Can Liz Hayes fix Spotlight after a horror year?
Liz Hayes has joined 60 Minutes rival Spotlight as a guest correspondent, signing on with Seven’s flagship current affairs show less than three months after making a confusing exit from Nine.
Hayes’ first story for Spotlight will be an interview with marketing executive Lauren Zonfrillo (previously known as Lauren Fried), the widow of celebrity chef Jock Zonfrillo, set to air in the coming weeks.
Seven will be hoping for a ratings triumph, as Spotlight looks to erase its tumultuous 2024 from the collective memory banks.
Liz Hayes in her 60 Minutes days
Ratings-wise, it’s doing well. Spotlight’s first two episodes for 2025 have been relative successes for the network.
According to VOZ ratings figures, the season opener, on March 23, drew an average audience of 637,000 — albeit against a MAFS average audience of 1.84 million over on Nine — and managed to beat its own audience numbers for 2024’s season opener by 11%. 60 Minutes drew an average of 935,000 for Nine earlier that same evening.
The most recent Spotlight episode, an April 6 exposé into electric vehicles, achieved a larger national average audience on the night than 60 Minutes, creeping ahead of its Nine rival by 25,000 viewers (850,000 vs 825,000). The total average audience for the second episode was up 36% on the second episode of Spotlight from 2024. This is a good start.
The non-ratings issues may be harder to leave behind. Former Spotlight senior producer Taylor Auerbach is currently suing Seven, claiming the network made disparaging comments about him in response to explosive claims he made during Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case.
Last April, Auerbach claimed in court that Seven reimbursed Bruce Lehrmann “through ‘per diems’ via invoice” for cocaine and prostitutes. During the court proceedings, it was also revealed the network paid Lehrmann’s $2,000-a-week rent for an entire year in exchange for two exclusive interviews on Spotlight.
Taylor Auerbach
At the time, Seven issued a strongly worded statement arguing it “did not reimburse Bruce Lehrmann for expenditure that has allegedly been used to pay for illegal drugs or prostitutes, and has never done so.” Spotlight’s executive producer, Mark Llewellyn, who Auerbach testified “gave verbal approval” for the Lehrmann reimbursement, resigned that same week.
Seven also recently settled a lawsuit filed by former Spotlight journalist Amelia Saw, who alleged a “general breach of protections” under the Fair Work Act, which followed a Four Corners investigation of Seven News’ “brutal workplace culture”, as Joshua Bornstein, principal lawyer at Maurice Blackburn, put it during the report.
But that was 2024. Now Hayes has joined the team. She does so with a level of comfort and familiarity, with former 60 Minutes producers Gareth Harvey and Phil Goyen also both currently working at Spotlight.
It will be interesting to see how Nine responds to Hayes joining Seven.
Hayes started at Nine in 1981, with “little more than a notebook and a typewriter” as she put it in February, when announcing her departure.
The wording of the official announcement from Nine was contradictory: Hayes was “pursuing new opportunities outside of the 9Network” but “will remain part of the Nine family.”
In the release, Hayes said “I leave Nine grateful for the decades of experience” while elsewhere it was promised “viewers can expect to see her on their screens for special stories and events broadcast on the 9Network.”
With this Spotlight deal, it seems unlikely Hayes will appear on Nine screens in the near future. Unless, of course, those “special stories” are already in the can.
News Corp reports that Hayes previously shot an “exclusive” interview with Lauren Zonfrillo for a 60 Minutes piece that was ultimately shelved. Tantalisingly, Nine retains the footage for the original interview, and presumably could still air it, should the network wish to fight dirty.
In announcing Hayes’ departure, Nine’s director of television, Michael Healy, said, “we know Liz’s next chapter will be just as successful as her last, and she has our full support.”
News Corp is less charitable, suggesting a “bitter falling out” between Hayes and 60 Minutes executive producer Kirsty Thomson is the real reason for the deflection to Seven.
If Liz Hayes and Spotlight start trumping 60 Minutes on a regular basis, it will be interesting to see how supportive Nine remains – and exactly what the contracts with the two networks say in the fine print.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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