'd send him back $9,999 from a different bank each time, to keep it under that $10,000 mark [which would flag suspicion].' Swimming in cash, she was soon able to move from her one-bedroom apartment to a fancy three-bedroom house in Paddington. Asked whether she worried about the potential harm she was doing through selling drugs, Kerrin is decisive. 'I was not standing at a kindergarten gate selling heroin,' she says simply. 'I felt absolutely no remorse about selling ecstasy because it wasn't a bad drug in those days,' Kerrin continues. 'In those days, you couldn't get anything more pure as a party drug. You only had to do a half to have eight hours of fun with no alcohol, a Chupa-Chup in your mouth, and a lemonade.' 'Special K' One day, a few months into Kerrin's ecstasy-dealing career, her American contact got in touch to tell her he was sending something different in the post. It would arrive in liquid form, in contact lens containers. It was ketamine - a previously unknown drug on the Australian scene. Kerrin began cooking it up and selling it for $200 per half-gram. Because she was the only person supplying it, Kerrin made 'an insane amount of money', but in the back of her mind, she knew she could be found out at any moment. In June 1991, that's exactly what happened. Unbeknownst to Kerrin, she'd been under police surveillance for a month before they decided to arrest her. 'They came in at 7.30am, and I was up in the top bathroom,' she recalls. 'I lived with three guys, and I thought it was one of them wanting to use the bathroom. I was in my pink flamingo pajamas, and they knocked at the door, and they said, 'get out now'. And I said, 'just hold on a minute, guys'. And they said, 'it's the police'. And I was like, 'OK, I still gotta clean my teeth anyway.'' As police searched her house, seizing drugs and other evidence, they eventually came to the oven, where Kerrin had left a batch of 'Special K' (ketamine) she'd cooked the night before. It was worth $10,000. 'They said to me, 'what's that?'' she recalls, 'and I said, 'it's Special K'. And they said, 'what? Like the Corn Flakes?' I said, 'no, like the ketamine that you give horses, it's a dance party drug, yeah?' So I was the first person in Australia to be busted with ketamine, and they changed the law to make ketamine illegal.' Because the drug had not been on the list of prohibited substances at the time of Kerrin's arrest, she wasn't charged for the ketamine they found. She was, however, charged for the 300 ecstasy pills, 2000 hits of LSD and $100,000 worth of cash that police found. She was eventually sentenced to three years and two months in Mulawa Correctional Centre - an experience she describes as 'hell on earth.' Life after drugs These days, Kerrin lives life on the law-abiding side of the street, exploring a passion for French cuisine, caring for her adopted Maltese Terrier, Bowie, and making videos about her adventures on TikTok for her fascinated followers. And in spite of her former money-making activities, she says that these days, the stakes are too high when it comes to drugs. 'It's a war on quality,' she explains. 'If the drugs were the quality of what I was dealing with when the ecstasy I sold was around, when the Coke was around, when all the drugs were around in those days and nobody was stamping on it 100 times, then you could feel safe about people taking them now.' 'I wouldn't, wouldn't trust anything on the streets these days,' she says. 'And anybody who gets involved with ice is just a goddamn idiot. I see the effects of that every single day.'
Daily Telegraph
an hour ago
- Daily Telegraph
This year's Logie Awards Hall of Fame winner announced
Don't miss out on the headlines from Logies. Followed categories will be added to My News. The Logies are almost upon us, with organisers announcing the winner of the coveted Hall of Fame award ahead of this Sunday's ceremony. It's been revealed Magda Szubanski AO will be bestowed with the honour, making her just the fifth female recipient since the first ever awards back in 1984. Szubanski, 64, who has enjoyed a stellar four-decade showbiz career, will be presented with the award onstage at The Star in Sydney. The comedic entertainer, who was born in England but raised in Melbourne, first hit our screens in the '80s on sketch shows including The D-Generation, Fast Forward and Full Frontal, while also carving a career in film with roles in 1995's Babe and its subsequent sequel. Magda Szubanski AO is the 2025 Logies Hall of Fame inductee. Picture:But she's perhaps best known for her star turn in the 2000s comedy Kath & Kim, playing the loveable Sharon Strzelecki – a character previously debuted in 1994's Big Girl's Blouse with Gina Riley and Jane Turner. 'With a career spanning nearly four decades, the much-loved Magda Szubanski has helped define Australian comedy, creating some of the country's most beloved and enduring characters,' a statement from Logies organisers read. 'The TV WEEK Logie Award Hall of Fame recognises outstanding and continued contribution and enrichment to Australian television culture by an individual, a group of individuals, or a program. 'Magda's contribution to comedy, literature, activism, and Australia's cultural identity is profound and influential. This induction into the TV WEEK Logie Awards Hall of Fame celebrates not only a remarkable television career but also a lifetime of shaping hearts, headlines, and history, and giving audiences the gift of huge laughs.' Gina Riley, Jane Turner and Magda Szubanski first debuted their Kath & Kim characters in 'Big Girl's Blouse' in the '90s. Magda's Sharon Strzelecki remains one of the most prominent characters in Aussie pop culture. Szubanski was previously bestowed with an Order of Australia (AO) in 2019 'for distinguished service to the performing arts as an actor, comedian and writer, and as a campaigner for marriage equality.' The recognition comes amid a devastating time in Szubanski's personal life, with the star announcing her stage four cancer diagnosis in May. The beloved entertainer told fans in a social media post she was battling Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a rare and fast-moving blood cancer. Szubanski confirmed she had begun 'the Nordic protocol' … 'one of the best treatments available' for the disease that was randomly picked up during a recent breast screen. 'Hello, my lovelies. The head is shaved in anticipation of it all falling out in a couple of weeks,' she said at the time. 'I have just been diagnosed with a very rare, very aggressive lymphoma. 'It is one of the nasty ones unfortunately. 'The good thing is I'm surrounded by beautiful friends and family and an incredible medical support team. Honestly we have the best in the world here in Australia. 'It's pretty confronting. It is a full on one. But new treatments keep coming down the pipeline all the time … I've just got to (laughs). 'What do you? What are you gonna do?' The much-loved Aussie entertainer will be honoured at Sunday's Logies. Picture: LisaDuring the past decade, Szubanksi has increasingly opened up about her private battles. In her 2015 memoir Reckoning, Szubanski documented her complicated relationship with food and her sexuality, something she had guarded for decades before coming out in February 2012. She later admitted it was one of the scariest things she'd done in her life. In her social post this year, Szubanski signed off to her legion of fans with a request: 'If you do see me out and about – don't hug me, kiss me or breathe anywhere near me! Wave enthusiastically from a safe distance and know I love you madly.' The Logies will air Sunday night on Channel 7. Originally published as This year's Logie Awards Hall of Fame winner announced
West Australian
6 hours ago
- West Australian
TV Week Logies 2025: Comedian Magda Szubanski to be inducted into Hall of Fame
Much-loved Australian comic Magda Szubanski will be awarded one of TV's greatest honours on Sunday when she is inducted into the TV Week Logies Hall of Fame. Szubanski, 64, got her big TV break in the 1980s ABC series The D-Generation before climbing to even greater fame as one of the stars of classic sketch comedy series Fast Forward, in which she parodied everyone from politicians to TV personalities, from 1989 to 1992. It was there she met and clicked with castmates Jane Turner and Gina Riley, and the three later created Seven comedy programs Big Girl's Blouse and Something Stupid. The latter featured the characters of Kath, Kim and Sharon — who would later become the stars of arguably Australia's greatest ever comedy series, Kath and Kim, which ran for four seasons from 2002 to 2007. Szubanski has also hosted TV programs on channels Nine and Ten, and starred in films Babe, Happy Feet and The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course. Logies organisers paid tribute to her as a 'comedic force and cultural icon'. She also won three Logies in the 1990s. They also recognised her cultural impact beyond the screen, paying tribute to her advocacy for the LGBTQIA+ community. Szubanski is just the fifth female inductee into the Hall of Fame, which was created in 1984, with her award to be part of Sunday's ceremony, to be broadcast on Seven and 7plus from 7pm. Szubanski in May announced she had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive stage four blood cancer, called mantle cell lymphoma. Last month the now-bald star said she was dealing with the treatment by getting into Lego. Other Logies Hall of Fame inductees in recent years include Rebecca Gibney, Bruce McAvaney, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Noni Hazlehurst, Home and Away and TV executive Brian Walsh.
