Channel Seven veteran broadcaster Chris Bath – who shocked everybody yesterday by quitting – has taken to blokey breakfast radio station Triple M this morning discuss her departure from a rumoured $800,000 a year job.
Bath, who will be leaving the newsroom after 20 years in the job, told the station’s Grill Team consisting of Matty Johns, Gus Worland and Mark Geyer of why it was time to move on.
Bath said, “It’s just the right time for me to do something new. As a public figure you end up talking to a whole range of people and school kids and telling them sometimes you’ve got to take a calculated risk, sometime you’ve got to back yourself and sometimes you know you just have to go for it and I just figure it’s time for me to walk the talk.
“I’ve been overwhelmed. I’m stunned that people even care.”
Matty Johns asked if there’s any truth to the rumours that newsroom politics and pay disputes had worn her down.
Bath said, “I don’t want to get myself a new headline with anything. In our game it’s a pressure cooker environment. I have worked in 20 years, with some of the most remarkable people in that place. They’re the ones I want to say thank you too.”
Yesterday, The Australian reported that Bath had been ordered to take a $100,000 “haircut” from her $800,000 annual salary after she was moved from reading the weekday news to weekends only and that was the impetus to her leaving. Bath, however, has denied this.
