In breaking news, Channel Ten are reportedly dumping their late night news service, along with Sports Tonight. Considering the changes happening at Ten regarding their news services, this doesn’t come as a massive surprise. Sandra Sully is set to move to the 5pm Sydney news where she will co-host alongside Bill Woods, while current co-host Deb Knight will move onto ‘other opportunities’.
As a semi-regular viewer of the late night news, it’s a shame to lose such a valued late night news service – the last remaining on commercial FTA television. This leaves the 11pm and midnight ABC News on ABC News 24 as the last remaining late night news programs. Certainly a strong argument for the value of the ABC News 24 service.
The cancellation of the late night news on Ten felt somewhat inevitable. It’s perhaps a shame that Sandra Sully won’t be utilised on the soon-to-launch Breakfast program. Other fans of Sully will agree with me that she deserves a national platform.
UPDATE: Ten Publicity inform me that the Sports Tonight brand will be retained by the network (which makes sense). The brand will continue through the sports segments on their 5pm News programs nationally. I’m also told that Sports Tonight have a new sponsorship arrangement with Toyota.
Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.