Jane Doyle to retire from 7 News Adelaide after 33 years

Legendary Channel 7 newsreader Jane Doyle has made an emotional announcement about her future.

Channel 7’s Jane Doyle will retire from the newsdesk after 33 years of reading the news to Adelaide. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Adelaide’s queen of news, Jane Doyle, has made headlines telling viewers she will step down next month after 33 years as Channel 7’s newsreader.

Doyle, 64, one of the best-known faces in Adelaide’s media, made the announcement at the end of the 6pm bulletin on Thursday, where she has dominated the ratings for 22 consecutive years. She will present the news for the last time on December 15.

She is a rarity in the cutthroat world of commercial television for leaving when she wants, on her own terms, without being pushed. She notified the Channel 7 newsroom 18 months ago to give the station time for succession planning.

“Television presenters don’t always get to script their ending, but Jane is Australian news royalty,” Channel 7 Adelaide news director Chris Salter said. “She’s decided the time is right and we now have a chance to give her the farewell she deserves.”

Gallery: Adelaide news queen’s legendary career in pictures

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Channel 7’s Adelaide newsreader Jane Doyle, at home in Beulah Park with her dog Hamish, has announced her retirement after 33 years with the station. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Doyle, who moved to Channel 7 from the ABC in 1989, wanted to tell viewers herself and argued her contract was with them.

Channel 7 newsreader Jane Doyle and husband Ian with their newborn baby son Henry in 1995

“I have always taken the view that it’s the audience that employs me and that it’s Channel 7 that facilitates and pays me,” Doyle said. “It wouldn’t matter if I was the nicest or the nastiest person on television; my future depended on the audience being prepared to invite me into their homes at night.”

Doyle, whose husband Ian was this week isolating with his second bout of Covid, said she considered leaving earlier but Covid kept her at her desk. She said Covid was the biggest story she covered, bigger than the death of Princess Diana, the Snowtown murders, or the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

“When Covid hit, I thought ‘I’ve got to see this through’ and I knew it wasn’t going to be a story I could leave in that first year,” she said. “We are still in it but three years later it’s time.”

Doyle, who in 2017 was successfully treated for breast cancer, said she was retiring in good health and would turn 65 in February. Originally from Queensland, she started out as a schoolteacher but moved to print media and worked in Port Pirie for The Recorder and ABC radio station 5CK.

In Adelaide, she read ABC radio news, then the weekend television news on ABC, presenting her first weekly TV news bulletin on Australia Day, 1988. Eighteen months later, she was poached by the Seven Network who wanted her as a co-anchor with newsreader Graeme Goodings.

Channel 7 newsreaders Jane Doyle and Graeme Goodings in 1990.

… and the newsreaders at the newsdesk in the studio, 1993.

It was a leap in the dark and when a journalist friend asked if she had the “it” factor needed for television, she confessed she didn’t know.

“I was fearful, I was anxious, but I thought ‘if it lasts a year, so be it’,” she said. “I went in not thinking that I would be there forever.”

After reading with Goodings for 15 years, she went solo and was then joined by John Riddell who retired in 2020. Since then, she has again read on her own.

Doyle, who was awarded an Order of Australia Medal this year for her work in the media and the community, plans to travel and will next year celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary – three years late because of Covid – in Norway.

She said knowing when to retire was difficult but she wanted to leave while she was still enjoying work.

John Riddell and Jane Doyle celebrate 100 consecutive weekly ratings wins.

“I’ve spent more than half my life at the Channel 7 newsdesk and by the time I finish in December it will be 33 years and four months,” she said. “I have had the great privilege of maturing in public, on air, and largely on my own terms.”

Salter said Doyle’s honesty and integrity set a benchmark for broadcasters across Australia.

“She will be missed in the Adelaide newsroom just as she will be in households across South Australia,” Salter said. “We wish her the best for her well-earned next chapter – we know she’ll be watching.”

Seven will announce a replacement in the next few weeks with speculation focusing on the recent recruitment of 5AA’s Will Goodings – the son of Graeme Goodings – to read weekend news on Channel 7 with Rosanna Mangiarelli.