‘I have a lot of respect for Nine’: Seven news boss not interested in network battles
The race to #1 is inevitably what every network is chasing, but the Seven news boss says he is only focused on what is happening internally.
Appearing on a recent episode of Mumbrella’s one-on-one podcast, the director of news and current affairs and editor-in-chief at Seven West Media, Anthony De Ceglie, acknowledged that the perception of “beating Channel Nine or Channel Nine beating Channel Seven is the definition of winning”, but he is more interested in simply building Seven’s audience.
“I have a lot of respect for Nine and a lot of respect for the broadcast ratings,” De Ceglie told host Neil Griffiths.
“I’d lie if I said I didn’t check [the ratings] when they come out every morning and not be happy when we win and a bit upset when we lose, but I just think at the end of the day, if we think success is simply beating our counterpart in broadcast, I don’t think we’re ever going to get to the next big thing.”
As well as discussing the introduction of such divisive segments like a horoscopes segment into the nightly Seven News, a satirical segment hosted by Australian comedian Mark Humphries every Friday and former rugby league star Willie Mason delivering a specialised NRL segment, De Ceglie said the TV ratings are just one part he looks at when determining success.
Using Humphries as an example, he said: People will say, ‘Have you looked at the minute by minutes of the broadcast and is it up? Is it down?’ But what they don’t want to talk about or what they don’t talk about, which they should, is the 3 million TikTok views that one of his segments got.
“It’s about always going, ‘Look, that’s one element of success – the broadcast ratings, the Oztam ratings. Another element of success is what’s happening on 7plus, and then there’s a whole other world of success out there, which is all the video that we put online, all the video put on social media.
“We’re talking millions and millions of eyeballs on our video clips every day online. The future of our company is going to be realizing how we monetize those clips, how that interacts with the broadcast channel and how that interacts with 7plus…”
Listen to the full episode with De Ceglie here.
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Neil Griffiths is the Managing Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the company in October 2023.
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Hmmmm 4 corners anyone?
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It’s quite staggering that no one acknowledges that he used to have aust most watched news service and in a very short time let ch9 take the mantle for the first time in about 10 years.
Where is Kerry Stokes and the board in not seeing that?Surely Jeff Howard notices that his number 1 news is no longer number 1?
Numbers don’t lie.
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3 million TikTok views wow! I’ll bet that gave your advertisers and viewers in Australia a real buzz. Stick to the knitting,
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Don’t forget the devastating impact on staff morale that he’s overseen.
No 2 nationally after years at #1 will do that.
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I’ve worked at 7 for over 30 years and never seen the company and news division in a poorer state. it is devastating to see 7news number 2 nationally after so many years at the top and all this talk about the brand being reformed. it was australia’s number 1 and they messed with it and now it’s not. please spare us the victory laps. ratings and revenue are through the floor and years of reputation building have been dissolved. sorry nothing to celebrate ADC
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