Mark Ferguson boycotts Logies after nomination snub

News.com.au

4 days ago

Seven newsreader Mark Ferguson is said to be steaming that his longtime understudy Michael Usher has been nominated by bosses for a Logie Award.
According to network sources, Ferguson feels slighted Usher has been nominated over the prime time news anchor for a Logie in a new category, the Ray Martin Award for Most Popular News or Public Affairs Presenter.
The award will be presented for the first time on Sunday night and sees Usher, Seven's only nominee in the category, pitted against Nine's Ally Langdon, Tara Brown and Peter Overton and the ABC's Sarah Ferguson and David Speers.
The nomination comes after Usher was tapped to appear on the current series of Seven's reality program Dancing With The Stars where he has emerged as a fan-favourite and, remarkably, a finals contender.
On Thursday insiders told news.com.au that as a result of the simmering rivalry between the two veteran newsreaders, Ferguson had declined an invitation to attend the upcoming 65th Logie Awards which are set to screen on Seven.
The snub comes a week after Seven's commercial rival Nine claimed the news ratings in the Sydney market for 2025, a market Seven has not won since Ferguson was appointed anchor of its 6pm news bulletin in January 2014.
Nine also claimed the first half of the ratings year nationally in five capital cities.
Ferguson's tenure has long been debated internally at Seven as the network's year-on-year losses to Nine in the news hour have mounted up.
As far back as 2016 Seven's longtime director of news Craig McPherson publicly championed Ferguson, telling media outlets the Tamworth reporter with the film-star good looks could have the job 'for as long as he wanted it'.
However McPherson would come under increasing pressure from engaged Seven proprietor Kerry Stokes to introduce changes to the nightly news bulletin.
In September 2024, following McPherson's departure in April that year, Stokes persuaded Macpherson's acquiescent replacement Anthony De Ceglie to welcome a joint-anchor, Angela Cox, to the desk.
The decision is said to have bruised Ferguson.
According to sources the relationship between the two newsreaders has not been an easy one and now Stokes is once again agitating for change.
Sources are adamant the Seven chairman wants to see Usher, who now enjoys a national profile courtesy of his Dancing with the Stars turn, appointed to the plum role.
Seven of Foxtel's eight Real Housewives of Sydney (RHOS) are understood to be shattered at being informed just one member of the program's cast will be going to this year's Logie Awards.
Fashion-obsessed program stars Krissy Marsh, Nicole Gazal-O'Neil, Terry Biviano, Caroline Gaultier, Dr. Kate Adams, Victoria Montano, Martine Chippendale and Sally Obermeder had spent months contemplating their couture options for television's glamorous night of nights when a brief missive from an executive, the head of unscripted/development at RHOS co-production partner Matchbox, arrived in their inboxes.
In the letter, the executive begins by softening the women up with a note of congratulations.
'Congratulations to each of you on the Logies nomination for RHOS,'
she wrote.
'It's a show we are very proud of and we are grateful for all your hard work that helped make it such a great series.'
Then came the bitter pill.
'We have one ticket only available for a RHOS cast member … I know this will be disappointing news for many of you..' the email continued.
Rather than conduct a ballot or a random draw to determine who the golden ticket would go to, the producers announced they'd drawn a line under the lobbying begun months earlier and made the decision about a Logies representative themselves.
The ticket would go to the most anodyne of the group.
The woman least likely to cause offence.
The woman least likely to get ugly-drunk or hurl abuse should the trophy go to another in Best Structured Reality Program category, a category which sees RHOS in contention with Farmer Wants a Wife, Gogglebox Australia, Married At First Sight, Muster Dogs and Shark Tank.
The woman least likely to jump Hamish Blake on the red carpet or try to souvenir a Logie or a kelpie pup.
In short, it would go to the most unlikely and least intriguing Housewife of them all.
It would go to.... Sally Obermeder.
Victoria Montana spoke for her castmates when she took to social media this week to blast the decision to give two tickets to TV producers: 'I was under no misconceptions about the fact that production would prioritise themselves over the stars of the show. The ladies, who for almost no pay at all, open their lives to the public so that production can make money from our lives.'
Hamish schmoozes the room following ratings crash
Broadcaster and networker par excellence Hamish Macdonald looks confident of having a big bright future at the ABC despite shedding 16 per cent market share in the latest radio ratings survey.
Macdonald's sustained ratings nosedive on ABC Sydney was confirmed last week six-months after he replaced Sarah Macdonald at the microphone in January.
Given his losses were greater than any of his stablemates in the latest radio survey, there was a sense that Macdonald, renowned for moving on fast from media gigs, might prove a no-show at last weekend's Andrew Olle Media Lecture, held on Friday July 25, just three days after his latest ratings capitulation was exposed.
However it was an exuberant Macdonald who turned out for the Olle Lecture at the W (Hotel) Sydney, the ABC-hosted event perhaps too tasty a networking opportunity for Macdonald, who recently lost his lucrative sideline gig on Ten's cancelled The Project, to miss.
With a gig on ABC local radio and a second on the ABC's Radio National where he presents a program called Global Roaming on his CV, Macdonald has no lack of options at the ABC.
It allows him to choose the company he keeps.
And so it was with interest that our sources noted Macdonald's decision not to sit his colleagues from the struggling local radio division but instead with the stars and bosses of the national broadcaster's more prestigious counterpart, Radio National.
He looked at home, this column hears, sitting with the presenter of this year's Olle lecture Geraldine Doogue, a friend, and the controversial ABC executive who recruited Macdonald to local radio, Ben Latimer, the ABC's head of audio content who played a role in Antoinette Lattouf's unfair dismissal case.
Meanwhile Macdonald's ABC Sydney colleagues including breakfast host Craig Reucassel, drive presenter Chris Bath, retired drive host Richard Glover (Bath and Glover joined by spouses Jim Wilson and Debra Oswald), and a cast of execs and producers including the beloved Peter Wall sat at one of a series of tables earmarked for the local radio team.
Also eager to be associated with the high profile oration was ABC chairman Kim Williams and ABC managing director Hugh 'I've been rumoured to be linked to many women' Marks, the former Nine CEO who has said he was unaware Nine had a culture problem when he was running that shop.
On his arm at the Olle Lecture was the woman he romanced while playing culture captain at Nine, his former Nine subordinate Alexi Baker.
Hegarty spied at Nine
60 Minutes' reporter Adam Hegarty appears to have been welcomed back into the fold following a long interstate sabbatical.
Mystery surrounds the decision for Hegarty to up stumps and relocate from Sydney to Melbourne earlier this year though we're informed it followed his break-up with a girlfriend.
Hegarty was involved with fellow Nine staffer Amber Johnston in 2024 and into the early months of 2025.
According to sources Hegarty, one of only two male reporters still on the books at 60, then took extended leave from the show although few wanted to furnish us with details on what prompted it.
Sources initially claimed he wouldn't be returning to the current affairs program yet a week ago he was spotted back in the Nine bunker.
As previously reported by this columnist, not everyone was thrilled when Hegarty was recruited to 60 Minutes at the start of 2024 with some telling us Hegarty's appointment irked some colleagues.
Pub icon departs
Sydney publican Margaret Hargreaves was given a fond farewell at St Mary's Catholic Church in North Sydney on Tuesday following her death on July 15 at age 90.
The longtime proprietor of hotels The Strawberry Hills and The Shakespeare, Hargreaves' pubs were a home away from home for tribes of journalists through the years as well as detectives from the police fraud squad and an array Sydney identities who she collected through the decades and who thought of her as a surrogate mother.
Among those paying respects at her funeral was troubled former game show host Andrew O'Keefe, Foxtel chief Patrick Delany and Real Housewives of Sydney cast member Krissy Marsh.
Pallbearers included one-time real estate heavyweight James Dack and car salesman John Altomonte.
Hargreaves is survived by her husband John, and four children Elizabeth, Kelly, John-Paul and Angie.