PBL Media boss, Ian Law was out spinning furiously in various papers today including The Australian and SMH about the return of David Gyngell … the message that unlike his last time at the network, Gyngell would “control Nine”.

Law told The Oz his own involvement would be as a “commercial manager”. He also said CVC director Adrian MacKenzie had little to do with Nine. But a former Nine executive says it was his experience at Nine and PBL Media that Law was a penny-pinching cost-cutter constantly interfering in the businesses: “How will Gyngell feel when Law is in and out of his office every third minute rabbiting on about the cost of this, the cost of that”.

This former executive says Gyngell could very well find that he’s replaced the tormenting gang of John Alexander, Chris Anderson and Pat O’Sullivan with Law.

The second point non-Nine people find hard to understand is the assertion by Law that CVC, the 75% owner of Nine, won’t be involved. It’s in the boardroom where CVC and its local head, Adrian MacKenzie, will become very involved. And Gyngell will still be reporting to someone, just as he reported to Alexander and/or James Packer.

If you own 75% of the company and you think something should change, then it will be changed.

And before we swallow the spin, another point needs to be made: why has Gyngell jumped back to Nine now?

The answer is Dawn Airey, the tough, straight speaking, Aussie male-hating former head of Sky Networks at BSkyB who takes over as worldwide boss of the Granada production house — Gyngell was the head of Granada in North America — on Monday.

Airey had plenty experience of the Aussie male TV culture when working for Rupert Murdoch at Sky and his tribe of loyalists from Down Under. She wasn’t impressed.

Airey was notable for her speech at a TV industry forum in Canberra in 2004 when she attacked Australian TV for its lack of creativity and its “blokey” culture. People in TV land have been waiting for the inevitable clash when Airey took over at Granada. Now Gyngell has jumped, courtesy of James Packer and Ian Law.

“Blokey” is a charge often leveled at Nine, especially under Gyngell, when half a dozen leading women executives quit because they found the male dominated culture hard to take. That culture continued under Eddie McGuire and Jeff Brown, but instead of being the NRL male approach of Gyngell, it was the AFL clubrooms approach.

People at Nine expect the NRL culture to return with Gyngell: there won’t be many females applying (maybe one).