Farewell to Kochie: “They tried to sack me, because I had an opinion”

EXCLUSIVE:

In October 2002 David Koch was installed as host of Sunrise alongside Melissa Doyle. It was a move the finance expert initially rejected, feeling the show’s approach to straight news was not the right fit. But with producer Adam Boland, the three would rewrite the rule-book, with a ‘family friendly’ show embracing its audience well before the days of social media.

Within 13 months Sunrise would overtake the Today show hosted by Steve Liebmann and Tracy Grimshaw.

“Kochie,” as he became known, was a disrupter to the genre, but one who brought enormous success to the Seven network at a time when, under network boss David Leckie, it would turn around fortunes in primetime.

On the eve of his final Sunrise show, he speaks with TV Tonight about the highlights, lowlights and the show’s ‘heartland’ audience.

Early Years

“When I started, I think we were 5% of the Today show audience. No-one watched us. Seven News executives didn’t even watch us. Our production office was a demountable in the car park at Epping. We weren’t even in the main building so we were allowed to try things and fail because no-one watched us. And I think that was the secret to it. There was no pressure.

“Give me a bonus when we get to half of Today’s audience”

“I remember when they asked me to do it full time and I said no, because I had my businesses then. It was a bit like a straight news-reading job. But we changed it a bit, so I could sort of be myself. The money wasn’t very good so I said to them, ‘Give me a bonus when we get to half of Today‘s audience, and another bonus when we beat them.’ When they said no, I said ‘Why not?” they said, ‘We don’t want that to be disheartening to you, because it will never happen.’

“But I was big enough and ugly enough, in my mid-40s, in business for a while, done different things and I reluctantly agreed. We got to half their audience after nine months, and beat them after 13.”

Seven boss David Leckie

“He said the best decision he’s ever made in TV is to have nothing to do with Sunrise. He learned that it was a very different beast to it anything else in television.

“He used to refer to us as ‘The Mansons,’ because we were our own cult within Seven and we didn’t give a f*** about anybody!

“He used to swear at us when we annoyed him, but he was one of our biggest supporters. He and Kerry Stokes, were probably the two ones that just loved what we were doing. Back in those days, when we changed the intro from ‘Melissa Doyle and David Koch’ to ‘Mel & Kochie’, the-then news director stormed out and told us to change it back because, we were demeaning the news brand of Seven. Maureen Plasvic after 18 months of me being there, took it to the board to sack me, because I had an opinion. I was bad for the network and the news brand. Thankfully, Kerry and Ryan Stokes overruled it.

“But I remember the first Christmas party. David Leckie said, ‘Mate I think we’ve got the pillars to build this network. You need three American shows, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Prison Break to get there. Then you build your local format around it.’ The bloke was a genius. He just had an incredible touch with television and that’s why he was a great supporter of ours.”

Before Social Media: Changing the format of Breakfast TV.

“When we first started, it was emails purely and we said to viewers, ‘It is your show. Email us with stories and issues you want us to solve.’ Then we put those issues on a whiteboard on the set, called the ROS wall – named after Roz Kelly because she had the sports rorts whiteboard scandal in federal politics at the time.

“It was the most powerful marketing tool that we had”

“It would stay on the whiteboard until we answered that issue or did a segment about it. I reckon it was the most powerful marketing tool that we had, because it said to viewers, ‘You’re important to this show. What you want us to cover, we will, and it stays on the whiteboard until we’ve done it.’

“TV is a bit arrogant. It sort of gives people what they think they should have. But we told our viewers, ‘You tell us what you want. ‘”

“Very early on we talked about who our viewer was”

Irene from Home & Away: the typical Sunrise viewer.

“Very early on we talked about who our viewer was, the most important viewer that we were going to build the show around.  Funnily enough, she’s still there today: we came up with Irene from Home and Away. Even now, we still refer colloquially and lovingly to our viewers as ‘Irene’. Because mums control the zapper of a morning. You’ve got to get mums to turn you on, but that can’t spark an argument with the rest of the family. It’s got to be a good decision that mum can live with. That’s why we would have all the performers and the music and things like that.

“We have the sport for Dad and a bit of news, but primarily, we had to get Irene to turn us on and make that a good decision for the family.”

Co-hosts: Melissa Doyle, Sam Armytage, Natalie Barr.

“You wouldn’t get up at ungodly hours of the morning if you didn’t get on with each other. We’ve been really lucky. We’re still connected. I see Mel and Sam out and about, Nat’s been on the desk before the co-hosting role. We’re really close, she often describes our relationship as me being like her older brother. I’ve done Kokoda with her husband, we text during footy games, that sort of stuff. None of us have ever socialised much outside of the show, because frankly, we have nothing to talk about. We talk to each other for three and three quarter hours a day. I talk to them and sit nearer to them than I have ever done to my wife.”

“He, Mel and I sat down and sort of built the show.”

Producers: Adam Boland, Michael Pell, Sean Power, Sarah Stinson.

“All of them have been absolutely instrumental in the development of the show. Early on, it was Adam that drove the changes through the hierarchy of Seven. We were trying to do something a bit different. He, Mel and I sat down and sort of built the show. He got it accepted and fought for it. Michael then took it to a new level in a different cultural environment with digital… he’d worked on the show for years with Adam beforehand, so it was a really smooth transition. Sarah’s been associated with us for years and years and understands who we are. It’s in really safe hands.

“I think the common thread through all of the executive producers that have been on the show, including the current ones, is that everyone has a passion for it.”

Highlights of Sunrise:

“Hopefully, we’re a show that has big event TV, whether that is adventurous, whether that is closing down a city because of Bieber or One Direction had their first appearance in Australia on us; whether it’s me broadcasting from Antarctica as the first show ever to do it in the world for five straight days or whatever. We did Anzac Day on the Kokoda track. Beaconsfield was a massive moment in the show, where we set a planeload of tradies up to Far North Queensland to help rebuild Innisfail after Cyclone Larry.

“It’s always been a show with heart”

“It’s always been a show with heart, with really strong values and one that is way bigger than any one individual on it. That’s probably the proudest thing. We’ve had changes on the show, and it hasn’t affected me deciding to step down. It won’t affect it one little bit. It will just keep going on, it won’t skip a beat because it’s so strong. People who work on it have the same value set that we established years ago.”

Indigenous protest, Pauline Hanson & copping criticism

“(The indigenous protest) was started by the opinions of a guest. I would get criticised because we had Pauline Hanson on regularly. I’d have massive arguments with my kids saying, ‘Do you want us to censor the views of different parts of the community? She’s an elected representative. She represents part of the community; I don’t agree with her and I’d rather have her on and disagree with it and shoot down a lot of the bulldust she’d talk about. She broke off with us, basically because she put a condition that she was going to come on the show, but she couldn’t be interviewed by me. And we said, ‘It’s not up to you to decide on that.’

“Research shows a lot of people get bloody annoyed with me.”

“We’re not going to please all the people, all of the time. You can’t do that in life. We can’t do that as a breakfast show. Research shows a lot of people get bloody annoyed with me. But Australia has three great breakfast TV shows. It’s not compulsory to watch one or the other. There is a choice. But even the people that get annoyed with me say ‘He does have a few brains, what he says is well researched.'”

Hosting Battle of the Choirs:

“I loved that show so much. I thought it had heart and soul. But so expensive to get all the choirs together. If they brought back Battle of the Choirs, I would be in it, in a flash. I loved that show because it was ordinary people doing something that brought them great joy. It was just beautiful.

Hosting Carols in the Domain, Telethon, Good Friday Appeal:

“If I get invited to do them, I would definitely be there. They’re such big events I can understand if they want to get other people in the network to do it. But I would be there in a flash. Carols in the Domain is one of the highlights of our year as is Telethon and Good Friday Appeal. They’re just great, joyous occasions.”

Advice to Matt Shirvington:

“Breakfast TV strips you bare. You cannot hide. If you’re doing three and three-quarter hours of live TV, you cannot pretend to be someone you’re not. I had lunch with Shirvo yesterday -just Shirvo, Nat and I. I said to him, ‘You’re going to come under a lot of focus, a lot of pressure. You’ve got to stay true to yourself. The first time you (say something) because you think that’s what people want to hear, they’ll know you’re bullshitting. You’ve just got to be yourself. You’re a good bloke, you have good values. You will say the wrong thing. Everyone does in life. Everyone says the wrong thing to their family or friends or whatever. No one’s perfect. But you’ve just got ride with that. You’ve just got to be yourself and be a bit humble. Don’t get suckers into the TV bubble.’

“‘Everyone will want to be your friend…. all the powerbrokers. The people who will decide whether you succeed or not live west of the Gladesville Bridge. They’re the ones you’ve got to relate to and be on their side.’

“The Guinness Book of Records apparently is verifying it”

Final Sunrise show:

“I know nothing about it. Absolutely nothing. I’m quite an emotional personal. I cry at The Sound of Music. It will be a big day. My kids on the family WhatsApp were running a book when I announced it last Monday on how long I would be able to keep it together without being emotional. My children take the piss out of me all the time about it. It’ll be a fun day. A good day.

“It’s 21 years in October. I think I’ve done more live TV than anyone on Australian TV. 16,000 hours of live TV. Over 5300 shows and over 50,000 interviews. The Guinness Book of Records apparently is verifying it.

“But I’ve also never been a person who sees breakfast TV as a stepping-stone to something in primetime. I’ve never aspired to do anything else except Sunrise. I don’t reckon I’d be very good at anything else except Sunrise.

“It was a perfect show for me, and I loved it. Absolutely loved every single day. For me, Breakfast is primetime.”

David Koch farewells Sunrise from 5:30am Friday.