Annette Sharp: Channel 7 bosses wrestle over how to manage reporter Matt Doran’s erratic behaviour

Matt Doran will be absent from Channel 7’s airwaves this weekend after he went AWOL from reporting on the Singleton bus crash last week, writes Annette Sharp.

Seven News problem child Matt Doran will be absent from the airwaves this weekend as TV bosses wrestle once more with a strategy for managing the reporter’s serially erratic behaviour.

Following his Tuesday morning misadventure, which saw Doran fail to turn up for work at breakfast show Sunrise on one of the biggest local news days of the year in the aftermath of the tragic Hunter Valley bus accident, Doran has been replaced at the helm of Weekend Sunrise, his bread-and-butter gig.

Seven’s indispensable newsman Michael Usher will be in the chair instead.

No decision has been made about future weeks, this column was told yesterday.

Reports vary as to where Doran currently is.

Channel 7’s Matt Doran was one of the first reporters on the scene of the bus crash tragedy. Picture: 7 News

While some have claimed he is in a rehab clinic attending to historic health issues, Seven sources maintain he is in fact at home prioritising his health and no doubt thinking about his compatibility with his chosen career as an ambulance-chaser.

On one point TV insiders are united – Seven executives don’t want the issue to drag on.

Doran and his wife Kendall Bora. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

There was little chance of Doran’s latest transgression remaining a secret on Tuesday after desperate Sunrise execs ordered Seven staffers staying at Rutherford’s Hunter Gateway Motel — some 16km from the bus crash site at Greta — to “knock on every door” of the motel in the hope of finding Doran, who they must have thought had been up all night playing cards with a rival media mate or making a new friend, for why else would he not be in a room associated with Seven at dawn?

Doran was eventually found by a police officer.

After a GeoTrack notification was issued, that officer entered a cafe only to find a man matching Doran’s description “slumped in a corner”.

Police refused to shed any further light on the search for Doran last week, annoyed that interest in the TV reporter’s movements had threatened to eclipse the actual bus crash tragedy.

Doran’s performance at a press conference on Monday has been broadly criticised.

The reporter was accused of dialling up the drama, taking centre stage and turning a harrowing press conference into a personal platform, using inflammatory and bombastic language not in-keeping with the grave tone of the meeting.

Monday also happened to be day one for David Koch’s replacement, Matt Shirvington, who TV executives picked over Doran for the starring Sunrise role.

Doran — said to be a favourite of Seven news boss Craig McPherson, who is apparently an admirer of Doran’s haughty macho reporting style — had at one time been favoured to replace Koch.

That dream collapsed when Seven was forced to spike an expensive Adele interview conducted by Doran on location in London in 2021.

The interview, for which Seven is understood to have invested a small fortune – around a million dollars – never saw the light of day after it was claimed Doran had irked the singer by failing to listen to her album ahead of their allotted chat.

Many are of the view this line from Seven was, at best, a half truth.

Doran later booked into a mental health facility.

On Friday, Seven refused to comment on the latest Doran drama issuing this column with only a brief statement: “This is a private matter involving one of our staff members and our priority is their wellbeing.”