Ratings challenge ahead for Seven’s ‘toddler’ TV team picked by news boss Anthony De Ceglie

Channel 7’s newly promoted newsroom executive team — nicknamed Romper Room due to their youth — is picking up the reins at a particularly tough time, writes Annette Sharp.

Seven director of news and current affairs Anthony De Ceglie has assembled a young executive team. Picture: Supplied

Seven Network newsroom newbie Anthony De Ceglie sure has a job ahead of him and his newly inked Romper Room executive team, with Seven News losing to Nine for the last three weeks on the trot.

According to ratings keepers on both sides of the often contested TV divide, it’s the first time Nine has beaten Seven in the 6pm-7pm news hour (five capital cities) in a very long time.

According to one set of number crunchers, it’s the first time Seven has lost three consecutive prime time news weeks to Nine in seven years.

Last week, week 25 of the year, Seven (at publication time) had lost to Nine by 27,000 viewers, with Nine recording an audience of 830,000 to Seven’s 803,000.

Nine has also won every week of 2024 in the most populous key markets, Sydney and Melbourne.

Sean Power is the new director of news for Seven Sydney. Picture: Supplied

New Sunrise executive producer Jake Lyle. Picture: Supplied

That’s going to painful reading for De Ceglie — but more painful for Seven Media chairman Kerry Stokes, who has long taken an interest in the news hour.

But then, of course, De Ceglie is Stokes’s captain’s pick, so ultimately these results rest with Stokes.

Seven News weeknight newsreader Mark Ferguson. Picture Craig Greenhill

Meanwhile, the results put greater pressure on Seven newsreader Mark Ferguson in Sydney as, unfortunately for him, he doesn’t fit the network’s new liking for the under-35s — as reflected by last week’s announcement that De Ceglie has rushed to promote the youngest executive news team (that presumably comes minus the legacy salaries) ever assembled at Seven and in the country.

So young is the new crew, Channel 7 insiders have named it Romper Room, drawing comparisons to the preschool program that was famously broadcast on the network in the 1970s.

But then if one of your slogans is (as we hear De Ceglie’s is) “your stories must be TikTokable” — by which we gather he means perishable moments that are largely irrelevant but fizz briefly, like a groodle farting in a bathtub, only with less laughs — you’re going to need to be in your twenties to swallow and sell it.

Miss Susan (Susan Jamieson) during her reign on Romper Room.

On Thursday De Ceglie rounded out Seven’s playgroup by promoting to the Sydney news director role Sunrise executive producer Sean Power, who could pass for 32 — maybe with a beard.

Meanwhile, someone called Jake Lyle, who looks 17 and, according to LinkedIn, has less than two years TV experience, replaces Power at Sunrise; while Holly Fallon, who is a passable 30, has taken over at Weekend Sunrise as executive producer.

Fallon’s resume, also thanks to LinkedIn, reveals that in 13 years she’s worked at five different companies, one of them at Nine where she remained for three years until December, when she left the role as a writer on Today to move to Seven.

The appointments have demoralised some in the Seven news department, say insiders, where anyone over 35 now feels they have a target on their back.

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