Awkward confessions, scandal headlines and a new life at the ABC: Hugh Marks’ story

As a mild-mannered, middle-aged father of five, Hugh Marks is an unlikely romantic protagonist. Despite disliking soft dramas – he prefers them to be grittier – he found himself playing the lead role in a real-life one, when he fell in love with a colleague while running Nine Entertainment (the owner of this masthead). It was all very awkward for Marks, his new partner, his boss and their colleagues, so he made a decision that took many by surprise: he chose his relationship over his job.

The whole thing was uncomfortable. Not many people have to disclose their new partner to a chairman, or address concerns you’ve favoured her professionally, or brace for “sex scandal” headlines, or inform the stock exchange that you’ve decided to quit. I ask whether it puts a wet blanket on romance. “As it turns out, not,” he says. “We’re getting married at the end of this year. We have a child. We have a house together. We have a lovely life.”

Their life is so lovely that Marks says he wasn’t chasing another big job after leaving Nine. “I was really enjoying myself,” he says. But when the ABC managing director’s role became vacant, he felt the lure of higher purpose. “It wasn’t that it was a burning thing for me to do,” he says. “But when I thought about it, I thought, no, it’s important. To do something that’s important … I mean, it sounds a bit righteous but it’s not. Media is important. Storytelling is important.

“It matters that the ABC is there as a public good … The work matters.”

It’s Friday afternoon in Paddington and noisy chatter fills Italian restaurant Barbetta, one of Marks’ favourites. He has a soft voice – his mild manner is partly what prompted his tongue-in-cheek nickname, Hollywood Hugh – and we strain to hear each other over the din.

I first met Marks when he became my boss, back when he oversaw the merger between Nine (of which he was chief executive) and Fairfax Media, which owned these mastheads, in 2018. These days he’s a public servant in charge of the public broadcaster, so, in a roundabout way – given I’m a taxpaying member of that public – he now works for me.

He orders his favourite dish, the pork schnitzel, and I select the ragù as I brief Marks on the usual pattern of these lunchtime interviews: as the one asking the questions, I’ll finish my meal, while he’ll be so busy answering, he won’t get a chance to eat and his food will get cold. “I’ll have to give one-word answers, then,” he says.

He doesn’t. Marks hasn’t done many profile-style interviews since he became managing director of the ABC five months ago and he’s at pains to explain his approach. Many at the broadcaster still aren’t quite sure what to expect. They’re uncertain of his vision, or what he plans to change, or whether he’ll be “too commercial”, or if he’ll stand up for them when the attacks come from outside, or if he sees a future for traditional radio and terrestrial television given their declining audiences, or even if he watches, listens to and reads the ABC.

They can be reassured on the last point. Marks says he has always been a fan of ABC news and current affairs. He likes Wednesday-night comedy. Friday-night dramas are a bit soft for him but he’s enjoying The Family Next Door. “When I was at Nine I could watch, listen [to] and read everything,” he says. “There’s no way I can do that at the ABC.”

But he watches, reads and listens to as much as he can, and does it with his work hat on. “If you have thoughts about the direction or tone or whatever, you’ve got to be thinking about all those things and talking to the teams about it,” he says.

He no longer feels obliged to watch Married at First Sight, the Nine reality juggernaut that “marries” two single, extroverted strangers, and is not to everyone’s taste. While he has said he wants the ABC to pursue more hit shows – to find the next Bluey or MasterChef – Marks doesn’t put MAFS in that category. Still, he doesn’t shy away from the concept.

“Love on the Spectrum is a different version of the same show – still a dating show, still puts people in a reality ... [context],” he says. “There are always different treatments of an idea.”

I take Marks back to the subject of dating, given it was at the centre of his departure from the top job at Nine in early 2021. It had been his second stint at the broadcaster, after working there for eight years earlier in his career as in-house legal counsel, then director of film and television, before leaving to become chief executive of Southern Star, which produced reality show Big Brother for Ten, drama Love My Way for Foxtel, and game show Deal or No Deal for Seven.

He replaced David Gyngell as Nine’s chief executive in 2015. The merger he oversaw transformed Nine, creating a multi-platform company with broadcast television, streaming (Stan), publishing and radio. During that time Marks and his wife, with whom he had four children, broke up.

His love life was the subject of speculation; he was photographed on a picnic with his executive assistant, who he said was an old friend. But then one of his own papers broke the story that Marks was leaving the business after he had begun a relationship with Nine’s former managing director of commercial, Alexi Baker.

They were two consenting adults. Still, it was messy. Questions flew about who on the board was notified and when, and if there were any promotions or bonuses for Baker. Relationships involving the chief executive and a subordinate make boards nervous. There were already fractures in the board between the Nine and the Fairfax people, and the relationship exacerbated tensions. Marks says he was thinking about leaving anyway, after the merger had been bedded down. The relationship sped up his plans.

“In one sense, you can deal with relationships and stuff through disclosure and all of that,” he says. “In another, it creates pressures in the business that I just felt at the time was better for us to move on … to be able to pursue that relationship without the impediment of the organisation.”

It must be awkward to have to tell higher-ups about one’s love life? “It’s awkward but it’s appropriate because the risk of conflict exists,” he says. “It’s a complex mash of personalities and responsibilities. It’s a challenge to make those decisions but it was the right decision.”

The story was widely reported; some of the headlines referred to it as a “sex scandal”. I ask how he felt about the reporting, and whether he thought his relationship had been unfairly lumped into the broader category of workplace relationship scandals, particularly as it came fresh off the heels of headline-grabbers such as then federal MP Alan Tudge’s affair with a staffer, who accused him of abuse, and Barnaby Joyce’s relationship with his staffer, who he later married.

“I think in many ways it was more unfair for Alexi than me,” he says. “That is, I think, a regret. There were certainly elements where we could have said more but chose not to, or where we thought it was unfair and we chose not to say something. We’re comfortable with our own decisions; you have to find that in yourself.”

They now have a three-year-old son, Hamish, and will get married in December when Marks’ adult children, two of whom live overseas, can attend.

Marks is enjoying fatherhood for the fifth time. He might have more experience at parenting than his partner but he’s conscious of not taking over. “It’s Alexi’s first child, so [I’m] trying to balance that. They’re such joys, children, they’re so interesting as individuals.”

Marks is juggling fifth-time fatherhood with a big job. His experience at Nine prepared him for some elements of the role but not others. He doesn’t have to answer to corporate shareholders but the ABC has its own version – the viewers and staff who feel a strong sense of ownership. Changes bring a big backlash.

“I must say,” he says, “one difference between Nine and the ABC was at Nine it was always ‘can you get rid of?’ At the ABC it’s more ‘why did you get rid of?’”

The cultures at Nine and ABC are different, too. The ABC staff is more unionised than Nine’s television division, staff are public servants, there’s a clear charter and a strong sense of independence from management. He’ll negotiate a new enterprise agreement later this year.

“There’ll always be moments [of conflict],” he says, “but I hope that my approach is always to engage with people on their work. There’s a great sense of purpose at the ABC, but if we can get them to buy into what we’re doing and why, I think we can hopefully get them all to come along.”

Marks says he has also learnt from the exposure of the culture of sexual harassment at Nine’s broadcast division, which exploded into the public eye last year but was happening while he was chief executive (he says the harassment allegations were never brought to him and were a surprise). One way to stop those cultures from developing, he says, is to keep an open dialogue with staff, and to listen as well as talk.

He admits he has become better at this over the past decade, given his personal travails. “My empathy levels have also gone way up,” he says. “I think you do learn every time something negative happens.”

He is deeply interested in journalism. He is not trained as a journalist but likes to talk to journalists about their stories and provide feedback, which makes some ABC staff – who spoke to this masthead on the condition of anonymity, so they could speak freely – nervous about independence, although others like that he values their work.

He also wants the ABC to break more stories with impact. This is easier said than done; every journalist wants strong stories, but they don’t grow on trees. Investigative journalism, in particular, is expensive.

“Yes, it’s difficult,” Marks says. “Often it’s just having the intellect, when you’ve got a story, to challenge you on … angles and layers that you may not have thought about,” he says. He sees his role as “an overview, looking at tone and balance, fairness, entertainment value and quality”.

Picking the next Bluey isn’t as easy as it sounds, either. Marks may want more hit shows but how, I ask, does he intend to make that happen? Partly, he says, it’s about having the right ABC people talking to the right industry people, inviting them in with their best ideas. He also wants the ABC to challenge its assumptions about what might work or not.

“If you really believe in an idea, I want you to push me, to challenge me on how we can do it, rather than accepting that we can’t. Hopefully you’ll get more ideas bubbling up, and things aren’t getting filtered out because they’re too expensive or too ambitious or too challenging or too controversial.” And then backing those decisions, rather than pointing the finger of blame.

The ABC comes under intense scrutiny for many of its decisions, particularly from News Corp. Staff wonder how willing Marks will be to defend them. He says scrutiny is part of running a public broadcaster; sometimes it’s fair, sometimes it’s not. “I don’t worry about [organisational criticism] as much as probably many others do,” he says. “Having been through some of that stuff gives you a good perspective on it as well.”

The other key element of Marks’ tenure at the ABC will be his relationship with its chair, Kim Williams. There’s a history of ABC chairs interfering with operations, and Williams has already been criticised for telling the head of radio about his old comedian acquaintance’s complaints about struggling to get onto local radio. Staff noted that Marks provided a statement about that to Media Watch, in which he said he was “vigilant to ensure the proper delineation of responsibility between the board and management”.

Marks describes Williams as a strong advocate for the broadcaster. “I’ve never met anyone that’s so passionate about the potential and success of the ABC,” he says. “You can’t criticise someone who’s in something for all the right reasons.”

He reiterated his emphasis on editorial independence. “Kim and I have had a number of discussions about how we make [the relationship] work really well, what he can really focus on and do, where I can focus on and do my best work. How chair and MD work together is a really important relationship. It requires, like any good relationship, constant work and nurturing.”

Despite my predictions, Marks has finished his pork. It’s now time to pay. I produce my credit card, he produces his. We find ourselves in a brief editorial integrity standoff, before reaching a compromise. We split the bill.

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