Life lived to the full
SAM CHISHOLM, DEAD AT 78, REMEMBERED AS ARCHITECT OF CHANNEL 9’S SUCCESS IN ‘80S AND ‘90S
IN HIS prime, Sam Chisholm was a man who went “everywhere at top speed”.
Hosting industry mates and family on his beloved boat, which he moored in the Hawkesbury River, the former Channel 9 boss would have its twin Caterpillar propellers “replaced many times just to extract an extra knot or two out of them”, his one-time colleague and long-time friend, Peter Meakin told News Corp Australia.
It’s the perfect metaphor for Chisholm, who started his working life as a farm hand in his birth country of New Zealand, before moving to Australia, where his life in the fast lane of television would take him around the world and back again.
His death, at 78, should not have shocked anyone who knew how close he came to the end before a double-lung transplant in 2003 gave him a second shot at life.
“He was given three weeks to live 16 years ago,” Meakin, now Ten’s news director said.
A determination to captain his own ship and beat an enzyme deficiency he was born with which affected his lungs was indicative of Chisholm’s pugnacious spirit, which also defined his career.
After his early years as a travelling salesman, the then 35-year-old Chisholm would, in 1975, be made chief executive of the Nine Network – leading it through what many regard as its golden days of the 1980s and early ’90s.
Brian Henderson, the network’s iconic Sydney newsreader, remembers the late dinners at Darcy’s restaurant featuring a guest list of media titans, including Nine’s former boss David Leckie, then radio king John Laws and 60 Minutes stars Ray Martin and Jana Wendt.
“They were always celebratory occasions,” Henderson said, with Chisholm famous for saying, “losers have meetings, winners have parties”.
Leckie, who remembered Chisholm as a mentor and friend, said: “Sam created a star system that had never been seen in this industry before, or again, and made Nine an unstoppable juggernaut. He was driven to be No.1.”
Remarkably, Leckie revealed Chisholm got his start in media sales by polishing Graham Kennedy’s floors (in demonstrating Johnson’s Wax). Ever the salesman, Hendo recalls Chisholm was a master in the art of the deal.
Meakin added: “He was the ultimate star-wrangler, he’d play people like fish. He’d hire the best people and was happy to pay them the best money.”
Wendt, adding her condolences, said: “Sam’s legendary ‘tough guy’ style was one side News Corp Australia’s Michael Miller, who worked with Sam Chisholm on the Sky New Zealand board and together on an organ donors campaign of the coin. The other was gregariousness and generosity. Sam was a great boss, whose support I appreciated so very much. My heart goes out to his wife Sue and his daughter, Caroline.”
It is understood Chisholm passed away peacefully on Monday evening, at the Sydney Adventist Hospital in Wahroonga, with his wife Sue and daughter, Caroline, by his side.