The Bolt Report

The Bolt Report is a weekly current affairs program hosted by climate sceptic Andrew Bolt and broadcast on the Ten Network. Bolt's program, The Bolt Report, first aired on May 8, 2011 at 10am. "It will be like my blog, made for television," Bolt said. "We'll be talking politics, the media and pop culture. We'll cut through the spin and have a laugh. We plan to be unpredictable," he said.

Bolt and Gina Rinehart
In November 2010 it was announced that Australia's richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, had bought a 10% shareholding in the television company Ten Network Holdings. Announcing the shareholding in a media statement, Rinehart's company stated that "our company group is interested in making an investment towards the media business given its importance to the nation's future and has selected Channel 10 for this investment." In a media release Ten announced that Rinehart would join the board following the company's December Annual General Meeting.

In one of his columns, Bolt posed the question why Rinehart would invest in Ten. "It is because the shares are cheap? Because there's big money in Simpsons re-runs? Because Channel 10 is going places now that James Packer has an 18 per cent share, to be split with friend Lachlan Murdoch? If that were all, I wouldn't bore you. But my strong and not entirely uninformed hunch is that much bigger issues are at play involving our country's future and threats to the wealth we've taken for granted. I can't disclose just why I suspect that, but read for yourself a clue in the terse statement put out by Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting on Monday: 'Our company group is interested in making an investment towards the media business given its importance to the nation's future and has selected Channel 10 for this investment'. Rinehart is on a mission. Channel 10 is just the vehicle," he wrote.

"I have no idea what Rinehart hopes now to do to Ten, if anything. Nor could I guess what chances she'd have of turning it into, say, an Australian Fox News, even if she wanted to. What would Packer say? What would Murdoch, son of the Fox News owner? But I do have an idea of what worries Rinehart about our future. The fact is that even in these green times 40 per cent of all we earn through exports comes from mines. That includes more than $50 billion a year from iron ore, and $55 billion from the coal trade that the Greens vow to phase out for being 'dirty'," he wrote.

A few months later it was reported that Channel Ten had recorded a pilot program hosted by Bolt. Amanade Meade reported that "sources said a keen advocate of the show was Ten board member and Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, who is a fan of Bolt's work. Ms Rinehart has also been heard to complain about the alleged left-wing bias of Ten's popular 7PM Project, and to say the network needs a right-wing Fox News-style show in its line-up." The following month Bolt's new program went to air.

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