Ever-patient Melissa Doyle without a gig at Seven while Sonia Kruger shines
Once one of the Seven Network’s biggest stars, Melissa Doyle is still without a gig four months after bosses axed the struggling current affairs flagship program Sunday Night.
Opinion
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Week three of official television ratings has arrived yet there’s still no sign of one-time Seven Network darling Mel Doyle on the box or inside Network Seven’s Sydney HQ.
Doyle, say Seven insiders, remains without a gig at the network four months after bosses axed the struggling current affairs flagship program Sunday Night, which she hosted.
The former breakfast TV star popped up in The Australian in January making generally optimistic comments about the future of mature women on television.
“I hope I’m a better journalist than I was 20 years ago,” she said, and “I hope (mature women are) always judged on our ability and that age shouldn’t really come into it.”
Lots of “hopes” from Doyle, who sounded uncertain on both counts.
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Doyle celebrated her 50th birthday on February 10 and while it could be said there’s never been a better time to be a 50-year-old woman in Australian television — think Amanda Keller, 57, Lisa Wilkinson, 60, Julia Morris, 51, Kylie Gillies, 52, and Sandra Sully, 55, to name just a few — it appears Seven’s quota for 50-plus women is full following last year’s hiring of Sonia Kruger, 54.
In a week in which Seven’s lacklustre financial results surprised no one came word they still hadn’t found a role for Doyle.
The reporter’s contract is up at the end of the year but you’d have to say being obedient, singing from the Seven PR songbook and remaining a good and faithful servant has helped Doyle’s career not at all.
If this columnist were her manager, we’d have pitched her to Nine’s Today Extra program as soon as Kruger departed that show for Seven in December.
As history now shows, that job finally went to an on-maternity-leave Sylvia Jeffreys (Belinda Russell is keeping the seat warm) but we’d have loved to have seen Doyle give Seven hell in the morning slot, in a talk show genre she once dominated, before taking her leave at year’s end.