With no television experience, The West Australian’s 38-year-old editor-in-chief, Anthony De Ceglie, has been enlisted to stabilise Seven’s ailing crown jewel, television news.
Historically, news has been fiercely competitive. More than just a nightly bulletin, it is the spine of a network’s business, its cash cow and a ratings winner. The on-screen talents are often the face of the network. But such high stakes can lead to costly errors – see Seven’s misidentification of the Bondi Junction killer and its Bruce Lehrmann Spotlight scandals.
Since then, Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn has left, followed out the door by De Ceglie’s predecessor, Craig McPherson.
Anthony De Ceglie and Sarah-Jane Tasker.
De Ceglie, a trusted lieutenant of billionaire media baron Kerry Stokes, will bring a tabloid flair to Seven’s TV news. He is considered a fresh start, tasked with clearing the house after Stokes became “sick of the shit show” caused by a series of recent blunders, according to a source with knowledge of the decision, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Seven is far from alone in facing the structural pressures looking to upend television news, or dealing with a changing of the guard in personnel. Competition from agile digital outlets and social media giants is forcing a major rethink of how TV news is delivered, and who is best suited to do so.
Seven’s bitter rival, Nine Network, also faces crucial decisions after news and current affairs director Darren Wick recently left after 13 years in the job. Nine, the owner of this masthead, will soon choose from a list of internal candidates to fill what is likely to be a transformed role, and the network is in no rush as the ABC’s former head of news, Gaven Morris, conducts a review into its news operations. More on that later.
Ten, meanwhile, does not challenge Nine and Seven at 6pm, airing Deal or No Deal in the same slot, and its bulletin is broadcast instead at 5pm. Behind a paywall, Sky News Australia has refocused its efforts on comment-led news and appealing to an international YouTube audience.
The equation for public broadcasters ABC and SBS is different, still led by a charter rather than chasing revenue. Yet in a sign of the times, the ABC appointed The Australian Financial Review’s Jacob Greber as its chief digital political correspondent on Wednesday, replacing former political editor Andrew Probyn, whose role was cut in mid-2023 after being considered too anchored to the 7pm bulletin.
The shifting sands of television news come at a crucial time. Consumption trends........