Media Diary: Anthony De Ceglie’s NRL directive baffles Seven staff
Forget the State of Origin, there’s an equally fierce contest breaking out within Seven, with the network’s former news boss at the centre of it all.
Forget the State of Origin, there’s an equally fierce contest breaking out within Seven that’s pitching state against state and mate and against mate – and somehow the network’s former top news boss, Anthony De Ceglie, is at the centre of it all … even though he doesn’t even work there anymore.
On one side, there’s De Ceglie’s outspoken detractors within Seven, who claim he was explicitly instructing them to beef up their coverage of the NRL at the same time he was secretly negotiating to become chief executive of the NRL’s new club, the Perth Bears.
They insist he was so intent on promoting the sport, he demanded it get extended runs across Seven’s full slate of news programs, from its hit Sunrise breakfast show in the morning through to its 6pm news bulletins.
What’s more, they claim the directive baffled many within Seven given the network was the official broadcast partner of the AFL, while the NRL rights were retained by fierce rival Nine.
But then, they found a lot of De Ceglie’s directives baffling – not least because he’s the fella who thought it was a good idea to include a Friday night funnyman on the network’s serious, prime-time bulletins … only to overshadow all that comedy (such as it was) by making the even funnier call to add a psychic in the hard-hitting nightly news mix as well.
They also claimed De Ceglie – who likes to go by his initials ADC – developed a strange fascination with the NRL’s boss, Peter V’landys, in recent months, and would routinely boast about their connection while simply referring to him as the equally initialised PVL.
In fact, we’re told De Ceglie dropped the letters so often at Seven’s Media City headquarters in inner Sydney, the network’s newsroom cleaners are still busy trying to pick them all up.
“It was always, ‘PVL this’, ‘PVL that’, ‘my mate PVL is so brilliant’,” one Seven insider told Diary. “At first we thought he had some sort of weird crush on V’landys – it’s only now we’ve realised he was actually talking to him about a job at the time.”
Wowsers. Talk about a head-high tackle.
Of course, on the other side, there’s De Ceglie’s equally outspoken defenders, who staunchly back his strategy for extending the network’s coverage of rugby league, while maintaining the decree was limited to the news bulletins in Sydney and Brisbane, where the sport reigns supreme.
Not only that, they claimed his focus on league long pre-dated his only recent talks about defecting to join the Bears – and that they were actually signed off at the network’s highest levels, and rubber stamped by Seven West Media director Ryan Stokes (son of the media organisation’s billionaire chairman Kerry Stokes).
“De Ceglie definitely focused on (promoting rugby league) a lot and encouraged us to do more of it,” one senior Seven insider told Diary. “But I’m not convinced it was ALL because of PVL or the gig.
“Nine dominate the NRL in Brisbane and Sydney and that definitely helps them in news – and he wanted to combat that. He definitely said PVL was his mate multiple times, though.”
Another concurred, saying: “If you want to win the ratings in Sydney, you need to up your rugby league coverage. That’s just obvious.”
As for De Ceglie himself, he didn’t want to buy into any of the media argy bargy and told us he just wanted to concentrate on the bare necessities of running his new Perth club.
Either way, Diary’s Seven sources assured us the network’s news sensibilities were never inappropriately impacted by De Ceglie’s appreciation of rugby league, if only because his powers of persuasion at the station were well and truly on the wane at the network by the time he was in talks to helm the Bears.
“You need to remember that by this stage, the majority of Anthony’s directions were simply ignored,” one source said.
It turns out, there are only so many diabolically bad brainwaves you can have about how to “fix” television news before people stop taking your suggestions seriously.
Grin and bear it
Remember a couple of weeks back when we told you the Seven staff who survived De Ceglie’s 13-month cost-cutting reign as the network’s top news boss would hold farewell drinks for him … though he was unlikely to be invited?
Well, they’ve had them – last Friday at the Alexandria Hotel just down the road from Media City.
“It started out as a farewell for a few 7News staff but turned into a celebration of De Ceglie’s departure,” one attendee told Diary.
“It was one of the biggest turnouts in years – all the cameramen, editors, reporters and producers – a heap of staff both past and present.”
We won’t tell you what was said about De Ceglie on the night – this is a family newspaper after all – but at least he brought them all together. Ain’t that something.
And now, for his next magic trick, ADC will miraculously disappear!
At least from the pages of the Perth newspaper he once edited, The West Australian, and Seven’s news bulletins, which is hardly surprising given he has clearly earned the sudden – and spectacular – enmity of his former paymasters by quitting the AFL-aligned media organisation for a rival footy code.
De Ceglie – who now describes himself as the Bears “inaugural chief executive officer” online – rolled out his respectful strategy for winning over the west coast capital’s only tabloid while unveiling league legend Mal Meninga as the Perth club’s “inaugural coach” in their inaugural press conference together on Friday.
“It will be up to the Perth Bears to earn the respect of the daily newspaper and earn the respect of the sports pages,” he said while making the announcement in Sydney of all places, for some reason.
“If we’re a success on the field … then we should be on those sports pages and if we’re not, the only people missing out will be the readers of the newspaper.”
Still, if the masthead’s current boss, De Ceglie’s one-time mentor and former editor-in-chief of The Australian, Christopher Dore, was listening to his erstwhile protege’s respectful message, he certainly didn’t show it. At least not in print.
Neither De Ceglie nor Meninga managed to find their way into The West Australian’s extensive sports coverage in its bumper weekend edition (while De Ceglie was even conspicuously missing from the AAP copy that was buried deep on the masthead’s website).
He was also cut from all of Channel 7’s coverage of the press conference, with The Daily Telegraph’s David Riccio revealing Seven sports reporter Andrew McKinley was given strict instructions ADC was to be neither seen nor heard in his news package … not that it made the network’s Perth news bulletin either way.
Which is a shame really because Seven’s viewers missed out on hearing De Ceglie repeatedly refer to Meninga as “Mel”.
Perhaps that’s because Meninga is about to unwittingly find himself “Melcolm” in the middle of a brewing media war over his new team … which should be fair warning to anyone else considering signing up for the Bears … like former prime minister Scott Morrison’s one-time handbag, Ben Morton, who we’re hearing will likely be announced as the club’s first chairman in coming days.
Gone in 60 Minutes
Sixty Minutes has a proud tradition of turning its reporters into household names – and even though the program has undergone rapid generational change in the past couple of years, most people could probably name at least a couple of the show’s current crop of presenters.
There’s Sixty’s now-longest-serving star Tara Brown, newsbreaking dynamo Dimity Clancey, journalism Swiss Army knife Amelia Adams … and … that other guy.
You know the one we mean, right?
No? Us neither … but Google reckons his name is Adam Hegarty.
Now, don’t worry about committing that to memory just yet.
Diary can reveal Hegarty – who only joined the show two short years ago – is currently off on extended leave as he weighs up his future with the program.
Apparently, all that business-class travel and free-flowing champagne isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the young reporter has until the end of the month to decide if he wants to stay or go. (Spoiler alert: we hear he’s been telling friends he wants to go.)
The more-than-capable Christine Ahern has been filling the void at Sixty in Hegarty’s absence (while he works on a separate podcast project in the network’s Brisbane studios) but is unlikely to land the role full-time given the program is desperate to retain at least one male reporter.
Nine News reporter Alex Heinke, A Current Affair stars Sam Cucchiara and Reece d’Alessandro, and resident network newshound Tim Arvier were all considered for the gig last time around and are likely to feature on the shortlist of potential replacement currently being worked up in at Denison Street.
That’s if Arvier is still with Nine when Hegarty finally hands in his notice.
Diary last month revealed Arvier had become a prime poaching target for rival networks after he was snubbed for the plum post co-hosting Nine’s nightly news in Brisbane, with part-time Seven reporter Joel Dry instead headhunted for the role.
In fact, we noted that Seven could probably convince Arvier to change channels for about $300,000 a year to offer him – not least because that would trump the $250,000 Nine was paying Dry.
Now, bless them, Seven almost got it right – and have since offered Arvier $250,000 to defect. Almost.
That’s the wrong figures fellas. If you check the story again, you’ll see that’s what Dry’s on. That magic number for Arvier is $300,000 – and you might want to move fast.
Mushroom mess
We’re pleased to note it’s not just Seven’s Brisbane newsroom that has been reading Diary and taking notes.
We hear we caused quite a ruckus at Spotlight last week after we revealed 60 Minutes was in the box seat to sign accused culinary killer Erin Patterson’s estranged husband, Simon Patterson, for an exclusive tell-all interview in the wake of her ongoing triple-murder trial.
The beleaguered Seven show has now belatedly sprung into action and flown half their staff down to Morwell in rural Victoria, where the trial is being heard, in a last-ditch bid to secure prospective talent – with Spotlight’s rising star Ashlee Mullany and even its kitchen sink spotted desperately playing catch-up in the tiny country town.
Oh Daany boy
Speaking of mushroom murder trial, if there’s one thing that gets Crikey’s irrepressible media scribe Daanyal Saeed all hot under the collar, it’s court reporters who simply don’t respect legal principles.
Just ask him … or don’t. He’ll tell you either way.
Because when Saeed isn’t busy bragging about how he’s a mid-year Walkley Award finalist for a story that got his source sacked, the recent law graduate is banging on about how he’s better equipped to cover legal affairs than most journos.
“My most boomer-coded opinion is that I don’t think you should be allowed to write news on the law or courts if you didn’t go to law school. Sorry, but too many of you have shown you can’t have nice things,” Saeed declared on X in February.
“I would argue that court reporters with legal education as a general rule would be better than court reporters without and that court reporting is an important enough beat to warrant that.”
Calm down, Perry Mason. Surely, experienced court reporters are more than qualified to do their jobs?
“Like truly I don’t think people without legal education appreciate the extent to how differently they see a legal case to those with one,” Saeed bloviated online.
“It’s not 5+ years of graft for nothing. And the way you learn to understand legal principles should be shared with the public at large.”
Now we don’t know what Saeed learned during his five-plus years of graft at uni … but it certainly wasn’t how to respect a suppression order – because he managed to breach the judge’s strict rules on what was allowed to be reported while covering the Patterson triple-murder trial just last week.
Crikey!
To be fair, the ABC’s imaginatively titled Mushroom Case Daily podcast, with Rachael Brown and producer Stephen “I’m Having A Ball” Stockwell, also breached the order, but at least they haven’t been pontificating about what genii they are on social media.
Mummy blogger Constance Hall and Mamamia also got their knuckles rapped by the judge for breaching that pesky sub judice contempt rule while offering their personal hot takes on witness testimony during the ongoing trial.
Hall later confessed to her 1.3 million followers she didn’t even know what sub judice was at the time, and still appears to be struggling with the concept.
“FYI you guys, I had to remove the post about the mushroom trial because I received an email from the Vic government telling me to immediately delete it and that numerous comments on the post breached ‘the principles of sub justice (sic) contempt’,” she said. “I’m not quite sure what it means but it sounded legit.”
Meanwhile, the mainstream commercial media’s seasoned court reporters – unburdened by law degrees – have generally managed to produce reams of excellent, accurate, impartial copy.
Fancy that.
Ten’s next project
There has been a flurry of speculation in recent days that Ten is about to axe its woke nightly gibberfest, The Project – which is hardly surprising because we’ve been telling anyone who will listen that’s been happening for months now.
Indeed, we first revealed the cloying current affairs show was under review at the network and destined for the scrap heap back on March 19.
So, for the avoidance of any doubt: Is Ten going to can The Project?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: You bet they are.
And yes, it will be replaced – at least in part – by the new investigative program we’ve been telling you about.
Contrary to industry rumours, though, the show won’t be named after either of the long-running current affairs programs on Ten’s US sister network, CBS: Inside Edition or 60 Minutes (not least because the local rights to the Sixty brand are effectively owned by Nine in perpetuity … just so long as they continue to pay their annual $150,000 licensing fee).
What we do know for sure is that the program is scheduled to debut on Monday, July 14 – at least for now – and that Ten’s top news boss, Martin White, is still busy signing up reporters.
We can reveal Nine’s widely regarded former European correspondent Carrie-Anne Greenbank is the latest recruit to join the team, less than a week after White poached Amelia Brace, Denham Hitchcock and Bill Hogan from Seven.
And, trust us, Ten’s only just getting started.
In fact, we hear the show’s inaugural executive producer, Dan Sutton, is already speaking with former A Current Affair reporter Seb Costello about a potential gig.
Ten’s hopes of wooing former Today show sports reporter Alex Cullen have been shot though, given he has now officially signed up to host Seven’s coming afternoon news talk show in Melbourne.
With all that said, what does this mean for The Project’s only star, Sarah Harris, her co-host Waleed Aly, and part-time presenter and eternally roving reporterHamish Macdonald?
Nothing great … given we hear Ten’s executives are adamant they want a clean break from The Project and that there is to be no crossover between the incoming and outgoing programs.
Stay tuned.
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