Why this award-winning Fox veteran no longer watches cable news
Washington: David Hill's 2025 began in fear. A Los Angeles resident for 30 years, his home in the Pacific Palisades was nearly eaten up by the wildfire that ripped through the coastal neighbourhood in early January, killing 12 people and destroying thousands of houses.
Hill and his wife Joan were evacuated for eight days, but the bricks and mortar survived – thanks to a wind shift, they were told. Many friends were not so lucky.
'It's devastating,' he says. 'You drive through the area and it brings tears to your eyes … Flying out of LAX this morning, there's Santa Monica, and then there's this huge black area where the Palisades were.'
But then came better news. In the space of two weeks, the veteran Australian-born sports television producer found out he would receive not one but two lifetime achievement awards; one from the Sports Emmys, the other from industry bible Sports Business Journal.
Hill may be American these days, but it's difficult to erase the Australian instinct for modesty. When the Emmys called, he said he was already getting a similar award from the Journal. 'I think you ought to change your mind,' he told them.
They didn't. Hill will collect the gongs on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, New York time, respectively, at separate ceremonies in the city. Coincidentally, Wednesday is his 79th birthday.
'It's a massive abnormality for the same person to get back-to-back lifetime achievement awards. To be honest, it's a little overwhelming,' he says. 'I like to keep a low profile and stay under the parapet, but God almighty, this is really putting your head over the parapet.'
Hill was born in Newcastle, NSW, and got his start as a copy boy at Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper. He worked at the ABC and Seven, but came into his own at Channel Nine, where he shook up the production of sport – including the rebel World Series Cricket – under then station owner Kerry Packer.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
43 minutes ago
- The Age
The Murdochs are feuding but their empire is thriving
Nothing in Fox's television schedules last year was quite as exciting – or, at times, as profane – as the drama that played out in a closed probate court in Reno, Nevada. Rupert Murdoch, the 94-year-old founder and controlling shareholder of Fox Corporation and its sister company News Corp, was trying to change the terms of a family trust to block three of his children from inheriting control of the companies upon his death. The high-stakes legal manoeuvre was rejected. An appeal – and thus a new season of morbid entertainment for media watchers – is in the works. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. This is doubly surprising. For one thing, succession crises and legal uncertainty tend not to bolster investors' confidence in a company. What's more, the Murdoch firms are giants in linear television and print journalism, declining industries that markets have not been kind to. Why is a pair of legacy media companies controlled by a dysfunctional dynasty so popular with investors? Start with Fox, the larger of the two, with a market value of $US24 billion ($37 billion). Its business is concentrated in American broadcast and cable television, which in recent years have witnessed a bloodbath. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. Over the past decade-and-a-half, the share of homes with pay TV has fallen from nearly 90 per cent to barely 50 per cent as viewers have defected to streaming services such as Netflix. As for broadcast television, Americans today spend half as much time watching it as they do streaming, according to Nielsen, a data company. While other legacy media companies' values have stagnated or worse, Fox's has soared. The difference lies in its content mix. In 2019 Fox sold its general-entertainment assets to Disney for $US71 billion at what turned out to be the top of the market, deciding to focus on news and sport. It was the right call: streamers like Netflix have since grabbed the audience for general entertainment, while news and sport have mostly stayed on linear TV, and thus with Fox.
Sydney Morning Herald
43 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Murdochs are feuding but their empire is thriving
Nothing in Fox's television schedules last year was quite as exciting – or, at times, as profane – as the drama that played out in a closed probate court in Reno, Nevada. Rupert Murdoch, the 94-year-old founder and controlling shareholder of Fox Corporation and its sister company News Corp, was trying to change the terms of a family trust to block three of his children from inheriting control of the companies upon his death. The high-stakes legal manoeuvre was rejected. An appeal – and thus a new season of morbid entertainment for media watchers – is in the works. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. This is doubly surprising. For one thing, succession crises and legal uncertainty tend not to bolster investors' confidence in a company. What's more, the Murdoch firms are giants in linear television and print journalism, declining industries that markets have not been kind to. Why is a pair of legacy media companies controlled by a dysfunctional dynasty so popular with investors? Start with Fox, the larger of the two, with a market value of $US24 billion ($37 billion). Its business is concentrated in American broadcast and cable television, which in recent years have witnessed a bloodbath. As the Murdochs continue their decades-long, multibillion-dollar family feud, the empire they are fighting over is flourishing. Over the past decade-and-a-half, the share of homes with pay TV has fallen from nearly 90 per cent to barely 50 per cent as viewers have defected to streaming services such as Netflix. As for broadcast television, Americans today spend half as much time watching it as they do streaming, according to Nielsen, a data company. While other legacy media companies' values have stagnated or worse, Fox's has soared. The difference lies in its content mix. In 2019 Fox sold its general-entertainment assets to Disney for $US71 billion at what turned out to be the top of the market, deciding to focus on news and sport. It was the right call: streamers like Netflix have since grabbed the audience for general entertainment, while news and sport have mostly stayed on linear TV, and thus with Fox.
Sky News AU
2 hours ago
- Sky News AU
'Maori-white girl': Bikini-clad AFL WAG Rebecca Judd shocks fans as she reveals her little-known New Zealand indigenous ethnicity
Rebecca Judd has shocked fans by revealing her little-known ethnicity. On Monday, the wife of retired AFL legend Chris Judd, 42, took to Instagram Stories to share a video of herself flaunting her signature bikini body at the couple's weekender on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. Judd donned the crocheted bikini from Australian swimwear brand It's Now Cool's new collection while proudly strutting around her outdoor spa. However, it was the mother of four revealing her ethnicity in the caption which really turned fans' heads. "Winter fit check with @itsnowcool. This little Maori-white girl needs a tan. See you soon, Broome," she wrote. Judd seldom mentions her New Zealand heritage from her mother Kerry Brown's side. Her father Hugh Twigly, is of Scottish and Irish descent. In 2023, the AFL WAG told Stellar magazine her family often travelled to New Zealand in her childhood, influenced by her mother's heritage. "Mum's side is MÄori, so we did a lot of trips to New Zealand when we were kids," the model said. "No one ever guesses that I'm MÄori. No-one. Ever." Judd said her family would all flock to her at her grandfather's farm in New Zealand, where they would enjoy a hÄngÄ«, a traditional MÄori cooking method in which food is cooked in an underground oven. "My pop has a big farm, and we'd have all the uncles and aunties over to have a hÄngÄ« every time we went over," she said. Judd's parents Hugh and Kerry relocated from New Zealand to Australia in the late 1970s to take advantage of the West Australian mining boom. After her parents separated, Judd and her sister Kate split their time between Perth and regional WA. In her wide-ranging interview with Stellar, Judd mentioned her family struggled to make ends meet growing up. "We didn't have much growing up, and every dollar counted, so we really respected our food, our home and our belongings," she said. In 2007, Judd moved to Melbourne with then-boyfriend Chris Judd. She completed her studies in speech and language pathology at La Trobe University and worked with adults in rehabilitation at the Alfred Hospital. Judd married Chris in Melbourne's Carousel at Albert Park in 2010, and they have four children: Oscar, 14, Billie, 11, and twin sons Tom and Darcy, nine. The couple documented their extensively redesigned $7.3 million Spanish Colonial house in Brighton, Melbourne's southeast, in the media.
