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Nine pays $140,000 for airing TT interview -or do they?

Updated: Media reports that Nine has paid $140,000 to Seven in an out-of-court settlement after airing an interview from Today Tonight are incorrect.

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The Nine Network has paid $140,000 to Seven in an out-of-court settlement after airing an interview from Today Tonight on A Current Affair.

In March Nine swiftly turned it around and played 4:30 minutes of an 8:30min Seven interview between TT reporter James Thomas and ‘Ritchard’ the second boy at the centre of a now infamous schoolboy bullying video.

ACA didn’t embellish or repackage the story and blurred out the Today Tonight watermark and neglected to tell its audience the story was lifted from its competition.

It followed ACA interviewing Casey Heynes, with selected quotes lifted by TT earlier.

ACA host Tracy Grimshaw told viewers TT had frequently lifted content without attribution and called on the rival programme to stop.

So far, neither has.

Nine’s Managing Director, former lawyer Jeffery Browne is understood not to have wanted to keep paying lawyers.

“He agreed to pay $100,000 in legal fees for both and $40,000 for the story being stolen,” a source told the Daily Telegraph.

Last week a Seven spokesperson told TV Tonight the case had already had its first hearing. Nine declined to comment citing legal reasons.

UPDATED: TV Tonight now understands Nine has not paid $140,000 to Seven as reported in this morning’s print media.

A figure much less has been proposed by Nine but the settlement will be confidential and leaks today are speculative and inaccurate.

21 Responses

  4. with a hell of a lot of luck one day TT or ACA will take the other one to court and a judge will order both of them off air for ever ok ok i will stop dreaming now

  7. $140 yes is a measly sum, but something tells me it was never about money, it is about winning. Especially if an on air apology was part of the deal.

    Tracy’s first attempt at justifying it rates as one of the weirdest moments on tv I have ever seen.

  10. When it comes to finance, $140,000 is not a lot of money in the realm of high-ratings profitability from tabloid current affair programs, especially when it’s a big headline story. This could probably happen again.

  13. Why don’t they just say “this footage is from our competitor”

    Do they really think their audience is that thick as to not know that it’s from the rival network? Perhaps they do, that’s probably why they run the same ‘budget shopper’ segment every fortnight.

  14. I love the typo in the penultimate para. It is a typo? Maybe not. As is said – “only the lawyers win”. How can they justify $100,000 in fees?

  20. My my, and Grimshaw tries to justify it by saying, they do it also so its ok for us to copy. Have just lost the last grain of respect I had for her, and she has lost the last ounce of credibility she had- if their was any left.

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