JOHN BLOM: Game, set and match, Alcaraz.

KARL STEFANOVIC: Carlos Alcaraz makes history in Melbourne, a four set epic to win the Australian Open final.

– Nine, Today, 2 Feb 2026

Hello, I’m Linton Besser, welcome to a new year of Media Watch.

And first tonight the 2026 Australian Open which has seen Channel Nine revel in a wall-to-wall 21-day bonanza of tennis:

SARAH ABO: We are live from Melbourne Park ahead of a huge weekend of tennis. It’s an Australian Open party and you are invited! 

– Today, Nine, 23 Jan 2026

With day after day of relentless cross-promotion:

FERN BARRETT: One thing that’s actually selling out by 11 o’clock every morning is Hector’s signature donut …

SHERRI-LEE BIGGS: Oooooh!

– Nine News (Melbourne), 19 Jan 2026

Also rushing the net, Melbourne’s 171-year-old paper of record The Age which has served up at least 168 articles during the tournament and splashing the Open across page one no fewer than 13 times.

It turned the much-loved CBD gossip column into ‘Open Season’, a frenzy of tennis chatter complete with the Australian Open logo and replaced its prestigious Saturday magazine with a supplement that looked like Good Weekend and read like Good Weekend but was only: 

Brought to you by

GOOD WEEKEND

– Tennis (Good Weekend), Jan 2026

And which included replicas of the magazine’s most-loved features like the shopping page with AO-sponsors’ watches and t-shirts and the backpage quiz which, yes, was focused on our favourite pastime.

While The Age’s stablemate The Australian Financial Review was enjoying a tipple with one of the Australian Open sponsors:

Mix … a sprinkling of founders, CEOs, Channel 9 personalities and The Australian Financial Review editors. Dress them in Ralph Lauren before whisking them to the prestige lifestyle brand’s elegant, Ivy League-themed pavilion at Melbourne Park … And what do you get?

– Life & Leisure (online), The Australian Financial Review, 28 Jan 2026

Um, gout?

The elegant story featured people leisurely reading an AFR Life & Leisure lift-out which just happened to be also dedicated to the tennis.

From time to time, Ralph Lauren has also sponsored The Age’s tennis blog which meanwhile offers you this little button, whisking you straight to Nine’s streaming service, Stan.

Serve and volley.

There’s no denying the Australian Open is a massive event and to give credit where it’s due Nine’s newspapers have published plenty of genuine and critical stories about the Open, like these.

But could there be another reason for Nine’s orgy of tennis?

Say for example, the $425 million the company has agreed to pay for the rights to broadcast across its platforms five years of the Australian Open?

At the time the Fin itself helpfully explained that:

… major sport events … are one of the few types of programming that continue to attract large live TV audiences.

– The Australian Financial Review, 11 Nov 2022

And while the vast majority of The Age’s coverage has not been sponsored, the paper has only very rarely carried disclosures in its news reporting like this of its conflict of interest. 

While in the sports pages, this disclosure also served as a promotion.

Oh, and just on conflicts of interest, special mention must go to Nine’s summer radio correspondent 3AW’s Shane McInnes who probed Tennis Australia’s head of innovation as to its latest … innovations:

SHANE MCINNES: … this year the AO is teaming up with Shake Shack …

FERN BARRETT: … you know, we’re a highly creative organisation …

– Drive, 3AW, 7 Jan 2026

Which 3AW’s man at the tennis, in fact, knows better than most because in addition to working for Nine Entertainment, Shane McInnes also happens to work as an in-house presenter announcer and host for none other than:

Tennis Australia

– LinkedIn, Shane McInnes

How very convivial.

3AW also looked to Shane, to ask the head of Tennis Australia about rumours he was being poached by a rival organisation:

CRAIG TILEY: There was a lot of speculation of that before the event and I’ve told everyone I am not fielding it.

SHANE MCINNES: I completely understand that. I can understand though if they did reach out, I can understand why …

– Drive, 3AW, 16 Jan 2026

Although on this occasion he decided to let his audience in on the joke: 

SHANE MCINNES: I’ll be upfront, I do a bit of work with Tennis Australia during the Australian Open, but it has long been one of my favourite events …

– Drive, 3AW, 16 Jan 2026

I have no doubt, Shane.

A spokesperson for Nine insisted the expansive coverage of the tennis was not about promoting its live broadcast:

Our newsrooms reflect the huge interest in the Australian Open … Editorial is not sponsored (and advertising is clearly labelled) and it is factually incorrect to suggest coverage is a conflict of interest.

– Nine Spokesperson, email, 30 Jan 2026

Not everyone is persuaded however, including in The Age newsroom:

We still do negative stories about queues etc so it’s not like we become actual propagandists for AO, but the sheer volume of coverage more than makes up for it. Whole thing is just so gross.

– Journalist, The Age

With Nine openly boasting of its cross-platform ecosystem helping it grow in line with the Australian Open.

Another Age journalist put it like this: 

… There’s no moral outrage here, there’s just resignation – this is how the business runs now … We’re a magazine produced by [Tennis Australia boss] Craig Tiley. 

– Journalist, The Age

Oof.

It is easy, of course, for us to get up on our high horse about this blurring of news and promotion, but while the ABC is a taxpayer funded public broadcaster Nine is most definitely not and it is fighting to survive in a ferociously competitive global market.

The line between commercial imperative and editorial independence is however getting ever thinner at Nine and if its newsrooms aren’t careful it may well fade away altogether along with their hard-fought reputations.