Mike Munro: “I am a producer’s worst nightmare!”

By his own admission Mike Munro is a tough customer.

He was fired from A Current Affair because he took issue with its consumer-driven content. He was unhappy that Sunday Night took too many weeks off air. He is continually looking over and amending news scripts.

He has already told his News Director at TEN that he hates doing cross promotions, at a time when the network is doing all it can to upkeep awareness of its content.

“I still get excited when I sit down and look at the script, but I am a producer’s worst nightmare because I am right there throughout the whole story. Producers hate working with me because I am so hands-on! But I love it!” he admits.

“We’ve had discussions over where I’m coming from. But I know I’m going to lose the battle over ‘Stick around because something is coming up.’ I forget what the programme is. Are You Paying Attention?

“Aren’t we all about credibility here? Isn’t the reason I am here to try and give some credence to News and boost it etc? And I think we tend to lose that when when we (do cross-promotions).”

“But I think I’m going to lose the battle and maybe it’s a sign of the times. I’ve just got to come around to it,” he admits.

Munro joined TEN to front its weekend news bulletins earlier this year at the behest of TEN’s CEO, after a long career in journalism and presentation including at Nine, Seven and News Limited.

“Hamish McLennan rang me. I vaguely knew him through Rupert (Murdoch), because I spent 10 years at News Limited as a copy boy,” he explains.

“He rang and said they were thinking of boosting their news and putting more resources into Mondays to Fridays as well as the weekend. Would I consider doing weekend news? So I jumped at it.

“Hamish McLennan is doing a great job. Putting Hugh Riminton with Sandra (Sully) is tremendous idea. I’ve worked with him at Channel Nine and I know what a fantastic hand that he is, not only as a newsreader but also as an ad-libber. I remember him at the Thredbo disaster and he was unbelievable. He just stood there and talked for hours. He does Live wonderfully.”

TEN Eyewitness News is amongst TEN’s highest-rating shows, at a time when the network is struggling in primetime. But despite the challenges ahead, Munro is upbeat about a welcoming atmosphere for this veteran journo.

“No-one has ever said to me in 35, 40 years of television ‘Gee it’s really great to have you here,'” he says.

“Newspaper people would never say it, Nine was on top of the world so they could be as sure of themselves as they’d like, Seven never mentioned it. But I’ve got to say TEN is under-resourced but it’s certainly not under-resourced when it comes to enthusiasm amongst the young people.

“If I can help bring something to the weekend news and teach some kids along the way, and they are all very keen to learn, then it’s great.

“I’ve always been very interested in (helping) work experience. If a student wrote to me -anywhere I was- then absolutely, we’d get them a week’s work experience.

“TEN is a young, vibrant newsroom and needs direction, so if I can help that’s fantastic.”

This also isn’t the first time Munro has worked as a news presenter. After some rocky times at Nine he found himself behind a newsdesk.

“When I got fired from ACA for kicking up a stink about how shithouse the programme was and was all consumerism, they didn’t get rid of me completely because I was still doing This Is Your Life. But I then directed myself into News reading the weekend News at Nine for 3 years.

“I was so disillusioned about A Current Affair. Ray had left and naively I thought I could bring it back up again with real stories. But how many times have we all read ‘We’re going to be pumping it up’? I said the same things. But management would say ‘Look at the opposition. We had a politician who had walked away from his Down Syndrome child and they had the price and value of washing machines.’ Up they would go in the minute by minutes. I would argue that’s because we’ve given them that crap and they’ve come looking for it when we should be giving them more responsible stuff.

“They said ‘If you don’t like it go, so I did.’ I did News which wasn’t as tainted or as consumer-oriented.”

In 2008 Munro departed Nine for ‘early retirement‘ in his mid-fifties. Within 6 months he was working again, this time lured to Seven for Sunday Night.

“I needed a break. I’m not sure in my heart that I ever really thought I would retire. We’d been though the ‘awful years’ at Nine under John Alexander, the man who was accused of killing Channel Nine. We had a News Director almost every fortnight, we had a Director of News and Current Affairs almost every month. It was a really rocky place without any real direction. I was severely disillusioned about News and Current Affairs,” he concedes.

“A lot of people thought I had already planned to go to Seven after I left Channel Nine. And that’s not true. And why do they think that? Because Peter Meakin went across to Channel Seven. He and I had spoken maybe once a year. We might be close professionally, but we’re not overly close. And a lot of people thought I had it planned.”

During 3 years on Sunday Night Munro was both co-presenter and reporter. But he admits things did not end well.

“It didn’t because I was unhappy with the scheduling. They gave us the clear impression very early on that this programme, if it worked, would run year-round. We then missed the tightest election in Australian history in 2010. We missed ‘Carbon Tax Sunday’ on a Sunday night programme which really disappointed me. And we were off air for a dancing show. Then we were off air for a singing show,” he recalls.

“But having said that the production values were fantastic, (producer) Mark Llewellyn’s doing a great job. It was like the Herald Sun saying ‘We’re taking Wednesdays off!’ I wasn’t comfortable being a part-time reporter or host so that’s why I walked away.”

Munro readily acknowledges he is a “news junkie,” watching plenty of bulletins and channel surfing at home. Since joining TEN has recently appeared on The Project which appears to have agreed with him.

“I normally go 5-6 TEN, 6-6:30 with one of the others probably Nine, 6:30 – 7 on SBS, 7 – 7:30 ABC, and then till 8:00 7:30. Or The Project. One or the other.

“I’m certainly more attuned to TEN these days than I would have been in the past. I’d never met Charlie Pickering or Carrie Bickmore before. But I really like them and think they’re doing a pretty good job.

“The Project is a good balance and you get another opinion. But I’m a news junkie.”

His love for News extends back to his early career working for News Limited for a decade. It’s remained in his blood. To this day Munro still prefers a typewriter over a computer.

“It’s the banging away on an old portable and keeping your head out of the clouds. It takes me back to my roots in newspapers and not being a bloody show-pony television wanker,” he laughs.

“It’s what I did for the first 10 years of my career and it brings back wonderful memories.”

Interest in journalism was ignited when he was given a tape recorder by his father, whom he only saw once a year, at the age of 13.

“For me it was the seed. But what makes you go to the bus stop and start interviewing people about how long they’ve been waiting for a bus?

“Where does that come from?”

Despite his regard for the Murdoch legacy, he admits he is yet to see the show that precedes him, The Bolt Report, nor Have You Been Paying Attention? afterwards, due to presenting another bulletin into the Perth market. With the chatter about the increase in News Corp interests at TEN, is he concerned it will impact on independent content?

“I will have to have a look at (The Bolt Report). I haven’t seen it. I’ve read Andrew but to be honest I have never seen him on camera. I’ve seen the promos,” he says.

“So before the News I’m not going to watch anything, after the News I’m not going to watch anything on the weekends… so I will just have to get copies of Andrew’s programme.

“I’m sure Andrew would never become an O’Reilly. I would hate to see any sort of overseas FOX(-style news) creeping into TEN with that shocking, right-wing biased shock jocks. That would be awful.”

Opinion at the News desk, is also not his intent. Mindful that readers want straight news he has already had to pull himself up following a comment after a story on Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“When they came back I said ‘Nice to see him in a shirt.’ But I’ve got to stop doing that. I do have to bite my tongue. But I’m not a real big commenter on stories. I don’t like to give too much opinion,” he insists.

“‘Hendo’ could do it, Mal Walden could do it. But I think people want straight News. I think we try and over-egg us the pud. And consumerism has been creeping into Nine and Seven’s News. But cross-promotion is the big worry these days. So I think we have to be on guard. Please don’t go the consumer route (at TEN)! Keep it honest, straight-forward News with no smart-arse comment from the presenter.”

Getting traction for TEN in a 5pm timeslot will, he concedes, be a big ask. For Munro, it’s heads down and getting on with the job.

“It will be really tough. But nobody thinks for a second we’re going to out-rate the NRL in Queensland and New South Wales or the AFL in every other state in the country. We’re not.

“All we can really offer is a good, sound, national one-hour bulletin with, you would hope direct, ethical, unbiased news. To try and be as balanced as you can with as little cross-promotion as possible.

“It’s not going to happen overnight. It will be a long haul and we know where we are on the ladder.

“But I love a challenge and this is a challenge.”

TEN Eyewitness News airs 5pm daily on TEN.