Michael Pope

About Michael

Michael Pope has been the television industry's first choice as audience MC since 1990, the person first to the microphone at hundreds of studio recordings — the job of turning a room of strangers into an audience before the cameras roll. Almost thirty years of that work sits behind his corporate career, alongside experience across theatre, cabaret, radio and television presenting. He is best known as a producer of Nine Network's Bert's Family Feud and The Price is Right, hosted Seven Network's Blockbusters and Total Recall, and worked as an announcer and presenter on Network Ten's Battle of the Sexes.

What that background produces is speed. Pope adapts his performance to whatever the situation turns out to be, which is a different skill from delivering a prepared set — a studio warm-up has to hold a crowd through delays, retakes and things going wrong. He brings it to conference facilitation, awards nights and public speaking training, and he has a second string as a mentalist, winning an award at the 2019 Melbourne Magic Festival. He also created Shuffle, a stage game of cards and odds played between two audience members with the whole room betting along.

For awards nights, conferences and online events, Pope combines humour, confidence and flexibility with the professionalism of someone who has done it on camera for three decades. His Company Team Challenge is a 45-minute hosted event on Zoom built in three rounds, with a pre-event video produced to build anticipation — a way to bring a distributed team together and give them something to talk about afterwards.