Nine sacks many Melbourne staff including technical and operational employees

Nine Entertainment has taken the axe to many jobs in its Melbourne headquarters impacting local TV productions.

Nine Entertainment in Melbourne has cut jobs. (AAP Image/Ellen Smith).

Nine Entertainment has cut staff in its Melbourne television production team, axing about 10 positions largely connected to local sport and news.

Staff from the network’s production department at its Docklands headquarters were told in recent weeks they no longer had jobs.

Those to get the cut included floor managers, lighting staff and TV production employees.

The Australian understands about 10 staff have lost their jobs.

A Nine spokesman confirmed the job losses and said it was due to internal changes at the Melbourne headquarters.

“A handful of technical and operational staff from Nine Melbourne were recently made redundant,” the spokesman said.

“This was due to changes in our technology and also operational structure which meant the roles were impacted.”

Sources told The Australian the staff were going to be let go before Christmas but Nine was unable to sort the redundancies before December.

The network has a policy it cannot make staff redundant during December and instead they were forced to wait until the new year and after the Australian Open was completed.

The grand slam tournament ended on February 21.

Nine expected a significant decline to its tennis ratings when the tournament was pushed from its regular January timeslot – during school holidays – to February and managed to negotiate about a 10 per cent discount to its annual fee to Tennis Australia.

This equated to about $6 million.

And on Wednesday it was revealed former Collingwood Football Club president Eddie McGuire will return to the TV screens on Nine for the first time since he stepped down from the top job.

He will host Wednesday night’s episode of Footy Classified ahead of the 2021 AFL season kicking off on Thursday when Richmond take on Carlton at the MCG.