Earlier this year, Seven News moved out of its Martin Place studio facility to move in with the rest of Seven West Media in Sydney in the inner west. The new Seven News studio set up there are now two control rooms. The smaller of the two facilities is used for Seven News, while the bigger, more manual control room, is used for Sunrise and The Morning Show.
The most notable difference when walking around the new facility is the space available. The Martin Place news HQ was well located in the Sydney CBD, but it was a cramped space with not a lot of room to spare. Staff were crammed into every available nook and cranny.
See also: Sunrise officially makes the move to Seven’s new newsrooms and studios in South Eveleigh
“We have two controls so we can have one on standby,” explained Seven’s head of news and current affairs Craig McPherson. “Given time zone differences there are occasions where we can have two control rooms running at the same time doing two different programs for two different markets. It’s something we haven’t had in the past, but it’s good that we do now.”
Craig McPherson
Ratings: Seven News closes the gap in Sydney
The day I visited McPherson at the new Seven News studios, Nine released comms that claimed it had won the year for 6pm News in Sydney. It’s not a claim McPherson disputed. “They have won Sydney,” he told Mediaweek. “The gap [between Nine and Seven] is closing. We are now about 3,000 viewers behind Nine on average nightly this year. We were close to 30,000 behind last year. We are happy with the progress in Sydney, but we haven’t won it and that is one of our main challenges.”
Although not looking for excuses, McPherson noted in Sydney Nine has the NRL in winter, the market’s highest-rating radio station, 2GB, and newspapers. “That is not a bad ecosystem. We feel we certainly match them, now it is just about getting over the top of them.”
Correspondent Chris Reason crosses live from the newsroom
Seven clear leader in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth
“Adelaide is having its best year since OzTAM started,” said McPherson, as he referred to evening news performance in other metro markets. “Our long-time newsreader there retired which led to a change of presenter and it has been an outstanding success.” Rosanna Mangiarelli and Will Goodings started presenting the Adelaide 6pm news in January this year.
“Perth continues to be very strong, Brisbane is not dissimilar to Sydney, with a close margin. Melbourne is flying for us where we have one around 50 weeks in succession.
“Overall this has been Seven News’ best year in over a decade across the five-city metro markets. When you include regional and our digital assets we are the #1 news brand in the country, bar none.”
It’s a race that continues every day. “It’s a never-ending finish line. You might be winning, but you’ve never won. You might be losing but you’ve never lost. We are careful not to get over-confident as we are in a dogfight every day for audience.”
Mark Ferguson closing the gap with Nine in Sydney
Outside of the 6pm hour
Including the key 6pm hour, Seven commits to 9.5 hours of news daily. The Latest is a floating late-night news bulletin presented by Michael Usher five nights a week – no Friday or Saturday bulletins.
“It would be nice to have a permanent timeslot, but the way programming is I can’t see that changing,” said McPherson. [Programmers] Angus Ross and Brook Hall are supporters of the program.” The Latest can go to air as late as post 11pm to as early as 9.30pm. “10.30pm is where we’d like to sit and we get there about half the time.”
“We start at 5am daily with News, then Sunrise from 5.30am, The Morning Show from 9am and then News at 11.30am.” The newsroom gets a breather between 12 noon and 4pm when there is an hour of news, with The Chase Australia the buffer between that and the 6pm bulletin.”
Master control at Seven News Sydney
No FTA Seven News channel
With Nine confirming it will run a dedicated FTA news channel during the Paris Olympics, how does Seven feel about turning its operation into a 24-hour beast across the primary channel for nearly half the day and then a multi for the rest?
“Could we [run a dedicated news channel]? Of course, we could. Would it cost that much money? Probably not. Would it make any money? Probably not. With a population of 26m we already have two news channels [ABC News and Sky News Australia].
“I’d love to do it. I have put forward a proposal for one. But right now we are more concerned with consolidating where we are and continuing to grow that audience.
“We have more Australians than ever watching our products on all platforms. Our year-on-year numbers for TV only are down slightly, but compare the number that is watching on all places and we are up.”
Matt Shirvington with his Sunrise colleagues Edwina Bartholomew, Natalie Barr and Mark Beretta
Keeping personnel changes to a minimum
Consistency of product is key to consistent ratings. Seven finds good talent and keeps them in place. Apart from the aforementioned change in Adelaide, bringing in Matt Shirvington to co-host Sunrise was the only other major talent move this year.
“Sunrise actually had two major changes in recent times with Sam Armytage departing a couple of years previously and then David Koch leaving,” reminds McPherson. “Shirvo was the right guy at the right time for us and he has done an outstanding job. The show continues to go from strength to strength in what was a seamless transition. We are well placed for the years ahead with the team we had.”
As to other potential replacements for Koch, McPherson confirmed Basil Zempilas was in the running.
“Of course, he was. Weekend Sunrise should be seen as a part of the succession plan for the main show. It’s not a closed shop obviously as Matt came in [from Seven News] and he was doing one or two days a week when David wasn’t here. Basil was part of the conversation when he was around.”
See also: Basil Zempilas in campaign mode, juggling TV and radio, and what’s next?
The Morning Show hosts Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies
The Olympic broadcaster no more
There are many Australians who might only remember one Olympic Games that wasn’t on Seven – London in 2012 – which was shared by Nine and Foxtel.”
When asked how Seven might cover Paris next year, McPherson replied, “We are still working that out.”
Could we see duelling breakfast shows on either side of the Seine in 2024 with Seven offering a spoiler? Unlikely! “It would be a waste of money for us,” McPherson said decisively. “We will give it a decent crack, but in terms of putting the whole Sunrise show over in Paris it’s not going to happen,” he added.
McPherson said he is not swayed by any argument that covering an event Seven doesn’t have will only help the opposition. “Everyone knows where and when the Olympics will be next year. It’s a similar argument when someone asks are we pushing audience to State of Origin when we cover it on news or Sunrise. No, I don’t believe so. People will either watch it or not. We can get a little bit too sensitive about things like that.”
McPherson did mention the challenging Paris 2024 time zones. “That’s a Channel Nine problem, not ours.”
News is still a live attraction…mainly
Despite the growth of on-demand viewing, audiences largely still want to consume news programming when it goes to air. “I’m quite buoyed that we haven’t lost significant [live] audience. It has almost plateaued. The 6pm numbers indicate it remains appointment viewing. Despite all the other options, I’m confident as much as hopeful, that will continue.”
McPherson noted some people stream the 6pm bulletins, but not a significant percentage. “Our streaming number is about 50,000 out of a national viewing audience of 1.4m. There is some growth, the question is at what rate will that number grow? As people become more accustomed to watching news on an app they might realise they have the ability to watch on-demand.
“The main issue that we face is being able to capture that number in a metric.”
There has been phenomenal growth on digital platforms including Facebook. McPherson notes that Seven News has an audience of around 13m on Facebook. “Our news website 7News.com.au is the #3 news website in the country. It is the #1 site for women under 40. It is still in its infancy. We still don’t have a 7News.com.au app, but it’s not far away.”
www.scottehler.com
Spotlight on Sundays
With a smallish band of battle-hardened TV news warriors, Seven’s Spotlight has been luring away some of the 60 Minutes audience from Nine, said McPherson. “The current season has just ended, although there will be a couple of episodes to come. Spotlight has beat 60 Minutes 12 to six when the shows have gone head-to-head. We are very pleased with the result. It is a small team, but we would like to grow that.
“Working alongside EP Mark Llewellyn are host and reporter Michael Usher, [former 60 Minutes reporter] Liam Bartlett and Steve Jackson. Sarah Greenhalgh [back from four years as Seven European correspondent] starts this month working on stories for next year. Andrea Keir has been doing some freelance work. They have all been doing a great job. They execute stories in a unique way, differently to what audiences would see on 60 Minutes or A Current Affair.”