How newsreader Peter Hitchener became ‘the nicest man in television’
PETER Hitchener has an uncanny ability to connect with viewers on TV, in the real world and on social media. And now ‘Mr Melbourne’ is celebrating 45 years on the box.
VIC News
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PETER Hitchener is intuitive enough to know when Livinia Nixon is hurting. When a news story is graphic enough to distress her as the camera is about to turn to her for the weather, he knows just how to spare her feelings.
After 13 years together on Victoria’s most-watched 6pm news — and 45 years this year reading news at Channel 9 — the man dubbed social media’s “Mr Melbourne” reverts to their secret code.
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“Because he knows me so well, he knows which stories upset me,” Nixon says. “We’ve been on air when the most horrific stories come through, and he’s had to report on it and then throw to the weather.
“During the taped piece he’ll go, ‘Are you all right?’ and I’ll go, ‘Not really’. So when he throws to me he doesn’t make eye contact, because you know when you can only hold so much and, if someone reaches out and is kind, you can kind of lose it and start crying. So he’ll look at the top of my head, and I’ll reply by looking at his tie.
“That’s our little silent way of saying, ‘I’ve got your back, and I know you’re upset. Let’s just do this together’.”
Queensland-born Hitchener was already working in newsrooms when Nixon was yet to be born, but a sign of this man’s uncanny ability to connect with people is the fact they both say they have a real bond. Hitchener says he loves chatting about anything and everything with Nixon every day in the makeup chair — “it’s so relaxing sometimes we fall asleep side-by-side”.
Nixon says Hitchener is so kind and generous she has seen “Hitchy” take off his tie and give it to a passer-by who had remarked on it, saying, “Oh take it, don’t worry I’m a newsreader. I have plenty of ties.”
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In the cutthroat world of TV news, Hitchener is something of an oddity. Try as you might, it is difficult to find any diversity of views about the man, his professionalism or his massive engagement with the community. Everyone seems to love him.
In the Nine newsroom, which was named after him on his 70th birthday, is a plaque celebrating “The Nicest Man in Television”.
On five platforms across social media, hundreds of thousands of people engage with posts from a 72-year-old they have never met.
He makes for an odd celebrity. A mild-mannered bachelor with three rescue cats, a low-profile private life and the squeakiest of public images is about as far from the fame-chasing reality stars of now as you can get — the ultimate, adorable dag.
He is such a good sport he agreed to pose for Weekend’s cover shoot in the style of Anchorman’s eccentric newsreader Ron Burgundy.
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Asked why people across demographics are so into him, the boarding-school boy from the bushbrushes the question off. Then he settles on it having something to do with his relationship with viewers being a true, two-way street.
“The only thing you can do is just be yourself. I’m sure there are plenty of people who look at me and think, ‘No thanks, I can’t stand him’. But if people watch the news, and if people feel that way (warmly), the least thing I can do is reciprocate it, because other people’s stories are much more interesting than mine,” he says over a quick coffee after his regular appearance on 3AW with pal Denis Walter.
On the way out of the studio, Walter’s three 20-something producers give Hitchener a dose of love and the gift of a potted orchid to celebrate his 45-year news anniversary. One mentions how ecstatic a 16-year-old she knows was to learn she gets to meet Hitchener. Perhaps it is no wonder kids love him, he puts himself out to make them happy by turning up to their events so they can get selfies.
“If I’m invited to anything, I try to get there and go along,” he says. “On social media I believe in following people back if I can (within platform limits), because if people are kind enough to be interested in me, I want to know their story as well.”
By the look of the photos they share, young followers treat Hitchener like a rock star. Of all those deb balls and formals he gets to, he says, “I only go for about an hour and a half, it’s not like I’m there till stumps.
“It’s kind of fun and the thing is, after 45 years, I don’t want to waste any opportunities.”
A reddit page started by someone thrilled to be followed back and tweeted by Hitchener is full of others chiming in with their chance interactions with him in real life or online. A young social media personality Hitch is showing around the newsroom on the day Weekend visits says she was beyond thrilled when he got on to her blog and complimented her self-made TV show.
More than 58,000 people follow Hitchener’s Instagram feed full of sweet photos of animals, pretty plants, art, food and shots of him in the newsroom with visitors he is showing around — a staffer says this is just about a daily occurrence — or at events he has agreed to attend. He admits to spending a lot of time interacting with his public in cyberspace.
Latest Instagram offerings include Hitch surrounded by 19 beaming teens in their formal wear at a deb ball in Brunswick (1200 likes), a “Throwback Thursday” pic of him on holidays sipping black tea in a pretty china cup in Japan (1100 likes), and Hitch on a Friday afternoon
in late March displaying “tonight’s tie … see you at 6!” (1100 likes).
He holds more ambassadorships to Victorian community organisations than he can list off the top of his head, and inadvertently creates scheduling juggles for the network media team by happily saying yes to as many fresh invitations to appear at this good cause event or that, if he possibly can.
In what spare time he has, Hitchener is a fan of vigorous gym work, including “aerial yoga” (see Instagram pictures showing him starfished upside-down), which is perhaps why he is a surprisingly buzzy presence for someone we usually see still and seated. He bops around the studio and newsroom affectionately calling everyone “kiddo” and rarely seems to stand still.
His news director, Hugh Nailon, says Hitchener considers many of his colleagues like family.
“Since his mum passed away a few years ago (in 2011), and he was extremely close to his mum, I think it’s fair to say in the wake of that we’ve become his family, and with his audience, he’s got a family relationship with them,” Nailon says.
Hitchener’s mother, stepfather (his dad died in 1963) and sister all followed him to Melbourne from Queensland decades back, after he landed here in the early 1970s. Hitchener excitedly tells the story of falling in love at first sight with Melbourne as if he landed yesterday.
“I was picked up at the airport by our production manager Russ Sefton and we drove along Royal Parade, Parkville, and it was in winter, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, look at this’. The two side lanes and the centre were lined with deciduous trees as far as the eye could see. And then we stopped on the Swan St Bridge looking towards the city and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I love this place’.
“I said to my mother, stepfather and sister, ‘Look, I think I’m going to be here for a while. I think this is a wonderful place, why don’t you come down?’ So they all moved down from Queensland.”
Hitchener is very close to his sister, and has been supporting her after she recently broke her ankle on holiday.
In the gruelling news rating race, Nailon considers Hitchener a big asset. He sees his audience appeal in large measure due to the fact that what you see is what you get and what you see is a genuine person.
“He is such a decent human being; as our news reader he’s effectively the figurehead of our newsroom and the warmth and decency permeates our newsroom, but also permeates the bulletin as well, and that comes across,” Nailon says. “After 45 years of seeing that, people can see that decency for themselves.
“The thing about television is you can’t fake it. There’s nowhere to hide. People see through you (if you try to fake it) and they make judgments immediately. They can see his warmth, humour and professionalism and they just connect with him straight away. It’s who he is. It’s the reason for his success.”
Nailon agrees that Hitchener represents an important link between the traditional, more reserved news presenter and a more open, approachable model, in keeping with contemporary audience expectations.
“Channel 9 has been extremely blessed to have three main newsreaders over the journey; three people doing that job in nearly 60 years (the others, of course, being Sir Eric Pearce and Brian Naylor),” Nailon says. “Historically, those guys were probably a bit more remote and aloof, by virtue of the technology at the time.
“Hitchy’s social presence enables him to connect at a more personal level and a more human level … it’s been a really pivotal part of the continuing warmth he gets from the audience. People get a peek behind the curtain.”
But even someone who confesses he loves spending hours conversing with his followers has some limits as to how much he shares.
Hitchener is not keen to go back over the low-key announcement he made in 2008 that he is gay, saying, “I think people kind of know my story anyway so l just leave it out there.” The revelation produced zero ripples in his industry and he’s just one of many public figures who prefer not to go on about their personal lives in media interviews.
Though Nailon describes Hitchener’s huge number of community events as tantamount to his “hobby”, the newsreader also names golf as his loved pastime.
He plays nine holes on public courses with a female friend, and his social life includes being invited to family functions of loved work colleagues, including longtime weekend newsreader Jo Hall.
Hall is another who says Hitchener “is exactly the same person on TV as he is off”.
“He’s absolutely sincere and that really comes across. There’s no faking it and, with all the extra stuff he does, he’s warm, engaging and he’s funny. He’s got a wicked sense of humour,” she says. “When he laughs, you can’t help but laugh, even if you don’t find it funny; when he loses it on the news it’s not an effort, or a mistake, it’s something positive. He’s not just part of this family, he’s part of my family.
“When the kids (Hall’s twins, Emmerson and Flynn) turned 18 last year, I said to them, ‘So who from my world would you like to ask?’ And they said, ‘Just Hitch’.”
When Nine lost a member of the extended news family, Hitchener took it hard. Having been rushed to Kinglake with an SES crew to present news after the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009, he desperately tried to call his predecessor, Kinglake resident Brian Naylor, during on-air breaks.
“I rang his number and got his chirpy voice message … but he had passed away hours earlier. We were actually on the news when we found that out. I’ve kind of blanked that bulletin out of my brain,” an unusually subdued Hitchener says. He found out mid-bulletin that Naylor and his wife, Moiree, had perished in the blaze and had to deliver the news.
“It was absolutely, without question the most challenging story I can remember because it was so close to home,” he says. “It was shocking going to Whittlesea and up the mountain. There was nothing on the ground, no noise.
“I don’t want to mention some of the things we saw, but there were some houses that hadn’t been checked yet … you could see that people had tried to escape the flames and had driven up embankments and you could see the car there just burned out.”
He says the aftermath of seeing the impact and suffering caused by the inferno was “almost too much to deal with”, and what got him through was the courage of people he met
on the ground.
In keeping with the caring character painted by his colleagues, Hitchener says he stays in touch with the Naylor family.
It is one more piece of evidence backing up Nailon’s theory that “you know the saying, ‘Nice guys finish last?’, well I think Peter Hitchener disproves that.”
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