Seven West’s fortunes could be turning around, the media is extremely thirsty for a spill, Dastyari’s TV disgrace, and other media tidbits of the day.

Seven predicts earnings rise. For the first time in at least five years, Seven West Media says it is forecasting a rise in earnings for the year ahead. The media group this morning revealed yet another dip in earnings for the year to June, a better than expected cost cutting performance in the second half of the year and cutting debt more than forecast. But for employees at the Kerry Stokes-controlled media group, the outlook is for another year of job insecurity as the company attempts to cost-cut its way out of trouble with the company warning of more job cuts this financial year.

There was no final dividend as promised earlier this year but that hasn’t stopped punters piling into Seven West shares this year. They have surged, more than doubling from 51 cents in February to $1.06 yesterday — including a rise of 15% in the past six trading days when more than 52 million shares changed hands, with more than 15 million on Monday. The company returned to profit after the huge, nearly billion dollar write down in 2016-17 on over-valued assets which produced a loss at the bottom line of $766 million.

Seven also signed a new regional affiliation agreement with Prime Media which started on July 1 this year. But the reality is that without the cost and job cuts and suspension of the dividend, the company would have continued to go backwards in 2017-18.  — Glenn Dyer

Is it on? Ahead of this morning’s leadership spill at the Liberals’ weekly meeting, today’s newspapers almost all dedicated their front pages to speculating about this morning’s spill and Malcolm Turnbull’s fate. Notable exceptions were the papers for the country’s smallest capital cities — Hobart’s The Mercury and Darwin’s NT News both had local stories for their splashes.

The media has played no small part in the leadership sideshow, as Fairfax’s Jacqueline Maley broke down as part of their extensive coverage today:

Even though Abbott and his supporters are small in number, they have an outsize shoutiness in the media that does a better job of creating instability than an army of leakers. And the same forces are now agitating for their new man, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Why operate in the shadows when you can command airtime on Sydney radio station 2GB, or when your former chief of staff has her own show, or when your loyal supporters — men like Craig Kelly, who only a handful of voters could pick out of a line-up — are awarded constant appearances on nightly TV?

In the eye of the beholder. Entertainment reporters have been breathlessly covering Network Ten’s “pilot week” this week, and yesterday they had two brand new shows to critique from Sunday night: ensemble skit show Skit Happens and disgraced former senator Sam Dastyari’s panel show Disgrace. But whether Dasher’s show was a success or not depended firmly on which news website you were reading.

Fairfax’s Michael Lallo wrote that while it had potential and would likely be commissioned for a full season, Dasher was beaten in the ratings by a rerun of The Blues Brothers on SBS.

Over at News Corp’s news.com.au, though, the show had “rave reviews” (based on tweets, not ratings).

But The Daily Telegraph preferred Fairfax’s take — reporting on the ratings — publishing a piece by Jonathon Moran also calling the program “disappointing”.

Glenn Dyer’s TV ratings. Nine’s night thanks to The Block (1.42 million nationally) and Doctor Doctor (1.04 million) and solid efforts by the news and A Current Affair. Seven’s Dance Bomb Bossed, sorry, Dance Boss bombed — just 702,000 national viewers (447,000 in the metros and 255,000 in the regions). The ABC hacked along gently. Ten had its best Night with Have You Been Paying Attention with 1.01 million national viewers, easily topping its lead-in from 7.30 — Australian Survivor with 914,000. Nine was an easy winner in total people, the main channels and the demos. Read the rest on the Crikey website.