Craig Bennett on Facebook has reported that Marilyn Mayo, former host of the Super Flying Fun Show in the 1970s has passed away.
Sad to hear that. She was interviewed by Woman’s Day less than a year ago and talked about her health struggles. Sadly, her co-host Marty Morton also passed away in September last year.
Veteran Channel Ten reporter Paul Mullins has passed away at 79. The sad news reported by Sandra Sully on Ten News.
ABC statement on the passing of former managing director Geoffrey Whitehead
Geoffrey Whitehead
28 September 1934 – 24 December 2024
As the first Managing Director of the ABC, Geoffrey Whitehead had a daunting task at hand.
Taking the reins of the public broadcaster newly corporatised under the ABC Act (1983), Whitehead faced the monumental job of bringing it into the modern era while grappling with the broader existential questions: what purpose the ABC should serve, and how best to serve it?
Whitehead, who has died at the age of 90, was appointed from an international field of applicants following a career working internationally as a print, radio and television journalist.
As historian Ken Inglis writes in Whose ABC? The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1983-2006, Whitehead stood out from the shortlist of six candidates by eloquently presenting his strategy for the new ABC. His comprehensive 19-page application to the panel pointed to “a crucial decision: how far will public radio and television go, in competing with the private sector? How aggressive should its programming and marketing be? Once that has been settled, then program decisions can be made; staff with the flair to make the programs recruited and retained; and the executive structure amended as necessary to achieve the established aims.”
Whitehead’s experience in media spanned more than four decades and three countries: Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Educated at London University, where he received a Diploma in International Affairs, he spent the first 20 years of his career working as a journalist in England, mostly as a Westminster and Whitehall political correspondent, including for Reuters news agency and the BBC, where he became deputy political editor.
As Radio New Zealand’s assistant director-general from 1974 to 1976 he helped establish the new organisation created following the division of the NZBC into separate statutory bodies. He assumed the director-general’s job, where he remained until 1983.
Whitehead held the role of ABC chief executive from 1983 until 1986. His 1988 book Inside the ABC detailed his sometimes turbulent three-year period leading the ABC.
“I believe the gains (of the period) outnumber the losses,” he wrote. “We did change attitudes, we had begun to make the ABC a more open corporation; more open to accountability in Parliament, more open to the public and more open to ideas from staff. I look back on my period as one in which the mould was broken and major reforms begun, so that the ABC had a chance to become more relevant to more Australians.”
In Tending the Flame of Democracy (2004) Whitehead argued that the health of democracy relied on governments tending to the needs of people as citizens, not just as consumers.
Whitehead remained a staunch supporter of the ABC and public broadcasting to the end of his life. In October 2022, on the ABC’s 90th birthday, he argued on the ABC Alumni website that the ABC’s role required formal consolidation: “[By] enshrining the national broadcaster, through an all-party Declaration, as an institution that’s integral to our democracy and to which all citizens have a right.”
Taking issue with the Liberal Party’s 2018 Federal Council policy resolution that the ABC should be privatised, he wrote: “It’s timely for Western governments to start building all-party declarations to the world that they see their traditional national public service broadcasters – like the 90-year-old ABC – as important democratic institutions having a focus on serving their people’s needs as citizens rather than their wants as consumers, and so helping us meet the new challenges we all face.”
ABC Chair Kim Williams AM said Whitehead was a committed and diligent individual who worked hard to reframe the ABC’s priorities and bring the new Corporation into the modern era.
“As the first Managing Director of the newly created Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Geoffrey was determined to shed its older mindset as the ‘Commission’, which was redolent with many outmoded administrative approaches and inflexible practices, Mr Williams said.
“Geoffrey Whitehead was impatient for change, however he found resistance in many distributed pockets and eventually felt compelled to resign and move back to New Zealand after three turbulent years. His frustration provoked sympathy and disappointment equally. Many will recall the large task he inherited and recognise the often intransigent resistance he encountered.”
“I am pleased to say that the ABC is now a very much more open and responsive place to change and innovation than in those early days”, Mr Williams said.
Whitehead died in New Zealand on Christmas Eve. He is survived by his partner, Faith Barber.
Michael Hill CEO Daniel Bracken dies suddenly
Was reading about Michelle trust moments a go. 
Horse trainer Michael Moroney, who won the 2000 Melbourne Cup with Brew, has died at 66.
https://www.racenet.com.au/news/melbourne-cupwinning-trainer-michael-moroney-dies-20250227
Non Daily Mail source Gene Hackman, 95, and pianist wife Betsy Arakawa, 63, found dead at home with their dog | Gene Hackman | The Guardian
Breaking:
Oh my goodness, the all-time Hollywood legend Gene Hackman has died 
He was 95, one of the oldest living actors too. Him, his wife and dog were found deceased inside their New Mexico residence. How tragic.
This is big, big, news. Would expect it to dominate the cycle the next 24 hours and rightly so. Possibly even break into programming or alter programming (which I’d expect and hope to see in tribute) level.
One of my favourite ever actors. I’ll be saluting you with a glass tonight, might even put on the iconic *French Connection. Aw man.
edit
ABC 24 at 9pm with a live cross to a critic
Hopefully they have time to do a mini tribute to him at the Oscars, even just showing a short clip from one of his works like The Poseidon Adventure would be nice.