Annette Sharp: Channel 7’s ratings slide as senior staff purge continues

Channel 7 is feeling the pinch in the ratings battle after senior staff were given their marching orders with the bloodletting set to continue into the new financial year.

The Seven News reckoning has been brutal and Sunday, June 30, will bring little comfort to nervous first round survivors who know there’s more to come.

Seven’s rookie new news boss Anthony De Ceglie has been hauling staff into the exit lounge at the network since he took the chair from departed news director Craig McPherson eight weeks ago.

In handing marching orders to loyal long-termers and highly paid senior hands, De Ceglie – and Seven’s number crunchers – have managed to wipe some 300 years of media experience from the roster and millions from the ledger but no matter how you cut it, there’s simply no substitute for experience in the media game.

This column can confirm the slashes have already come at a costly price to Seven chairman (and De Ceglie champion) Kerry Stokes with Seven losing – for the first time in nine years – on the only battlefield that matters, the TV ratings where eyeballs directly correlate with revenue.

For the past five consecutive weeks, Seven has lost the critical 6pm to 7pm five metro cities’ ratings to rival Nine.

It’s the first time that’s happened since 2015, the year after Seven launched its one-hour news bulletin, the hour that historically underpins the entire prime time schedule.

In 2015 Nine managed to defeat Seven for 18 consecutive weeks.

Veteran Channel 7 presenter Ann Sanders.

Chris Reason has been at Channel 7 for over 30 years.

So troubling was that collapse at the time, it prompted Seven’s then CEO Tim Worner to bring down the curtain on the careers of the network’s then news director Rob Raschke and Sydney news boss Chris Willis.

To the rescue came new blade Craig McPherson who wasted little time arresting the slide.

That transgression didn’t occur on McPherson’s watch again, something that must now be worrying his new-to-TV 38-year-old replacement, De Ceglie, under whom it has happened sooo quickly.

The slide began a week after De Ceglie boasted to industry bible Mediaweek: “(Seven News has) been number one nationally since 2015 and it’s been number one in the metro area since 2016.”

Anthony De Ceglie has put a broom through the senior ranks at Channel 7.

De Ceglie, or “The Great Unifier” as he’s being called thanks to his assertion that unification was his focus at Seven, has been responsible for slashing Seven’s once proud news division to the bone.

On Friday two more veterans, news operations manager Craig Dyer and Melbourne chief camera operator Phil Loschiavo, were shown the door.

Their departures represent another 30 and 43 years’ of discarded company knowledge.

Add to that the remarkable media innings of McPherson, 30+ years, Sydney news director Neil Warren, 32 years, Melbourne news director Shaun Menegola, 40 years, senior producer Richard Cunningham, 36 years, senior reporter Robert Ovadia, 23 years, Melbourne crime reporter Cameron Baud, 23 years, and departed Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn, four decades, and that’s an irreconcilable amount of expertise wiped off in one purge.

Channel 7 executive Sarah Stinson is the director of morning television. Picture: Supplied

It’s little wonder Seven’s ratings have collapsed in the capital cities where the news battle is most hotly fought.

Looking at Seven’s books, the purge has to be making the chairman’s favourite Ann Sanders, with 44 years under her designer belt, nervous, not to mention the highly paid Chris Reason (30+ years), Kylie Gillies (30+ years), Melbourne newsreader Peter Mitchell (30+ years) and Seven’s Director of Morning Television and McPherson mentee Sarah Stinson (25 years).

And then there’s poor old Sydney newsreader Mark Ferguson, whose $700k contract has to be in “The Great Unifier’s” sights.

Seven’s reckoning, which also took out chief revenue officer Kurt Burnette, head of sport Lewis Martin and chief marketing officer Melissa Hopkins last week, has some way to run yet as mega contracts fall due in upcoming months and the bloodletting set to continue.

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