Tonight Seven News Sydney bulletin is expected to feature its first satirical segment, The 6.57pm News, from Mark Humphries.
The addition of the former ABC and SBS comedian marks part of changes under news boss Anthony De Ceglie.
Ahead of the launch Humphries spoke with The Nightly, owned by Seven West Media, and addressed some concerns following his move to commercial news.
“I’m in two minds of trying to keep everyone that’s concerned about this segment, having them feel relaxed, but at the same time, feeling like I do want it to be something a bit different,” Humphries said. “I do want you to occasionally go, ‘Oh, that was surprising’ and ‘Oh, that was quite sharp. I do like to think that occasionally that stuff I do has a bit of teeth.
“Not every week but sometimes, especially on certain stories where things need to be taken down a peg or two, a journalist in their role can’t really play that role. And I have that liberty that you have with satire of being able to say what the audience is thinking a lot of the time.
“Hopefully, there is the occasional thing that rocks the boat.”
It isn’t clear if the segment will screen nationwide but for those knockers, Humphries is unapologetic about taking the gig when the surprise call came through.
“It’s kind of funny to have a couple of people say, ‘sell-out’, but when I got the phone call, I was unemployed. I was like ‘Is it selling out to take a job to work?’ But I understand the perception, and they want you to be like perfect, weird outsider that can just do whatever they want. But Channel 7 was the only one that came and said, ‘We’d like to do satire’.
“The ABC had their chance, they had me for five years and they decided to stop doing it.”
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