Five years today since Mark Ferguson officially took over from Chris Bath as the lead presenter of Seven News Sydney.
To this day, I often wonder where the news service would be now if Seven stuck with the paring of Chris Bath & Jim Wilson for a little while longer. I guess it’d be hard to say for sure but if the content/promotion was improved and they were persistent with both presenters, I reckon a Bath/Wilson-lead Seven News might be actually be #1 in the Sydney ratings today with the benefit of things like The Chase Australia as a lead-in & David Brown’s weather. Maybe some of the other Seven News Sydney presenters/reporters who’ve left in recent years might’ve stayed on longer too.
Raschke and Willis were never going to let Chris Bath get back to weeknights because they wanted their agenda to prevail and Bath was kind of against it which meant that they had the upper hand. Ferguson always seems like the kind of person who would ‘go along’ with whatever is dished if you get what I mean, which is probably why he got in (that, or he bribed Channel 7 to push Bath out).
I would blame the management of Seven for their downfall in Sydney. For too long they have treated their audience with contempt and laziness and now they’re paying the price.
Without repeating the same stuff all the time, what did/do Seven seen in Mark? Who in their right mind would put a dumped anchor against his successor and expect it to work?
I don’t think Chris Bath would have ever regained their lead in Sydney but I am sure that they would be a hell of a lot more competitive than they are today.
While Fergo appears to be the type of newsreader who seems happy to just read the autocue and go along with whatever the management want him to do, I’m not sure if I agree that he would’ve wanted Seven to push Bath out.
Samantha Armytage (if any of the rumours of her & Bath not getting along were at all true) on the other hand…
Any mention of the milestone (even just for 30 seconds) on local 6pm Seven News bulletins around the country tonight?
If not, that’s quite dissapointing IMO because while Rick & Sue aren’t nearly as well known nationally as many (well, pretty much all in this market) local news presenters in Sydney or Melbourne, Seven do deserve to give them a few more brief moments in the national spotlight in addition to their appearance on Sunrise this morning.
Sharyn Ghidella has landed in Townsville. Expecting her to either present the Queensland bulletin tonight - or co-anchor segments alongside Kay back in the studio.
Would love if that was the case but I doubt it. I would say (unfortunately) that Sharyn and Max Futcher are going to co-anchor the entire bulletin from Townsville with Kay not airing. But we’ll have to wait and see.
It is about time that Seven flew one of their anchors up to NQLD. Nine did two days ago.
Saturday (02.02.2019): Sharyn Ghidella is anchoring the Brisbane bulletin live from Townsville, covering the floods. Kay McGrath is in studio solo with the rest of the day’s news.
Meteorologist Tony Auden has also been rostered in today.
