Peter Meakin is Australia’s most experienced and legendary news and current affairs producer, having worked on such seminal programs as 60 Minutes, A Current Affair, The Project and nightly news programs for channels Ten, Seven and Nine, giving him a clean sweep of all the commercial networks. In a week when both the long-running Q&A and The Project were cancelled, I spoke to him on Friday.

Fitz: Peter, without trying to make you feel old, you’ve been a heavyweight media titan for an era spanning six decades, going back to 1965. I do want to get to the media news of this week in a moment, which is: these major-league shows being cancelled. But quite seriously, for all your success across so many news shows over so many decades and networks, there must have been a North Star of how to do “news” well that you’ve steered by.

Peter Meakin: “Our budgets were so big you could try 10 things, and if two of them worked, you were a superstar”.Credit: Mick Tsikas

Meakin: There was no guiding star, but it was certainly a lot more luxurious in the old days. Our budgets were so big you could try 10 things, and if two of them worked, you were a superstar.

Fitz: Your point being that these days, with no more rivers of gold from advertisers paying big bucks to connect to huge audiences, networks have to connect or get out quickly?

Meakin: Well, there are certainly no more rivers of gold, and the streams are just a trickle of small change now.

Fitz: Would it surprise you if I told you that when you were executive producer of 60 Minutes and sent the reporter Ian Leslie and a crew to do a story in early 1989 on me playing rugby in France and David Campese playing in Italy, after the final shoot Ian Leslie pulled out a gold Amex card to pay for drinks and dinner, and the bill for six of us – which didn’t even make him blink – came to $6000?

Meakin: It does surprise me, and I will institute an investigation immediately.

Fitz: You’ve dealt with all kinds of proprietors, none more famous than Kerry Packer. When the days grow cold, and we grow old, you’ve got to have a great Packer yarn ready to go?

Meakin: I do remember back in the 1970s, when the minister for immigration was an extremely crusty old guy, Clyde Cameron, who announced that he was going to give refuge to some Cypriot girls because the Turkish troops in Cyprus were running riot. And these girls were genuinely [and officially] known as the “Cypriot virgins”, right? So on A Current Affair, we did a story about them, where he was asked, verbatim, “Mr Cameron, these girls have been called the Cypriot virgins. How do you know they’re virgins?” He replied, “There are some things a gentleman takes for granted.” The follow-up question was, “what if they arrive as virgins and don’t leave in that condition?” And his response was, “Anyone who defiles any of my virgins will have to answer to me as minister.”

Fitz: I can’t believe he said that!

Meakin: He did say that, and when Kerry Packer saw it, he was........

© The Age