Bolt the real Insider on ratings. With only an couple of episodes to go to the end the 2012 TV ratings season, right-wing ranter Andrew Bolt has had a good year. Oztam figures up to last Sunday show there has been a 11%-plus rise in viewing of his program on Sundays (the 10am broadcast and then the 4.30pm repeat) in metro markets. He’s done better this year than Insiders, where he used to feature before he was seduced by Ten to star in The Bolt Report.

His program has so far averaged in 2012 a total of 272,000 people in both screenings, up from the 258,000 who watched in 2011, when the program started. The 10am program has seen a near 12% rise in viewers, to 143,000 from 128,000, while there has been a slight fall in the audience for the 4.30pm repeat to 129,000 from 130,000. Insiders total Sunday audience (in three screenings) has fallen to 261,000 this year from 267,000 in 2011.

Bolt now attracts more viewers in total than Insiders on ABC TV does. Insiders‘ ABC1 audience from 9 to 10am has fallen 11.7% to 173,000 this year (still well ahead of Bolt) from 195,000 in 2011. The News 24 simulcast audience is up more than 21% to 56,000 from 46,000 and the evening repeat on News 24 has up more than 27% to 32,000 from 26,000. On several occasions in the past three months, Bolt’s 10am audience has exceeded that of Insiderswhich has fallen into a bit of trough since midyear. — Glenn Dyer (read the full story here)

Fairfax ditches Outlook for Gmail. Crikey hears that Fairfax staffers are concerned about the company’s decision to ditch the Microsoft Outlook email system in favour of Gmail as an apparent cost saving measure. “Our email accounts were moved over on Monday, and staff are pretty unhappy,” a Sydney Morning Herald insider says. “It doesn’t seem all that significant, but staff are asking questions about security and privacy — not just of emails, but investigations, stories, research, etc — since Google is being used to store files too. No one seems to be getting any answers though.”

Fairfax, which says the new system will be 40% cheaper than current arrangements, spruiked its hook-up with Google Apps in a July email to staff. “This is an exciting development for Fairfax Media and an important, innovative step in our transformation,” Fairfax’s chief information and technology officer Andrew Lam-Po-Tang said in the email. The move will also see Fairfax staffers use other tools such as Google Docs, Google Hangouts and Google Talk. — Matthew Knott

Front page of the day. Obama’s Asian tour continues, becoming the first US president to visit Cambodia. Here he is in a “tense” meeting with autocratic Prime Minister Hun Sen, as recorded by The Phnom Penh Post.