The story behind how Sanders came to replace Katrina Lee on weeknights is rather interesting. Katrina, the senior and more experienced journalist, was white anted out of her role by management who thought it was more important to have a strong male anchor to lead the team and challenge Seven and Nine.
Katrina returned from holidays to be told she would no longer be sitting in the dominant left position. There was also series of farcical ads featuring Tim Webster reporting from the scene of events he never covered. It was well known Katrina was the award winning, accomplished journo and Webster was the pretty boy ex DJ who Ten hired because he looked good on camera and could read the autocue well. This didn’t escape the attention of newspaper columnists even at that time and viewers responded to the negative publicity by turning off. The elevation of Ann Sanders to weeknights was an attempt by Ten to stop the negative attention their poor treatment of Lee had attracted.