‘Let’s be honest, it’s a battle for Western Sydney’: Seven boss talks play for NRL’s Willie Mason joining news team
The Seven news boss has been the target of criticism for some big changes he’s made to the nightly bulletins, which includes the recent addition of controversial retired rugby league star, Willie Mason.
The recruitment of Mason, who presents a dedicated NRL segment on 7NEWS Sydney, was first announced last month and followed the introduction of some other divisive moves, including a horoscopes spot and a satire segment on Friday’s hosted by Australian comedian, Mark Humphries.
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, discussed bringing in Mason and the key motivation behind it.
“We approached him because we’re big fans of what he does,” De Ceglie told host Neil Griffiths.
“The battle in Sydney is, let’s be honest, it’s a battle for Western Sydney.
“When I first came in, I wanted to really focus the Sydney newsroom on Western Sydney a bit more. Not that we weren’t doing a good enough job in Western Sydney, but just that we could do a lot more.”
De Ceglie said that despite the fact that the Seven network is home to the AFL, it’s undeniable that Sydney is an NRL town so he wanted to cater a sports segment for the city around that.
“We went out of our way to find the most Western Sydney NRL person we could,” De Ceglie continued.
“He’s amazing. He’s really good to deal with. We have told him not to swear, but other than that, we’re really keen for him to do his thing and be divisive. I think in his first night, he had a crack at [rugby league journalist Phil ‘Buzz’ Rothfield], um, and then [Rothfield] had a crack back.
“And that’s exactly what we were hoping would happen – just fire up conversation and get people talking.”
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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So Seven admit they have a culture issue – say they’re fixing it…
In comes Mr Bright Spark Newsman with his horoscopes and then hires Willie Mason – someone that has faced assault allegations, along with making offensive comments regarding just about everyone.
Yeh Seven, you’re fixing it up real well.
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‘Just trying something’ is not a strategy. It’s an under qualified person not knowing what to do.
It worked well for Raygun 😂😂😂😂
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