No worries Bobby.It seems The Australian is following the BOS...

No worries Bobby.

It seems The Australian is following the BOS story

Here's another relating to RGM and Robert Hughes

RGM are planning on spending 100,000,000 a year??



More at stake in molester affair than a reputation Caroline Overington

From: The Australian March 27, 2010

THE Nine Network's A Current Affair this week did something that Australian media is generally reluctant to do: it named a man -- a TV dad, from a popular 1980s sitcom -- as a child molester.

Robert Hughes, who played the dad in Hey Dad on the Seven Network until 1993, has not been charged with any offence. His accusers have not yet been to police. There is a real risk, if charges are laid, that Hughes -- who vehemently denies the allegations -- will be able to argue that he cannot get a fair trial. After all, he's been described, on the highest rating program of the week, as a dirty old man.

Girls who worked with him on Hey Dad have said he loved getting his penis out and waving it around. He'd pull them on to his lap and try to cop a feel. In short, he has been described as the kind of dreaded, grabby pervert little kids used to learn to avoid.

Nine believes it has assembled enough evidence to withstand a defamation action from Hughes. At the same time, it understands that there is more than Hughes's personal reputation at stake.


He is married to Robyn Gardiner, who is chairman of the talent agency that bears her name: Robyn Gardiner Management, whose clients include Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton; Balibo star Anthony LaPaglia; Home and Away's Jodie Gordon, and practically everyone else who appears in a Nine drama.

Moreover, RGM is in expansion mode. Just 10 days ago -- on March 17 -- it was planning to list on the Australian Stock Exchange as part of a larger plan to finally make what many consider to be Hollywood's dream project: a sequel to the 1991 surf and cop movie, Point Break.

A Point Break sequel has been the dream of many a Hollywood mogul. The original, made in 1991, launched the career of Keanu Reeves and was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who last week became the first woman to win the best director Oscar, for The Hurt Locker.

To launch Point Break II into production, RGM planned what is known as a "backdoor listing" on the ASX. Rather than pay all the fees associated with being a new company, it would allow itself to be taken over by a struggling little biotech company, Biosignal, which would be renamed RGM Media.

Robyn Gardiner and her partners would own 75 per cent of the shares, and they would spend about $400 million on English language productions over the next four years.

Supporters of Gardiner wonder whether it's a coincidence that a scandal engulfed her partner just days before RGM was due to list. Woman's Day editor Fiona Connolly says the timing is entirely coincidental.

"About six months ago, New Idea had an article on Hey Dad, a where-are-they-now piece, and Robert Hughes wasn't in the photograph," Connolly said. "The journalist in me was thinking: why isn't the dad in the story? So we put Steve Jackson on it and pretty much straightaway, we heard the rumours."

When Connolly found out that Hughes was married to Gardiner, she immediately asked for an RGM client list "and when it landed on my desk, I thought, OK, it's got everyone in the industry we report on, so we knew what was at stake, but that wouldn't mean we wouldn't tell this girl's story".

Woman's Day did not name Hughes, saying only that Sarah Monahan, who played Jenny, was abused by a "man on the show". A Current Affair followed up, and last Wednesday named Hughes.

ACA executive producer Grant Williams says: "We didn't have any doubt that the allegations were true. We have so many stat decs saying it's true".

ACA did not name Hughes until after they had secured an interview with Hey Dad actor Ben Oxenbould, who said he came around a corner one afternoon to see Hughes with his hands on a girl "under the age of 10". That interview was facilitated by Oxenbould's talent agency: RGM.

Williams, a former NSW detective, says there's no truth to rumours that they were put on to the story by film industry rivals, who want to scuttle RGM and its plans for Point Break . `

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/more-at-stake-in-molester-affair-than-a-reputation/story-e6frg6nf-1225846183135