Sweet Surrender Read Free Page A

plump, a single woman in her late thirties without children. Indira was highly educated, intelligent and calm, also in her thirties, married but without children, and representing the ‘ethnic’ audience. Cleo was the glamour queen, clever and quick and doing it tough as a single mother. I was the token older woman, a mother and grandmother able to speak from life experience.
    This time the audition was in a large studio with a mock-up set, and the highly experienced Liz Hayes was our moderator, steering us from one topic to the next. We did the best we could under the circumstances. The idea was to keep the conversation bouncing along quickly; to agree to disagree, and not to talk over the top of each other. It was important that everyone get an opportunity to speak to every topic, but without us creating polite silences while we waited for the next person to take their turn. In other words, the intention was to create a relaxed but vibrant discussion between women that would provide a point of identification for female viewers at home.
    After the taping it was a waiting game. The edited ‘pilot’ program had to do the rounds of the network, being shown to program directors in every state, as well as to the upper echelon at PBL, the magazine arm of company. I was concerned it might fall flat because, from my limited experience in television, it lacked production quality. There had been little pre-production or ‘styling’, and to me it felt raw and a bit rough around the edges.
    Nevertheless, a month later, we got the call that the show was ‘on’ and would start production early the following year, going to air at the beginning of the ratings period. I was astounded, but also excited at the prospect. To celebrate we were to be invited to a boardroom lunch on the third floor of the Nine Network’s main building in Artarmon. That meant we had really made the big time – I chuckled mightily to myself. David and I had met for the first time in this very building, morethan thirty years earlier. He was working as the associate producer of a family situation comedy series called
The Godfathers
and I had joined the publicity department after completing my training at the
Weekly
. My ultimate ambition was to join the Channel 9 newsroom as a reporter. Three months after I arrived, David asked me out, right there in the studio where we had just taped the talk show pilot. Just thinking of the path our lives had taken in the decades since that moment, it was not lost on me that I had come full circle.
    Next came the contract negotiations. Having worked for the ABC for nine years I had a pretty fair idea of what an average television presenter is paid, but this was different. Our show was to be one hour, live to air, five days a week, and presumably it would not be expensive to produce with its studio set and chat format. I knew that we could not demand a rate of pay like Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s because her show is heavily sponsored and she is the sole host. Nevertheless, I was determined not to undersell myself. I knew that the network would negotiate hard and that they would keep the four of us apart during these negotiations. David came with me to meet Channel 9’s director of daytime television, and we were both surprised at just how little they were prepared to pay. We managed to push the fee up a tad; the network also agreed to pay for my accommodation and weekly airfares from Bathurst, where we have a farm, to Sydney. So we shook hands on the deal. A contract was to be posted out the following week.
    I kept in regular communication with my co-hosts, but we steered clear of discussing the delicate topic of our individual contracts. I secretly wondered, though, if they were being paid as little as me. I rationalised that if the show took off I could renegotiate a much better deal for the following year.
    The boardroom lunch date was set, and the atmosphere was one of high spirits and