Seven news gets a new boss with no TV experience
By Calum Jaspan
The new head of news for Australia’s second-largest commercial TV network is a 38-year-old from Western Australia who has never worked in television.
The West Australian Newspapers editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie has swept into power to lead Seven’s suite of news programs, as the network deals with the damaging fallout from a series of blunders in its high-rating news division.
De Ceglie will replace former director of news and current affairs Craig McPherson, who stepped down from his position on Monday. De Ceglie will take the reins at Australia’s top-ranking nightly news network with no experience in television to date, other than sharing an office with the Seven Network in Perth.
West Australian Newspapers editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie has been elevated to the top news role at Seven West Media.Credit: Seven West Media
On Monday, he was in the process of relocating to Sydney to become director of news and current affairs, and editor-in-chief of Seven West Media more widely. His remit includes all of Seven’s news and public affairs programming, including 7News, Sunrise, The Morning Show and Spotlight.
De Ceglie is close with Seven’s controlling shareholder Kerry Stokes and is considered a “change agent” for Seven West’s news brand, which has had to wear some damage after a spate of recent controversies, according to senior figures at Seven who were not authorised to speak publicly.
De Ceglie joined Seven from News Corp in 2019, moving The West Australian, the only daily newspaper in Perth, downmarket to further to appeal to the masses. He was subsequently charged by Stokes to take West Australian Newspapers’ dominance to the national stage just two months ago through the launch of digital news website The Nightly.
An exodus of executives at Seven West has now further “fast-tracked” De Ceglie’s appointment to the top job, one senior Seven insider said.
McPherson, meanwhile, who had led Seven’s news and current affairs since 2015, on Monday said now was a “good time for all to have a fresh start”.
McPherson joins Spotlight boss Mark Llewellyn and former producers Taylor Auerbach and Steve Jackson out the door, alongside the planned departures of chief executive James Warburton and commercial director Bruce McWilliam. Colleagues of McPherson privately said his position was untenable, having “let us all down” after the string of blunders under his watch.
Spotlight’s efforts to secure an interview with Bruce Lehrmann came under intense scrutiny after a Federal Court was told of company expenses being used to purchase sex workers and drugs, alongside lavish meals, golf trips and a year’s worth of accommodation.
Lehrmann was later found by Justice Michael Lee to have raped Brittany Higgins.
Executives at Seven were waiting to see the lasting damage to the Spotlight brand before making a definitive call, the insider said. Whether it remained in its current format was not known but there would “definitely” be a Sunday night current affairs show.
Sunrise incorrectly named university student Benjamin Cohen as the Bondi Junction knife attacker live on air on April 14, hours before NSW Police confirmed it was, in fact, 40-year-old Joel Cauchi.
In his first week as Seven West Media chief executive, Jeff Howard sent a lengthy apology to Cohen, settling a legal action for an undisclosed sum.
Replacing De Ceglie at The West Australian will be former editor-in-chief of The Australian and his former boss at The Daily Telegraph, Chris Dore.
Dore’s appointment is a “stop gap” rather than a permanent one, another senior Seven source not authorised to speak publicly said.
He recently joined Seven as a senior columnist for The Nightly after departing News Corp in late 2022 after allegedly making inappropriate comments towards a woman at an event in California hosted by The Wall Street Journal.
Craig McPherson was at the helm during Seven news’ recent turbulent spell.
Dore was one of several expensive senior hires that include past and present News Corp talents to beef out The Nightly’s offering. The rest of the company has made efforts to cut costs after profits tumbled at the company’s half-year results.
According to web analytics firm SimilarWeb, The Nightly’s daily audience over the past month sits somewhere between 6000 and 20,000 visits, excluding a recent run of major news events where its visits spiked, peaking at 155,000 on April 15. Across the same month-long period, 41 per cent of its visitors were in Iraq, compared to just 30 per cent in Australia, and 12 per cent in South Africa, the same dataset shows.
Howard said De Ceglie would bring a compelling vision to the role and that his “absolute focus on newsgathering and storytelling” would underpin his approach. His knowledge of digital and his innovative mindset “will be just what SWM needs as we continue to build a better media business”.
“This appointment reflects our ambition to think differently about the future of media in Australia. I look forward to working with Anthony in his new role.”
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