Peter Overton expected back on air after health scare

Popular TV news reader Peter Overton vanished from our screens with his employer leaving it up to his wife to explain his absence.

OPINION
Nine Sydney newsreader Peter Overton is expected to return to air at the weekend, three weeks after his wife went public with his latest medical plight.

Nine has remained silent on Overton’s absence from the airwaves and on Thursday again refused to comment on the ailment that has most recently sidelined their top-rating Sydney news anchor except to say he would return to air on Sunday night.

This column was directed to a statement released by Jessica Rowe, Overton’s wife, on January 14 when she took to social media to reveal her husband was on extended leave from Nine following surgery to remove a polyp from his vocal chords.

Nine newsreader Peter Overton is off work as he recovers from surgery following the discovery of a lump on his vocal cords. Picture: Instagram

Image of Nine newsreader Peter Overton undergoing surgery for melanoma removal in 2021, Picture: Nine News 2021

“ As you know Pete doesn’t do Insta – and he wanted me to share some news with you. He’s off work for a little longer at the moment after an ENT surgeon discovered a polyp on one of his vocal cords which explains his very raspy voice over the holidays,” Rowe said, adding there would be “no talk for now”.

According to sources, the polyp removal coincides with Overton going under the knife a second time this summer, for melanoma.

Overton has been diagnosed with skin cancer previously.

In November 2020 the newsreader was operated on to have a melanoma in the hairline of his right temple removed.

An image broadcast by Nine later showed a sizeable triangular incision stretching from Overton’s mid temple to the middle of his right ear.

Within 12 months of the first melanoma diagnosis Overton was back on the table in 2021 after three more skin cancers were detected on his back.

Overton’s wife Jessica Rowe took to social media to announce Overton was taking extended leave following surgery to remove a polyp from his vocal chords. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“It looks like I’ve been glassed and stitched back together,” he said after the surgery, adding that the cancers had been caught early due to his vigilance with skin cancer examinations.

Overton mastered his famously accessible emotions to report the disease stats for a Nine news report: “One Australian (dies) from melanoma every five hours,” he said, urging his audience to get themselves checked.

The surgeries were the start of a run of health issues for the popular newsreader.

In 2022 he revealed during a news bulletin that a blood vessel had burst in his right eye.

Known as a subconjunctival haemorrhage, Overton assured his viewers his bloodied eye “looked worse than it actually is.”

Then in April last year the 58-year-old father-of-two underwent a hip replacement.

Overton was looking wan and strained in social pictures posted by Rowe to Instagram in December during a family holiday to Japan.

A month later, on January 14, the start of the TV ratings season and the week Overton was expected to return to air, Rowe again posted shots from the December trip in lieu of new photos to celebrate the couple’s wedding anniversary.

A week prior, Rowe had uploaded a topless photograph of herself at a Bondi Junction mammogram clinic and urged her followers to undergo screening for breast cancer.

WAG KICKING GOALS

In keeping with ABC chief overseer and chairman Kim Williams’ push to attract ever younger (though more easily-distracted) eyes to His ABC, one-time Seven Network presenter and WAG Abbey Gelmi has been signed to host weekend sports panel show Offsiders.

From Sunday Gelmi replaces AFL commentator Kelli Underwood who finished up with the program at the end of last year and this week made headlines for picking up an OAM.

Underwood, 48, is widely credited with being Australia’s first woman AFL commentator.

She also has the distinction of hosting the highest rating Offsiders show, a program broadcast following the Matildas’ win over France in the 2023 FIFA World Cup.

Underwood (512 followers) leaves large shoes for glamorous Insta-friendly 33-year-old Gelmi (76.5k followers) to fill.

Abbey Gelmi has been signed to host an ABC weekend sports panel show Offsiders. Picture: David Caird

Gelmi’s star rose swiftly at Seven Media, a company run by proud Perth media magnate Kerry Stokes who, as it happens, is also said to be on friendly terms with Perth Olympian and athletics legend Herb Elliott, Gelmi’s grandfather (not that we are suggesting that had anything to do with Gelmi’s success at Seven).

Despite being tapped ahead of people’s favourite Johanna Griggs in 2021 to co-anchor Seven’s Tokyo Olympics’ coverage alongside Hamish McLachlan, brother of then AFL boss Gillon, Gelmi’s public profile has slipped in recent years.

That’s bound to happen when you take time out to have babies with your other half, ex Richmond AFL player Kane Lambert.

Gelmi replaces AFL commentator Kelli Underwood who finished up with the program at the end of last year and this week made headlines for picking up an OAM. Picture: Jason Edwards

This writer’s review of Gelmi and McLachlan’s appalling on screen chemistry at the Tokyo Games enraged Seven bosses at the time but hit a chord with many readers of Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph.

McLachlan too disappeared from Australian television screens for an extended period post Tokyo and there has been plenty of chatter about the commentator’s decision to pull the pin on his media career and move to France and Switzerland with his family in late 2023.

But like Gelmi, McLachlan is back after returning to Seven in time to cop a bollocking for his presenting at the Brownlow Medal in September and signing with Sports Entertainment Network (SEN) for a new weekly interview show called Unfiltered.

CLOCK’S TICKING

Television executives have been brought in to try and resolve what is now being called a “standoff” between 60 Minutes star reporter Liz Hayes and the executive producer of the program, Kirsty Thomson.

Further to Sharp Shooting’s report last week about Hayes’ absence from the 2025 60 Minutes promo comes word Hayes and Thomson have been at loggerheads for some time – “years” we are told – over the calibre of producers working on Nine’s once great keystone current affairs program.

As far back as 2000 Hayes is said to have tabled her objections to working with the program’s new breed of increasingly youthful and inexperienced producers.

Those objections were heard by network executives including Nine’s Director of Television Michael Healy, one of Hayes’ staunchest supporters.

This led to, in 2021, the launch of 60 Minutes’ spin off program Under Investigation with Liz Hayes with the journo at the helm and veteran 60 Minutes producer Gareth Harvey serving as supervising producer and creator, later executive producer.

That year Hayes opened up to media about the scope of her new show which she maintained was not just another cold case crime series: “That’s not what it’s all it’s about. The format allows us to tackle any subject from major breaking news and natural disasters to world events,” she said in 2021.

60 Minutes star reporter Liz Hayes. Picture: Supplied

60 Minutes executive producer Kirsty Thomson. Picture: Liam Mendes / The Australian

Launched with lofty ambitions, the short-series program was soon staffed with more reporters (it was reported that a further four senior reporters had joined the unit) and had in its sights for season one Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chemical assassins, the killers of pretty Bathurst shopkeeper Janine Vaughan and of Victorian lovers Russell Hill and Carol Clay.

Tackling the critics, said to have included sceptical Nine executives, head-on, Hayes told media: “Content is still king. A good story is good for everybody, in whatever age group. And it can’t be boring. I’d like to think a bit of wisdom and experience is very valuable and worthwhile, particularly in television.”

For the next four years they were – and then Nine’s bean-counters turned up the middle of 2024 and pulled the plug on the show. Budget blowouts were blamed.

Harvey was let go, other staff reabsorbed back into 60 Minutes.

Hayes meanwhile is said to be sticking to her high production standards.

On Thursday a Nine spokeswoman declined to comment.

The decision of what to do with Hayes, whose contract is up this year, has now fallen to Nine’s new and unpopular director of news Fiona Dear and Healy, who swiftly sent her to the US to cover the election in November, and acting CEO Matt Stanton who is fast making a name for himself as a decision maker.

HOT SEAT

The list of rumoured contenders for the Nine Sydney’s Director of News role continues to grow with another former television newsman (yes, man) said to be in talks to replace departed boss Simon Hobbs.

Michael Best, ex Seven Brisbane reporter and ex Nine Perth news director, is back in the loop at Nine, or so this column hears.

Best walked away from television news in 2022 to join Twiggy Forrest’s Tattarang and Minderoo Foundation as Director of Communications.

Former Nine Sydney’s Director of News Simon Hobbs.

Hobbs’ rumoured replacement Michael Best. Picture: X

Ex newspaper editor and radio host Neil Breen is also a rumoured contender for the role. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

After 18 months he next moved to Gladstone Ports Corporation at the start of 2024 as Head of Corporate Relations and Indigenous Affairs.

Best joins a colourful list of rumoured contenders including former Nine news reporters Mark Burrows, Damien Ryan and Neil Breen vying, according to industry insiders, for Hobbs’ job.

Hobbs left Nine in November in the aftermath of Nine’s culture review.

Meanwhile we hear women from inside Nine’s bunker have been slow to apply for Hobbs’ job. Make of that what you will.