Channel Seven employees concerned for their jobs amid mass redundancies have allegedly turned their ire on the network’s biggest stars.
With the likes of Sunrise hosts Natalie Barr and Matt ‘Shirvo’ Shirvington pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary each year, some insiders at Seven have said tensions are starting to rise among workers behind the scenes.
One source told Daily Mail Australia on Thursday that some believe Seven is ‘slowly sinking’ with the employees at the bottom of the rung copping the brunt of the job and funding cuts while the TV stars continue to earn top dollar.
‘It’s not just the bigger talent getting the extra cash, it’s also the people in management… There is definitely spite there,’ the insider said.
‘Unspoken spite of course, but it’s a lot that we talk about out of earshot. We express our anger and contempt about it. The general idea is that we’re on a very slowly sinking ship.’
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Seven for comment.
Nat, 56, who has served as Sunrise host since June 2020, has never revealed her exact salary, though it is believed she earns upwards of $1million a year for hosting Australia’s top breakfast TV show.
Co-host Shirvo, 45, joined the program in June 2023, replacing former star David Koch who was reportedly earning over $1.5million a year despite only working four days a week.
Shirvo, a former Olympic sprinter, is understood to have signed an initial $400,000-a-year salary agreement with the network which was subject to an increase come ratings time.
A source told Daily Mail Australia at the time: ‘Shirvo is young, good looking and charismatic, but he’s still relatively untested, which is why he’s getting paid half of what Kochie earned.’
The insider said they expected his salary will soar to $750,000 if the ratings and audience feedback played in his favour.
It comes as Channel Seven confirmed a controversial change to its TV news bulletins – that they will feature an astrology report from ‘Astro Tash’ – amid division at the network over a radical shake-up as the axe falls on 150 jobs at the channel.
Multiple insiders claimed on Tuesday there is now a tense atmosphere at the station, where some staff are ‘miserable’ and taking sick days to look for jobs elsewhere after a new regime took power intent on shaking things up.
A ’10 second’ astrology report just before the weather and 6pm bulletin, as well as a weekly comedy skit on Friday’s at 6.57pm by Mark Humphries are some of the major changes that viewers will notice over the next week.
Meanwhile, many viewers don’t appear to be happy either, with Australians threatening to boycott Seven after the network debuted the new satirical segment hosted by comedian Mark Humphries.
The 6:57pm News will be a weekly segment after the news bulletin on Fridays and is just one of a series of changes being introduced to the channel.
Humphries chose to crack several jokes about President Joe Biden after he suffered several gaffes during a high-pressure press conference.
‘Today, people around the globe waited with bated breath to hear from Joe Biden, the leader of the Free, for now, World,’ the comedian began.
‘His press conference was delayed by over an hour, presumably because the President was running late or more likely, waddling late.
‘And you know it was serious because of how it was being billed by the White House. A big boy press conference. And that’s technically correct if you’re using the Benjamin Button definition of “boy”.
‘Biden, who is 81 but doesn’t look a day over 90, spoke smoothly on a variety of issues and allayed voters’ fears about his age, is what I wish I could tell you.’
Viewers were divided over the skit: ‘You’ve sacked Sharyn Ghidella and now at the end of the news you have a very unfunny, stupid, moronic idiot on!’ one woman wrote on X and a second added: ‘I will never watch Seven News again.’
Meanwhile, on Friday reports emerged that long-time Channel Seven Queensland newsreader Ghidella, 58, was fired by phone call from the network she had worked at for 17 years.
Ghidella, the face of Seven News in Queensland since 2007, confirmed the news in a fiery Facebook post on Friday.
She said her ‘tap on the shoulder’ finally came while she was at the salon, admitting it was a ‘relief’ of sorts after several anxious weeks of media job cuts.
Daily Mail Australia has been told that morale was already ‘at an all time low’ after the Spotlight show’s Bruce Lehrmann fiasco and the sacking of veteran reporter Robert Ovadia.
And the raft of new changes in the wake of new director of news and current affairs Anthony De Ceglie’s appointment are being viewed with trepidation by some long-time network news insiders.
One critic described the changes as ‘depressing’, saying: ‘All the journalistic credibility we’ve worked towards for so many years is being destroyed. People are gutted. It feels like a funeral in here.’
But the new boss hit back at critics, insisting both that morale is ‘great’ and that ‘trying new things’ is part of the network’s bold new future.
Mr De Ceglie presented the changes as an overdue shake-up of a staid format that hasn’t changed in decades.
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