Chris Bath, seen here in action, becomes Channel Seven's new 6pm news reader
So, journalist Chris Bath has finally scored the coveted 6pm news reading gig over Seven’s new recruit, Mark Ferguson, when Ian Ross retires later this year. Or so she said today on a Sydney radio station.
Big deal!
It’s not as if it’s a first for women or a break through for feminism. Yes, Seven’s nightly news is in the number one spot, but again, big deal! The top spot is ephemeral.
Women broke through the glass ceiling decades ago when the honey-voiced Helen Tiller scored the solo newsreader’s gig in prime time in the 1971 for GTS/BKN out of Port Pirie in South Australia. The network covered a wide sweep of country South Australia and into Victoria, Tiller told me.
Tiller, now a renowned voice coach who has taught many of the on-air talent how to project and enunciate, was soon followed by another female ground breaker. Gail Jarvis smashed through the plexiglass ceiling in 1977 for ATN and then moved on to become the first female boss of Nine’s flagship 60 Minutes, which she followed by a string of other top jobs.
And here’s another news flash – there have been plenty of capable women reading the news alone in various versions of prime time – morning and night – for years.
Helen Tiller, the First woman to read the news solo on Australian TV
Jessica Rowe was easy on the auto-cue at Channel 10 before her short-lived stint at Channel Nine from where she was “boned” by Eddie McGuire.
Over at ABC we recall Angela Pearman in the 1990s, and SBS had the eminently capable Mary Kostakidis sitting solo on the World News at 6.30pm for almost 20 years before the powers-that-be decided that, after two decades of professionalism, she needed a male side-kick to help her out. They teamed her with Stan Grant (also short lived in the role) and she walked out in 2007, before subsequently settling a lawsuit with the network.
There have been plenty more in the decades since Tiller and Jarvis truly did break new ground for Australian women in broadcast journalism, and here’s a small sample (apologies to those who I’ve missed; too many to name); Jana Wendt, Katrina Lee, Anne Fulwood, Jennifer Keyte, Anne Saunders (also at Seven in the mid 90s), Juanita Phillips, Felicity Davey, Lisa Millar, Leigh Sales, Maxine McKew, Sandra Sully, and Deb Knight.
It’s great that talented women are getting top jobs, but it’s not new or news. They’ve been getting them for years. And there is no currency to be had for Seven to bask in Bath’s deserved rise to the prime time slot in this day and age, especially when she’s been a proven talent for some time. It’s deserved.
Sure, it’s good news for Bath, a former Dancing with the Stars contestant, but as a social comment about women it amounts to nought.
Incidentally, I’m curious to know if Bath will get one of Seven’s blokish nicknames. As she said on the Steve Price radio show earlier today: “When Roscoe retires I am taking over Monday to Friday … and Fergo will be doing weekends. That’s the plan.”
Roscoe. Fergo. Batho? Nah; and Bathie doesn’t work either.
But you’ve got to give the woman credit – she went on the front foot and announced that David Leckie – Seven’s boss – had promised her the 6 pm job that many had thought was going to Ferguson. And her announcement makes it very difficult for Leckie to now hand it to Ferguson on a silver platter.
