That’s a wrap for marvellous Mal

When he was just starting out in his media career, Mal Walden had a boss who was pretty tough on him.

But in a cruel-to-be-kind style the man very nearly ended Walden’s 52 years in the media before it had barely started.

“He said to me, ‘Mal to survive in television you have to walk a tight rope between ego and insecurity,” Walden explains.

“Too much of an ego and you will slip. And it’s the same with insecurity, you will slip the other way. You have to maintain a very fine balance.

“He said ‘I didn’t want you to have too much ego, so that’s why I was a bit harsh on you.’

“But he was wrong. He gave me too much insecurity and I very nearly slipped the other way.”

Thankfully for viewers, he never did. Tomorrow Walden wraps his fulltime media career -40 of them in television. For 25 of those years, Walden, 68, has been with TEN Melbourne with Seven Melbourne preceding it.

“My first news service on Melbourne television was the 6^th of June 1970. I remember the date because everything’s happened on the 6^th of June. I joined 3YB Warnambool on the 6^th of June, I joined 7EX Launceston on the 6^th of June. I joined 3DB in Melbourne on the 6^th of June, and I came back from overseas on the 6th of June and got my first job at Channel Seven when the newsreader was taken ill and they asked me to read the news and I’ve been reading ever since,” he says.

“So when I came last year to making a decision about my future, I made it on the 6^th of June. It wasn’t coincidence, it was synchronicity.  I didn’t want to break the chain.

“TEN were most gracious, and this is something I will never forget. Normally in this industry when you indicate you want to move on, they show you the door and escort you through it. But TEN said ‘How can we do a transitional year and make it easy for you?”

This year Walden’s workload has been lightened, presenting 4 days a week for the first six months, 3 days for the second 6 months. He impresses how grateful he is to exit on his terms.

“It’s almost unheard of isn’t it?”

But he also insists this is not retirement, although he’s not committing to his next move just yet.

“Writing, travelling, or as my wife says, ‘It’s not until you shut the door that you know what will fly in through the window,'” he says.

“I’m not going back 5 days (a week) or going anywhere else.”

But he is hoping to publish a book, having kept a diary for every week of his media career. Whilst it began initially because he has “a shocking memory for detail and names -particularly names,” it was an interest that grew across the years.

“When conversations were passed onto me I would jot the basis of that conversation down. And from that it became a process I would do almost every day, certainly every week. At the end of the year I would stick it in the drawer and start another one,” he recalls.

“About 25 years ago my wife said ‘What are you going to do with all that junk in the garage?’ so I started reading them. And they told a fascinating story about how the industry has changed and how headlines and stories were personally affecting me.

“So the year before last I enrolled at UCLA California online and did a non-fiction writing course. Now I have a book of memoirs. But it needs a good editor, a bloody good lawyer, and a publisher. The sad part about publishing is it’s a bit like network television: unless you are known widely then they’re not really interested.

“I’m not known outside Melbourne so I can’t find a publisher who’s really interested.”

Walden’s career started after he won a ‘secret sound’ competition on Warnambool’s Radio 3YB.

“I went in to collect my prize at lunchtime with a couple of mates and met the announcers, and it was a defining moment because I thought ‘I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be in broadcasting!'” he says.

“So I came to Melbourne and did a course in broadcasting that cost me hundred pounds, which was the amount of money I’d won, applied for a job, was successful and asked them where it was, and it was at 3YB!

“It was almost like fate.

“It was 7EX Launceston where ‘Malcolm’ became ‘Mal.’ I was Malcolm Walden. Edmund Rouse the chairman at the Examiner newspaper didn’t like too many syllables as a Top 40 American import station.”

They suggested he change his name to Mike, Mel or even Fred.

“I said how about ‘Mal’ as in ‘Malcolm?’ and they said ok!”

His first television job was at Nine Tasmania in 1965. He almost missed his first news reading job a Seven when he was rostered on the day that Harold Holt drowned. Instead of a part-time radio presenter hosting that night, the task fell to “the big guns.”

But who could overlook that he came with an excellent pedigree?

“Eric Pearce, Geoff Raymond, Brian Naylor, David Johnston, myself, all came from the same school and the same radio station, all mentored by the same News Editor.”

Walden has become synonymous with Melbourne,  known for his reliability and geniality in the fickle world of television news.

“What we do is very subjective. People either like you or they don’t. People like certain newsreaders and don’t like others, for whatever reason. It’s not a case of whether one is better than another, it’s just a purely subjective choice,” he insists.

“I’ve laughed and cried and quipped my way through countless bulletins –I think 12,000 was the last count.

“I always feel I would like to read the news (in way that) if I was sitting at home I’d like it to be read to me. I hate blandness, I hate too much sincerity, I hate too much smiling.

“Television lurches from crisis to crisis, it always has. You learn to ride the rollercoaster.”

Some memories are harder to shake than others.

“The hardest news bulletin without any shadow of a doubt was the night a Channel Seven News helicopter crashed killing everyone on board. We lost 4 colleagues that night and it came like a bolt out of the blue,” he recalls.

“It was total devastation, but we had to do a bulletin and I had to read it. The acting news director told me ‘The only way you will get through this is if you write it as well.’ So he made me write the news as well as read it.”

He also nominates the death of Nine presenter Brian Naylor as a lowlight.

“We were due to play golf that day and we cancelled when we saw the weather deteriorating. It was another body blow. But when you think about the amount of tragedy that we read every night involving other people, it stands to reason at some stage it’s going to affect you. The black cloud of tragedy is indiscriminate, isn’t it?”

And while new gathering has revolutionised, Walden looks to the 1970s as the greatest period of change.

“(Technology is) certainly growing faster now but the basics were established in the 1970s. Satellites were launched making delivery more accessible, we went from black and white to colour, we went from film to tape, we went from typewriters to electric typewriters as the precursor to computers,” he says.

“But one of the most defining things that emerged from that time was the 10 second sound bite, which is now a way of life. It happened when we went from film to tape and we realised we could package news stories differently. Instead of 1 minute interviews with vision over them, we could paraphrase the interviews, show more vision, recut it and put a 10 second sound bite to emphasise certain points.

“Less is best today, as they say.”

Yet while Walden is known and respected in the Melbourne market, he’s gained some recognition nationally for the personality he brings to News.  He’s been known to comment on the odd story, not always glowingly, and for bringing a sense of humour to the job. On one occasion he dismissed a story about a flight attendant posing in her underwear for a men’s magazine as “a waste of time.”

“Management didn’t like it but there’s no rule about what you should or shouldn’t do. Someone once said newsreaders should be the conveyor of the message. Sure, they should be impartial. In most cases we are,” he insists.

“I wouldn’t ever editorialise on a major political news story, but it’s usually in the banter between co-presenters, in live crosses or a light and fluffy story.”

The day he couldn’t pronounce the word “phenomenon” is now a YouTube hit, and he laughs that after 52 years in the media, it may well become his legacy.

“For a while I thought I would be the first person to get the story of Cyclone Tracy out of Darwin, or the first journalist to be appointed a newsreader. Because at that stage newsreaders weren’t journalists.

“But it looks, bloody, hell like Phenomenon is going to be my legacy!” he laughs.

“I can say it easily now, I have no problem with it! I think more people have seen it online than actually watched it on the night.  I will probably use it on my final night, just to show them I can do it. If the opportunity arises I will.”

For now he just wants to get through tomorrow’s bulletin, but is mindful it won’t be a walk in the park.

“My last farewell from Channel Seven 25 years ago ended in tears. Not just mine,” he recalls.

“I feel emotional, so much gratitude to this place. I feel sad in a way it’s come to an end, but it was my choosing.

“I’m really happy that I’ve been allowed to see out my time on the day of my choosing which is very rare in this business.”

Walden’s final bulletin airs 5-6pm Wednesday on TEN Melbourne.