Nine has reportedly forked out a cool $2 million for an exclusive interview with the parents of kidnapped four-year-old girl Cleo Smith.
The Australian has reported that a two million dollar deal was made with Smith’s mother and stepfather. The deal will include interviews with Smith’s mother Elle Smith, her stepfather Jake Giddon and even Cleo herself.
The deal will also allegedly include interviews on Nine’s flagship 60 Minutes and other exclusive details for Nine’s newspaper. There are even rumours swirling about a possible documentary series via Stan.
If the rumours are true this marks the biggest offer Nine has made for an exclusive in a while.
According to Sky News, the last time Nine looked at spending this much cash was when it offered $1 million each to Brent Webb and Todd Russell for an exclusive on surviving the Beaconsfield mine disaster.
Before that Lindy Chamberlain held the record when she was offered $250,000 by 60 Minutes in 1985.
B&T reached out to Nine for comment, however, while they declined to comment on the figure, Darren Wick, director of news & current affairs at Nine, told B&T, “We are honoured that the family of Cleo Smith has chosen to tell their story to Nine.
“From a 60 Minutes story to other opportunities across Nine, we will continue to support Cleo and her family as they go through the court process, and we take our legal obligations around reporting on Cleo’s story extremely seriously.”
Of course, there’s a reason Nine is allegedly willing to pay so much. The Cleo Smith story dominated the news cycle. When she went missing for over 18 days you’d have been hard-pressed to find an Australian that wasn’t invested in hoping the little girl was found.
Thankfully she was happily reunited with her family and here at B&T we won’t pretend that the happy ending didn’t make us shed a few tears.
