If you ask me, Mark Ferguson would probably be a great presenter of a daytime bulletin or even a rolling news channel. But I don’t think he works particularly well on a main evening news bulletin, especially in a quite large and competitive news market like Sydney. I also seem to get the impression that unlike Peter Overton, Fergo isn’t quite comfortable with having such a prestigious role as the main 6pm newsreader on a major network in Australia’s largest city.
History shows that the Sydney market has a preference to the type of TV newsreader that can be serious when they need to be but can also have a bit of fun and actually banter with the presenters where appropriate. To be the main 6pm newsreader in Sydney, I think you really need to be able to handle that very delicate balance between serious breaking news and the more light-hearted content if you want a long career and consistent ratings wins for the news service and often even the network in the city as a whole.
If Seven were to use Michael Usher as a future main Sydney news presenter (which I’d personally like to see happen, not the least because a Michael Usher vs Peter Overton ratings battle in Sydney news would be very interesting!), I think they might need to give him a decent amount of time on weekends to get him used to a typical news studio environment (which is very different to constantly travelling for 60 Minutes, that’s for sure) before finally giving him the position as Seven’s main Sydney newsreader.
More importantly, could Michael Usher ultimately pass what I’d call the Hendo/Climpson/Roscoe/Overton test of being able to handle more light-hearted news and presenter bantering as well as the serious news of the day?