I am delighted to reveal exclusively that my dear friend Stan Grant may return to our TV screens much earlier than expected. And, no, it’s not to return as host Q&A on the ABC each Monday night.
Surprisingly it’s Sky News that has offered Stan a chance to explore totally fresh fields in the world of commercial subscription television.
I can reveal the proud Wiradjuri man is weighing up a number of options put to him by the Rupert Murdoch-controlled network.
My usually reliable sources within Sky say that one proposal is for Stan to anchor a new nightly but early-evening current affairs program covering topics of interest to him.
One senior source said: “If he agrees to the idea Sky has promised that unlike Q&A there would be no pesky studio audience or panel guests.
“Stan would be able to ask and answer his own questions on an eclectic mix of topics, interrupting himself regularly to stress a particular point of view he wants to impart into each lengthy monologue.
“Those of us behind the project have even given the timeslot a new name because it would precede our ‘after dark’ shows.”
I am told that the new show would be titled Dark Information and Education (at top) and, as my Sky sources informed me, it would logically enable the network’s “after dark” team to comment on Stan’s thoughts for the remainder of the night, interview each other about them, invite viewer comments, then comment on the comments, as well as write about them in the columns many of them pen for Murdoch media outlets.
Network executives admit that Sky News After Dark might be delayed some nights if interjections and objections on Stan’s show get out of hand and he requires extra time to state the facts and give viewers the full benefit of his amazing indepth knowledge on just about any issue possible.
My sources tell me that News Crap Australia has also done a deal with Network Seven to enable Stan to appear in a special Sky News version of Seven’s popular singing competition The Voice.
Sky’s version, No to the Voice, would see Stan given a backing band and sing his reasons for backing the indigenous voice to federal parliament while a panel of judges – Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, Senator Pauline Hansen, Senator Jacinta Price, and Labor-turned-Liberal activist Warren Mundine – adopt the traditional approach of having their backs turned to him until they spin around to indicate their support.
The new Sky show would run weekly right up until the planned referendum later this year.
“The suspense for viewers in Seven’s version has always been in watching to see which of the judges will break first and spin around,” one of my Sky sources told me.
“Of course we’re still working on our format for the show to accommodate the fact that none of the judges will ever turn around.”
The fact that Sky has offered Stan the chance to star in one or perhaps two major new programs will be an absolute slap in the face for the ABC which the veteran journalist claimed had failed to sufficiently support him in his fight against vile racist comments on that putrid sewer that is Twitter; hurtful barbs that had earlier forced this gutsy, wonderful, human being to take a break from the public gaze.
I rang ABC chair Ita Buttrose to seek her response to the Sky overtures and, to her credit, she gave me a very direct answer.
“Stan who?” she said.
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