Is this even legal? Ten’s staff scratching their heads over ‘buyout’ offer

OpinionMedia WriterNovember 6, 2026 — 5:00amNovember 6, 2026 — 5:00amThis week in On Background, Network Ten’s Trumpian buyout offers; the ABC flexes its muscle; News24 presenter’s entertaining prediction; News Corp’s Australian unit in the red again.‘Winning culture’When massive mergers happen, staff are often left wondering if they’ll have a job when all is said and done. That was the case last week when an email titled “Building a winning culture” landed in the inboxes of employees of Network Ten, filled with American corporate gobbledegook about buyouts, “one-time offers” and “in-person collaboration” asking if they wanted to leave the company now titled Skydance.Skydance is owned by David Ellison, who after buying Ten’s owner Paramount last year, completed a deal for HBO and CNN owner Warner Bros Discovery last month.Skydance CEO David Ellison (left) and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz are building a “winning culture”.AP But just a week after the Trumpian “one-time offer” buyout to all the company’s global staff, which appears squarely aimed at reducing headcount under the guise of offering staff a way out if they don’t want to return to the office five days a week, the Australian media union reckons the company could be in breach of local employment laws.And staff across Ten have been left scratching their heads as to what exactly the offer is, given details are scant and the fact it was an open offer to any employee to apply to take up.While the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance tried to clear this up with Skydance, the company insisted it is definitively not a redundancy round, despite offering “personalised details and terms, and a window to decide whether to accept this one-time offer”. Sounds a lot like a voluntary redundancy!Clearing things up to On Background, the union says the company is unwilling to meet its obligations and is making a blatant attempt to undermine its workers’ rights.“Union members at Ten have fought for years to secure fair redundancy entitlements for circumstances exactly like these. If Skydance needs to reduce headcount, there is a clear process in place to follow,” acting union media director Matty Burton said.“This reflects an imported American approach to workforce restructuring that disregards established Australian workplace protections and shows little regard for the employees who create the journalism our communities rely on.“Equally concerning is the apparent failure of Network Ten to make clear to its new corporate owners that Australian workers are protected by legally enforceable rights and agreements that cannot simply be set aside when it is commercially convenient.”Union officials have told Ten staff they are assessing whether Ten and Skydance have complied with local workplace obligations and the Fair Work Act in distributing the buyout program information to local staff. The program would not include certain conditions afforded to staff taking redundancies, such as tax benefits.It isn’t just union officials who have raised their eyebrows; staff at Network Ten are treating the offer with great scepticism. Some have told On Background there is a belief it is a trick to sidestep or remove a voluntary redundancy process.Few staff have taken up the enticing offer so far, we hear.Skydance was approached for comment.Cost-cutting isn’t limited to Ten. Seven boss Rohan Lund told shareholders at its annual general meeting on Thursday that there will be even more than the initial $150 million in cost savings previously planned.Nine also internally announced an expansion of its “Future News” program on Thursday, on the eve of its AGM on Friday.Nine’s director of news and current affairs, Fiona Dear, told TV news staff that the program “presents some cost benefits”, which this time include six staffers’ roles being made redundant in Queensland.Nine declined to add to Dear’s email.Aunty’s midterm boonWhile revenue is dropping for commercial legacy TV, the ABC flexed its muscles this week with extensive coverage of the stunning results delivered in the US midterms on Wednesday.Aunty took a massive punt on this year’s elections, and it appears its swing was the right one considering the widespread interest in not only Donald Trump but how the US’s overseas actions are affecting Australians’ hip-pockets.The ABC deployed its flagship current affairs program, 7.30, to Washington this week, with host Sarah Ferguson broadcasting each evening from a chilly-looking rooftop. Cash was clearly spent on reporter Adam Harvey jetting around the country for info-packed colour reports.The program’s average audience spiked to 1.2 million on Wednesday and it was the second-highest rating program in Australia, beaten only by Seven’s 6pm bulletin.Four Corners reporter Mark Willacy also jetted in with a camera crew to film the ABC’s primer for the midterms. On YouTube, the program is already up to 1.7 million views in a couple of days – its most-viewed episode on the platform this year.The ABC also committed to live, rolling coverage throughout the whole day on Wednesday, with a total of 2.4 million Australians tuning in to see the flurry of red seats turn blue as the Democrats took back the House of Representatives and the Senate.NostraDeanus Rowan Dean, take a bow. With News24’s Sunday morning program named Outsiders, its presenting line-up surely must feel the need to go against the grain to provide something different to the ABC’s Insiders and the rest of the media commentariat.Luckily, Dean’s big prediction for the midterm elections delivered on that brief this year.“I don’t think Trump’s going to get slammed the way everyone’s saying,” Dean opined.“I’m always cynical when every single pundit out there, every journalist, it’s all the same thing … all the same commentary, he’s going to be destroyed. I don’t buy it.”If anything, it was at least entertaining! But there was almost a mood of mourning on News24 on Wednesday night as the MAGA wipeout materialised.News24 has benefited, like many media organisations, from a renewed Trump Bump. But unlike others, it has redefined much of its output and coverage in the mould of the MAGA movement and its supporters.For those who have missed it, News24 has launched MAGA-themed merch, oriented much of its programming to focus on American, Trump-related material, and recently hired a former Trump staffer, Elizabeth Pipko, to host a digital-only show.While it doesn’t release its viewership figures anywhere, it has trumpeted its YouTube channel figures at every available opportunity. But even those have begun to slow. Data shows that daily viewership figures for the YouTube channel are down about 14 per cent on 2025 figures and even more on 2024, while subscriber growth has stagnated, too.MAGA fatigueThere could be some lessons to be learnt from News24’s sister station Fox News, which Lachlan Murdoch said was suffering from “viewer fatigue” this week, as it also suffered major audience declines.The conservative US news station remains the powerhouse within a highly profitable media company, Fox Corp, however, as evidenced by its strong financial results for the quarter this week.There is little transparency over just how much, or little, money News24 makes for News Corp. The same was true in two sets of financials published by News this week, reporting both its annual set of local numbers for 2026 and its global first-quarter result.News24 host Rowan Dean’s big prediction was slightly off.FoxtelNews Corp’s lack of a local tax bill (again) filled plenty of column inches a few weeks ago. But within its local filings for the 2026 financial year submitted to the local corporate regulator, we learnt that might be because the company posted a post-tax loss of $41 million, its third successive year in the red. Ouch!Those losses ballooned out from $25 million in 2025, and it shed a further 150 staff from its local headcount across the year. Despite this, executive pay rose by 16 per cent, so all’s well that ends well.Globally, News Corp’s first-quarter results for 2027 were delivered on Thursday to the stock market, buoyed by strong results for digital real estate business REA Group and Dow Jones, which is led by The Wall Street Journal. But despite a slight bump in digital subscribers for its Australian publishing business, which includes the likes of The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, the News Media segment, which also houses The New York Post, the London Times, The Sun and the Australian papers, suffered. The division was far and away the company’s worst performer, with earnings falling by a whopping 40 per cent to just US$18 million ($25.7 million).The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.From our partners