Recent weeks have seen Adelaide’s Channel 10 sack its longtime presenter Rebecca Morse and shift the news broadcast to its Melbourne studio.

Rival Channel 7 also fired longtime weekend presenter Jessica Adamson and quirky weatherman Tim Noonan, while dropping its current affairs program Today Tonight and replacing its 4pm bulletin with an interstate feed.

It’s all happened before, though, and viewers’ memories are longer than many on-air identities’ careers.

Here’s a look back at some of the newsreaders – and weather presenters – we loved.

GEORGINA MCGUINNESS

When it comes to networks playing musical chairs with Adelaide news services and their presenters, Georgina McGuinness has seen it all before – and experienced it first hand.

After 25 years on air with Channel 9, most of them as the presenter of its weekend news, in 2011 McGuinness and the station’s weeknight anchor Michael Smyth were unceremoniously told their contracts would not be renewed.

“My demise … maybe I should have seen it coming, but like a lot of the recent newsreaders, I was blindsided to a degree,” McGuinness, now 54, says.

At the time, Nine said the sackings were part of a “network restructure” but others blamed cost-cutting measures made by the Adelaide station’s then-owner, the Wollongong-based WIN Corporation.

“Nine years down the track, it’s still happening … it’s the demise of local (TV) news,” McGuinness says.

“It would be foolish to not look at the broader picture of where this is going. That tension has always been there, to centralise news to the east coast.”

Today, Georgina runs her own strategic communications consultancy business, McGuinness Media, with six key clients.

“The sectors they are in are finance, defence, resources, local government and arts – so there is a broad range.”

Adelaide born Georgina Allen joined Nine News as a reporter in 1987, fresh from completing a journalism degree, and a year later was appointed as the station’s weekend news anchor.

In 2002, she also presented the short-lived Adelaide edition of A Current Affair.

It was at Nine that Georgina met and subsequently married former Adelaide Crows captain Tony McGuinness in 1999.

A mother of four, she has been an ambassador for the Women’s and Children’s Hospital and done volunteer work with the Australian Refugees Association.

“I was fortunate enough to be partnered up with an Afghan family who had fled the Taliban – we still see them pretty much most weeks. That’s a wonderful friendship that our two families have formed.”

After her sacking in 2011, McGuinness says she got out a notepad and wrote down the things she felt she could and couldn’t do.

“Luckily, Isobel Redmond (then opposition leader of the Liberal Party) took a punt on me and gave me a job as a speechwriter.”

That, in turn, led to a senior adviser role with Redmond’s successor, Steven Marshall.

After Mr Marshall’s first, unsuccessful bid to become Premier in 2014, Georgina took the skills she had honed during the election campaign to set up her own business.

“It’s been a different life, a life I hadn’t expected,” she says.

“Every day, I still miss the newsroom and the friendships that you make. But you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and see what else you can do.”

CLIVE HALE

For a generation of viewers, the venerable Clive Hale was the face and voice of ABC news and current affairs in South Australia.

His dulcet intonation and immaculate enunciation were as readily identifiable as his almost prime-ministerial black eyebrows and, in later years, silver-white hair.

Born in Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula in 1937, Hale was educated at Norwood High and studied at the SA School of Art, with the intention of being an artist.

Hale actually started his 38-year career with the national broadcaster in Perth in 1959, appearing on ABC-TV’s first night on air in that city.

In 1967, he became the presenter of the Adelaide edition of This Day Tonight, or TDT, broadcast at 7.30pm and the state’s first program to adopt a new style of current affairs, which became particularly influential on SA politics.

Hale later spoke of “the enormous number of issues that needed to be faced by Australia that hadn’t (previously) been aired”.

``We were able to treat all these things and I think we treated them fairly,’’ he said.

Hale’s popularity was so great that the ABC even printed bumper stickers saying “I like Clive”. When state editions of TDT were axed at the end of 1978, Hale was the only original presenter left and he was made national host of its replacement program Nationwide.

After Nationwide finished in 1984, Hale became the national presenter of the ABC’s Late Night News until 1995 when he was replaced by Indira Naidoo.

In the spirit of the UK’s Antiques Roadshow, from 1987 Hale also presented the antiques show For Love or Money with regular panellists, who appraised collectibles sent in by viewers at various historic locations.

Hale formally retired in 1997 and died of cancer in Sydney in 2005, aged 68.

GEORGE DONIKIAN

With his enthusiastic, accented pronunciations of foreign place names and personalities, George Donikian made SBS World News must-see viewing for Australians from all backgrounds in the 1980s.

When he went on to front Adelaide’s Ten News for 20 years, Donikian proved he could even make the names of local suburbs sound exotic.

Even those who hadn’t watched SBS knew of Donikian through comedian Steve Vizard’s exaggerated impression of him as a swarthy seductor on Channel 7’s sketch show Fast Forward.

After a prolonged absence from our screens, Mr Donikian is now back in the news – making headlines, as well as presenting online site The Informer.

In an eight-minute tirade on The Informer in late August, 68-year-old Donikian declared that Melbourne’s Stage 4 COVID-19 lockdown meant its residents were living under “totalitarian rule” and likened Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ leadership to that of “a modern-day Stalin”.

“The destruction of families and relationships because of domestic violence and the homelessness it is creating; the destruction of Victoria for our future generations; the pending economic disaster we now face; the dismantling of the sacrifice past generations of Victorians have made toward building Victoria – gone,” Donikian said.

“Dan Andrews will have blood on his hands and a conscience that will bear the memories of those through his grab for power and total control that has caused their deaths.”

Born and raised in Sydney of Greek-Armenian descent, young George first learned Greek, Armenian and Turkish and didn’t speak English until the age of seven.

He initially worked as a radio announcer around the country, including a stint on Adelaide’s 5AA.

After a chance encounter with TV executive Bruce Gyngell, Donikian became the first presenter on SBS World News when it began on TV in Sydney and Melbourne in 1980, later expanding to include Adelaide and other cities in 1985.

However, in 1988, he left SBS – and his trademark moustache – behind to join the Nine Network for a more diverse range of roles, which included sports announcing and presenting news highlights as part of comedian Graham Kennedy’s late-night Coast to Coast program.

George relocated to Adelaide to present Ten’s Eyewitness News in 1991, originally as a solo host before being joined by Nikki Dwyer the following year.

In 2000, studio production for the 5pm Adelaide bulletin was moved to Ten’s Melbourne studios, with Donikian and Dwyer both relocating there.

Donikian presented his last Melbourne-based bulletin for Adelaide on January 21, 2011, after which production returned to the network’s local ADS-10 studios. The restructure resulted in him presenting weekend national bulletins, and he left Ten in September that year.

In 2010, George set up Donikian Media to pursue feature documentary making as well as train business executives to cope with the demands of modern media. In 2018, he was installed as the chairman of the 24/7 streaming radio service, Football Nation Radio.

Donikian says he has also recently been encouraged to enter politics by Victorian business leaders and a large following on social media.

ANNE FULWOOD

The first of a new generation of young women news presenters, Anne Fulwood captured viewers’ hearts and ratings shortly after she began her television career as a sports reporter at ADS-7 (now ADS-10) in 1982.

It wasn’t long before the Waikerie-born Fulwood became co-anchor for Adelaide’s Seven National News in late 1984 alongside veteran presenter Kevin Crease, weatherman Keith Martyn and former Glenelg football captain Peter Marker on sports.

Anne now runs Fulworks, her own communications and broadcast media company, and has become a corporate adviser to boards and executive leadership teams spanning business, community, Federal and State government agendas.

In 2015, Fulwood was appointed as Australia’s first representative to the Women20 (W20) Engagement Group for the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Turkey. She also represented Australia at the W20 in China the next year and Germany in 2017, shaping policy and submissions for G20 Leaders to promote the economic and financial empowerment of women.

Fulwood was also a Federal Government BoardLinks Champion, appointed by the Minister for Women to advocate for more women on public and private sector boards.

On two occasions during her Adelaide years, Fulwood briefly worked on-air in the US at KTVV-TV (now known as KXAN) in Austin, Texas. The first time was as part of an exchange with Austin news anchor Tonia Cooke during both cities’ 1986 sesquicentenary celebrations. Fulwood proved popular enough to be brought back a second time to co-anchor with Cooke.

A talent like Fulwood’s was always destined for the national screen and, in 1987, she moved to Sydney – again as a sports reporter – for Network Ten. She soon progressed to weekend anchor for Eyewitness News as well as reporting role on Sydney with Mike Gibson.

In 1991, Fulwood joined breakfast TV show Good Morning Australia as its newsreader, working alongside hosts Kerri-Anne Kennerley and Tim Webster.

In late 1995, Fulwood moved back to the Seven Network, initially as the presenter of its late news program and then as co-host on 11 AM. She then moved to presenting Seven News Melbourne with David Johnston from mid-1999 through 2000, and ended her career with the network by again presenting its Late News.

A talented tennis player, Fulwood presented several major sports events, including Ten’s coverage of the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada, and Seven’s coverage of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

In more recent years, Fulwood has been on the Art Gallery of NSW board where her philanthropic initiative, the Women’s Art Group (WAGs) raised more than $900,000 for education and curatorial support programs.

She was also previously on the nomination panel for the boards of the ABC and SBS, recommending directors to the Federal Minister for Communications and the Arts.

INDIRA NAIDOO

If anyone’s culturally diverse background virtually ensured they would become a presenter on SBS, it was that of Indira Naidoo.

Before she even began her career, Naidoo had been born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, then educated in England, Zimbabwe and Launceston, Tasmania, before matriculating as dux of Naracoorte High School on SA’s Limestone Coast.

After completing a journalism degree at Uni SA’s predecessor, the College of Advanced Education’s Magill campus, Naidoo joined the ABC as a news cadet in 1990 and, after stints as its political and industrial reporter, anchored its weekend news and state edition of the 7.30 Report.

As of January 2020, Naidoo is back on the ABC and can be heard again by Adelaide audiences – this time as weekend (Friday-Sunday) host of its Local Radio program Nightlife.

Naidoo gained something of a cult following as the ABC’s youngest national anchor in the mid-’90s when she moved to Sydney to front its Late Edition News.

That led to her being headhunted by SBS In 1997 to present its inaugural Late News program, where for the next three years she covered events including the independence struggle in East Timor, the coups in Fiji and the Balkans war in Kosovo.

She was also noted for her more humorous stint on Roy & HG’s comedy variety show Club Buggery, followed by appearances on other comedy shows including McFeast, Good News Week, The Fat and In Siberia Tonight.

Since then, Naidoo has also written extensively for food and travel magazines and published her own books The Edible Balcony and The Edible City.

In 2009, she was a contestant on the premiere episode of Celebrity MasterChef Australia and, in 2017, presented specialist stories on urban garden initiatives for Gardening Australia.

Naidoo returned to SBS in 2017 to host the TV series Filthy Rich and Homeless, then co-hosted Breakfast with Indira and Trevor on Sydney’s 2CH radio station in 2018-19.

She was also appointed as an ambassador to Sydney’s Wayside Chapel homeless crisis centre in 2012 and began conducting weekly classes for homeless visitors at the centre’s rooftop community vegetable garden.

In 2017, Naidoo was awarded the Peter Sculthorpe Alumni Prize by the Launceston Church Grammar School for her contribution to broadcasting and the community.

KEVIN CREASE

No list of South Australia’s favourite newsreaders could be complete without Kevin Crease, who not only anchored the evening bulletins on the state’s two top-rating stations but was the face of Adelaide television from its outset.

Viewers were deeply moved when their beloved “Creasey” died from an aggressive form of cancer in April, 2007, just two months after taking leave from his on-air role to battle the disease.

When NWS-9 aired a special, Farewell Creasey, later that month, it was the week’s top-rating program in Adelaide.

His had been the first face seen on Adelaide TV, as the host of Clarkson’s TV Hostess Quest when Channel 9 held a trial broadcast on July 17, 1959.

Crease’s public speaking prowess was evident from an early age. Born in North Adelaide but raised in what was then working-class Semaphore, he won a schools debating championship.

He started work as a clerical officer with the Shell oil company in 1952, then had his first, short-lived media job as a copy boy and cadet journalist at afternoon paper The News, before falling foul of its chief-of-staff.

After then completing his National Service, Crease left the army after an incident in which he apparently “borrowed” an armoured car to take a girlfriend to a party.

It was while working as a spruiker for John Martin’s department store, selling plastic raincoats on the street, that he was noticed and offered a job in 1957 at radio station 5DN.

As his TV career evolved at Nine during the 1960s, Crease read everything from commercials to news, often acting as compere and performing comedy skits on popular variety show Adelaide Tonight from 1962 until the mid-1970s.

In 1975, Crease briefly left TV to become press secretary for SA premier Don Dunstan for two years.

He returned to TV at ADS-7 (now part of Network Ten) where he presented its Seven National News evening bulletin for the next decade. While there, in 1983 he also released a children’s book titled Sam and the Dreamtime, which included his own photographs alongside illustrations by John Draper.

Crease shifted back to Channel 9 in 1987 to present National Nine News with Rob Kelvin. They would take the soon renamed Nine News Adelaide back to the top of the ratings in the 1990s, spending an unbroken 20 years together behind the desk.

At the time of Crease’s death, Nine’s then news director Tony Agars said the station was deluged by cards, letters and phone calls.

“What we’re seeing is not only people who grew up with Kevin on TV, but their kids have grown up with him and in some cases their kids, too,’’ Agars said.

“He could make a point with a slight raising of the eyebrow, his faultless delivery, his emphasis in just the right spot, and he always made that connection with his audience.’’

MELODY HORRILL

With her sunny disposition, Melody Horrill was Channel 7’s weather presenter for close to a decade.

Inspired by her grandfather, who was a journalist at the New York Times, Horrill studied communications at UniSA after which she co-founded the Dolphin Research Foundation to protect the Port River dolphins.

She made her small screen debut in 1995 on a Channel 10 wine show which she co-hosted with Shane Dannatt, who went on to become a newsreader for the ABC.

When the program’s last drinks were called, Horrill packed her bags and moved to Whyalla for a reporting gig with Central Television (now Southern Cross Television) before being hired as a freelance journalist by ABC-TV in Adelaide.

Next, she worked for Nine as the environment reporter, before making the switch to Ten.

“I was always passionate about environmental, conservation and science issues and was lucky enough to become the senior science reporter and fill-in weather presenter for Channel 10 for five years,” Horrill says.

“I also wrote, produced and presented three one-hour long documentaries for Network 10 which aired nationally.

“CNN Atlanta picked up one and flew me over to the US to present it to an international audience. It resulted in the formation of Australia’s first Dolphin Sanctuary in the Port River – perhaps my proudest moment.”

In 2004 Horrill joined Channel 7 where she was both a weather presenter and reporter until late 2013 when she decided not to renew her contract to “explore new horizons”.

“The station played Weather With You by Crowded House after my last presentation. I look back now and think about how appropriate that was, considering I am now actually working for the weather bureau,” she says.

“There have been a number of meteorologists who have gone into weather presenting, but no weather presenters, that I am aware of, who have gone to the Bureau of Meteorology.”

Now based in Melbourne, Horrill is the Bureau of Meteorology’s media and communication manager for Victoria.

“My focus is ensuring we communicate the weather in a way that helps people make decisions to keep them safe,” she says.

“The Victorian bushfires were such a challenge, but I am incredibly proud of the work my team put into briefing our emergency services and keeping the public up to date with weather warnings and forecasts …. It was a tough time.”

NARELLE HILL

On June 6, 1999, Narelle Hill read her last bulletin for Channel 7 – 10 years to the day she joined the station as a fresh faced 19-year-old teaming up with John Riddell to deliver the weekend news service.

After signing off, she packed her bags and headed for Western Australia to spend time with her family, before making the move to London.

Two years before, while Hill was on holiday in London to visit her good friend Kelly Nestor, Princess Diana died.

Ever the professional, Hill immediately took up a temporary posting as one of Seven’s UK correspondents covering the event.

After leaving Adelaide in 1999, Hill ventured nowhere near the bright lights of TV and instead moved to what many journalists love to call “the dark side” – public relations.

Working in corporate PR for The Telegraph newspaper, Hill planned to stay in the UK indefinitely.

But after 15 months, Hill returned to Australia with her now husband.

Relocating to Sydney, she worked in communications for the NSW Department of Education and financial services training organisation Tribeca, where she produced professional development videos for the finance industry.

Now living in Perth with her husband and daughter, Hill’s been a freelance journalist for The West Australian newspaper and is currently a communications officer for a child safety foundation.

She also teaches restorative yoga, which she’s been practising herself since 1999.

“While I may have been gone for 21 years, Adelaide is still very dear to me and I have many wonderful memories of my time there,” she says.

CHERYLEE HARRIS

Regularly recognised wherever she goes, Cherylee Harris’s big break on the small screen wasn’t part of her grand plan.

“I was representing the Western Community Hospital (now Western Hospital) on AM Adelaide when, one day in 1993, I was asked to fill in for (regular hosts) Steve Whitham and Anne Wills,” Harris says.

“I was absolutely shocked.”

But Channel 7 was right to recognise her potential and she went on to have a more than 20-year career in TV that most only dream about.

Still at school when she was discovered by Tanya Powell, Harris was a successful model in her teens and the winner of both Miss Beach Girl and Miss Advertising in 1979. When she moved to Melbourne, she studied beauty therapy before opening her own salon and expanding into three shops within 12 months.

Studying marketing and sales, Harris returned to Adelaide. She began working as a sales rep for a company and was promoted to look after national training and development.

But back to the powers that be at Seven: They loved their new on-air talent so much that Harris went on to also become a weather presenter and co-host of the Fishing and Boating Show and lifestyle programs Discover and Summer SA – all while raising her son Mitchell and working in marketing, plus wearing a number of other hats.

Over the years Harris’s various gigs have included teaching etiquette and voice production at Tanya Powell Model Agency, running her Dress for Success and Networking Knowhow classes and doing voiceovers for Phil Hoffmann Travel advertisements – which she still does to this day.

Harris has also been in demand as an MC. She’s hosted everything from the 2009 Australia Day reception, where VIPs included Kevin Rudd, to the Ice Factor Spectacular.

An Ice Factor mentor since the program began in 2005, Harris has also been a volunteer at Meals on Wheels and is a strong supporter of Variety the Children’s Charity. Graduating from the University of Adelaide with an MBA in 2008, Harris still works for Western Hospital in marketing and business development.

Stay tuned for Part Two in our “Newsreaders we loved” series. Coming soon to Advertiser.com.au