Who are the most powerful 25 people in Australia’s media? Working out the top two is easy: Rupert and Kerry, and not necessarily in that order. But what about the rest? It’s a Crikey kind of question, and an idea that’s been taken up by ABC Radio National’s Media Report.

The show’s host, Richard Aedy, asked a panel of four media types – Financial Review Canberra bureau reporter David Crowe, The Australian’s marketing/advertising reporter Lara Sinclair, RMIT journalism lecturer Matthew Ricketson, and yours truly – to come up with their list of the Top 25. We were thrown together for a wide-ranging discussion, to be broadcast tomorrow morning.

For the record, this is my Top 25 Media Power list:

Top 10: John Howard; Rupert Murdoch; Kerry Packer; Kerry Stokes; Helen Coonan; Grahame Morris; Alan Jones; John Singleton; Sam Chisholm; Sol Trujillo.

The rest: Harold Mitchell; John Alexander; Laurie Oakes; Eddie McGuire; John Laws; Janet Albrechtson; David Penberthy; Tony Jones; Malcolm Farr; Andrew Denton; Chris Mitchell; Neil Mitchell; Andrew Bolt; Brian Evans; Roy Masters.

Most of them will be familiar names on the media/political landscape. If you don’t know any of them, don’t fret: that’s what Google’s for. Features of my list include a lack of women, and New Media moguls: we’re yet to produce our first Bill Gates. And conflict of interest prevented me from trying to squeeze in our own publishers Eric Beecher and Di Gribble.

I’ve chosen two politicians in my top five; the PM and Communications Minister Helen Coonan. OK, they are not media professionals – but they are influential. With the pending sale of Telstra, and the government poised to deregulate the media, Howard and Coonan are in a position to dictate the future of our media.

And the PM’s media skills, his ability to understand and feed the beast’s needs, are such that he sits atop the tower of media influence – outranking even Rupert and Kerry. Howard’s long-time political guru and News Ltd advisor, Grahame Morris, sits in my Top 10, further cementing Rupert Murdoch’s influence on our media landscape.

The results will be broadcast tomorrow morning at 8.30 on Radio National. The final list, based on a compilation of the four panellists’ suggestions, will be posted on the Media Report website here. And check out The Guardian’s Top 100 UK media power list, on which the RN list was based, here.