Dear god I thought I’d never see that super with the horrid orange sky and blue globe again. Whoever thought that looked good at the time… honestly should have lost their job.
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On one instance she fumbled through the autocue without the script
Who could ever forget how obsessed Evulant/Evo was over the Seven News globe back then. Even I don’t make posts that weird sometimes!
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Wow. How could they let that go on for so long? Isn’t there a kill switch or something?
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I heard it was all down to the director.
Quite a long clip from the 60s uploaded to the Vault channel.
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I love the 7News Vault channel! So many rare stuff
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Yeah it’s great. I would love to see more videos from other states especially HSV7 though. The first Today tonight/Real Life and 4.30 News would great also.
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The 4:30 news began in 2003 during the Iraq War with David Johnston returning. After the initial invasion, it was a standalone news bulletin.
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Latest upload to the Seven News Vault YouTube channel, Sydney’s news from Thursday November 11, 1993:
Remembrance Day coverage leads this bulletin, with the top story being the ceremony for an unknown soldier at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Emotion is evident in Roger Climpson’s introduction.
Sport was presented by former Ten rugby league commentator and current 2SM/Super Radio Network “Talkin’ Sport” presenter Graeme Hughes.
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Roger was simply brilliant. He’s really as good as Hendo in the old days (perhaps a bit more fluid in his presentation at times). Such a shame Seven couldn’t be more competitive at the time despite being such a polished product.
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Agreed. It’s a tie between Roger Climpson and Ian Ross for the coveted title of best ever Channel Seven Sydney newsreader.
Nine still had Sydney’s best ever newsreader and has the best currently on-air though IMO. It’s incredibly difficult to argue against Hendo’s 46 year run or Pete’s decade and counting at the top.
The problem was that Nine’s Sydney news service was quite stable for most of the 1990s while Seven changed their News & Current Affairs lineup multiple times.
Perhaps the only major exception would’ve been around the 2nd half of 1993, when Seven Nightly News became competitive and win several weeks at a time things were fairly unstable at Nine.
Seven’s Sydney 6pm bulletin most likely outrated Nine’s on 11/11/1993, with Week 38 1993 (November 7-13) being the first non-Olympics week Seven had won in the Sydney TV ratings since June 1991 as Robin Oliver noted in his weekly ratings column in the SMH on November 16.
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I recently found this interesting piece from the Herald Sun about the replacement of Jennifer Adams with Jennifer Keyte on Melbourne’s weekend news in 2003. Also some mention of Keyte’s resignation from the Seven Network in 1995.
Adams read her final bulletin on the 13th of July (the mention of “last sunday” is from an older article several weeks before), David Johnston filled in until Keyte started. Also from the 23rd of August, weather was presented by Inouk Arnall, who I hadn’t heard of before, though it’s stated she was on a show called ‘Discover’ on 7 at the time. She must’ve not lasted very long presenting.
Keyte and Power
23 August 2003
Robert FidgeonIt was a sweet moment for Jennifer Keyte when Channel Seven asked her back to revive its flagging weekend news service. But, writes Robert Fidgeon, there’s much more at stake
ON DECEMBER 10, 1995, an emotionally bruised and disappointed Jennifer Keyte quit Channel 7 after discovering the network no longer considered her first choice to spearhead its news, but didn’t have the guts to tell her.
Seven-and-a-half years, $105 million and three news regimes later, Seven concedes it got it wrong.
Tonight, Keyte returns to the channel that spurned her, this time as its great hope in yet another multi-million-dollar assault on Nine’s news supremacy.
Incumbent Peter Mitchell remains Seven’s weeknight anchor. Keyte’s role is to erode Nine’s weekend dominance.
Without AFL to help bolster her ratings, it’s a tough call. Nine consistently whips Seven by about 350,000 viewers on Saturday and Sunday.
The move pitches Keyte head-to-head against former Nine colleague and Melbourne’s present queen of weekend news, Jo Hall. Both are looking forward to the challenge.
“Jo and I have worked alongside each other for quite some years now,” Keyte says diplomatically.
“We started in the business about the same time and we’ve always had a healthy respect for one another.”
Hall is equally diplomatic, but sees the Seven move as a compliment to the performance of the Nine news team.
“It’s flattering Nine is forcing change. If anything is going to make us even more focused, this is it,” Hall says.
“I have known Jennifer for many years and I’ve always liked her. I hope she does well at Seven - though not too well.”
But behind the warm smiles and diplomatic embracing of each other, Melbourne’s about-to-do-battle TV news mums, both in their 40s, are committed to a no-holds-barred fight for weekend viewers.
Keyte, 43, takes over from Seven’s most recent news victim, the under-appreciated Jennifer Adams, who fought back tears as she farewelled viewers last Sunday.
At just 28, Adams’ crime was a perceived lack of maturity and experience, compounded by an inability to make inroads into Hall’s audience.
Keyte’s maturity and experience convinced Seven - particularly new news boss Peter Meakin - to fork out $300,000-plus a year to entice her.
The day’s news is the day’s news. It doesn’t vary from channel to channel. Nor, really, does the way each presents it. The only significant difference between the bulletins is the reader.
It is a measure of the regard Seven has for Keyte that it believes, even without AFL, she can make a difference.
It’s a belief reinforced by Melbourne audience research, which shows that despite not having read news on a regular basis for more than seven years, she continues to be considered one of this city’s most respected news presenters.
Meakin has always been a strong Keyte supporter.
“She is an excellent news presenter, highly respected and experienced. I’m confident she will do well.”
IT’S a mutual admiration society, with Keyte regarding Meakin as her “mentor”.
“It was a huge blow when Peter left Nine (for Seven) earlier this year,” she says.
"Here was this award-winning person who had been a mentor to so many of us at Nine, and bred such loyalty and demanded such high standards, leaving to go to the opposition.
“So when Peter rang and said: ‘Have you ever thought what you’re going to do next because we (at Seven) would love to have you’, you give it serious thought.”
Nine news boss John Sorell is not about to underestimate the new challenger.
“We have faced many challenges over the years and we always rise to the occasion,” he says.
“This is no different. Jo is an exceptional newsreader who is extraordinarily popular. While we continue to deliver Melbourne’s best news service, we’ll keep winning.”
Keyte was about to leave for a two-week holiday in Noosa with husband Ben and their two children, James, 3, and Alexander, nine months, when Meakin phoned.
“We talked about his vision, his passion. Hearing how excited he was about the challenge, I suddenly thought, ‘This could be something that could be really great to be a part of’.”
Meakin’s approach no doubt had a familiar ring. After all, this was the second time in 17 years a passionate Seven news visionary had set about enticing her to join the network and be a part of something great.
The first time was in 1987 when Seven lured the 27-year-old Keyte from Channel 10 to spearhead its bid to reverse its disastrous news fortunes in Melbourne.
One can only hope this time around there will be a happier ending.
The events of October 18, 1995, which led to Keyte quitting Seven on December 10, made for one of the most dramatic days in Melbourne TV history.
SEVEN pulled off what it believed to be a master coup, when it signed Ten newsreader David Johnston and Ten Melbourne news boss, Neil Miller.
The only catch was that Seven management couldn’t bring itself to inform Keyte of Johnston’s signing.
So Seven’s plan to kick off 1996 with a Johnston/Keyte co-hosted bulletin sank in a sea of managerial miscalculation and total lack of understanding of the woman who had been reading its news since 1988.
Keyte quit Seven two months later. By April, she was at Nine.
Seven’s news was a ratings basket-case when Keyte first joined the network in August 1987. It was watched by so few viewers it often rated an asterisk.
Under the guidance of then news director David Broadbent, who was also dumped on October 18, 1995, Keyte took over reading the news solo in 1989. Together, the pair turned Seven’s news around and put it back on the ratings map.
Keyte concedes the circumstances surrounding the signing of Johnston bruised her. But more than seven years at Nine, a marriage and two children later, and the pain has gone.
"The passage of time is a wonderful thing. When you leave a job, you move on to the next stage of your life and that’s it.
"That’s the way I’ve always been. I don’t look back. That next stage of my life, which was spent at Nine, has been a wonderful journey, not only professionally but in my private life, too.
“I very much enjoyed my time at Nine, but recently an opportunity presented itself that’s just perfect for me at this stage of my life.”
While the pain may be long gone, Keyte is still not at ease recalling the events that led to quitting Seven.
Only a handful of Seven executives knew of the Johnston/Miller signing.
Seven’s then CEO Gary Rice, who previously headed Ten, masterminded the perceived coup and handled negotiations with his former colleagues.
Word of the defections leaked out late Wednesday morning. By early afternoon the whisper was all over town.
Nobody at Seven, however, told Keyte, who first got wind of it from the HSV7 switchboard mid-afternoon.
There was a reporter on the phone wanting to talk to Keyte about the signing of Johnston. She said she knew nothing and phoned management.
“They assured me there was nothing in it at all,” is all she offers today, along with a wry smile.
It was only after the Seven switchboard told Keyte they had reporters on the phone saying the story of Johnston joining the network was running on radio news bulletins that Seven management confessed they had signed him.
DISAPPOINTED she had been lied to, Keyte considered her future. Seven, surprisingly, never imagined she would quit.
As one executive said to me that eventful afternoon, after I suggested she would walk: “She’ll co-host. She knows where her bread’s buttered.”
Johnston was to be the senior reader in the new partnership. He and Keyte did a couple of trial news runs, but when her contract expired, an unhappy Keyte asked her brother for advice.
On December 10, she quit.
“It was a matter of principle,” she told me at the time.
“I was taken aback and disappointed at the way it happened. At the end of the day, I realised that the developments the network was making were not part of my vision. It was time to move on.”
It is certainly a different Seven today.
David Leckie is the fourth network CEO to fill the chair since Keyte was last there.
Seven Melbourne is on its third news boss. Neil Miller went in 2000, replaced by Rob Olney who was dumped a few months ago, both paying the price for failing to dent Nine’s news dominance.
Now it’s the respected Steve Carey. Seven is making much of the fact he has come through its reporting ranks and is not, like Miller and Olney, an import.
The other big change in Keyte’s life is the fact that she is married and a mother of two. Ask about the family and a proud smile lights her face.
"They’re wonderful.
"I’m absolutely besotted with my three beautiful boys. When I say ‘my two beautiful boys’, James says, ‘Mum, you have three beautiful boys. What about daddy?’ So I have three.’
“James has seen me on TV. He thinks it’s a place where everyone has fun. He knows I’m going back to work and that he’ll see me on the telly again. He thinks that’s great.”
Keyte last week had her first trial run at the Seven news desk. The studio crew draped the room with streamers.
“It was a lovely gesture,” she says.
“It’s funny, nobody’s saying: ‘Hi, Jen, good to see you’. They’re all saying, ‘Welcome home’. That’s nice.”
Anchors away!
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Pretty terrible the way Seven treated Jennifer Keyte back in the 1990s. If they wanted to get David Johnston back they should’ve dumped Mitchell instead of making Keyte quit. Jen on weeknights and DJ on weekends would’ve made a strong team against Naylor/Hitchener on Nine.
Fast forward to today and Seven must be regretting that they didn’t work hard enough to keep their best Melbourne newsreader.
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I didn’t know Gary Rice also worked at Seven, that means he did all three networks.
Great article find, thanks for posting.
Inouk Arnall lasted one month as weekend weather presenter. She was pretty ordinary and we haven’t heard much of her since - she did a few lotto draws here and there and that was about it.
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Fuck, I miss Fidgeon. His articles were always written with such insight, and his column each week was a must read.
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Drama! Jen has had such an interesting career. Radio then 10 then 7 then 9 then 7 then 10. What’s next?!
Did she do much at Nine in the early noughties after Good Medicine? Was she being warehoused and/or on parental leave when she defected back to Seven?
Great article!
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I remember Inouk was the subject of a lot of criticism on these very forums at the time.
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