Media giant Nine has made three leadership changes to its news and current affairs teams.
Darren Wick, Nine’s national director of news and current affairs, announced the changes to staff in an email this morning.
Steven Burling has been appointed director of morning television. In this role, he will be the executive producer of TODAY and also have oversight of TODAY EXTRA and WEEKEND TODAY.
For Burling, it’s a return to the program where he began his career with Nine in 2000. He started out as a segment producer on TODAY and a ‘meeter and greeter’, looking after on-air guests.
Burling rose through the ranks of TODAY, spending several years as the entertainment producer for Richard Wilkins.
He subsequently became the Sydney bureau chief for A Current Affair, a field producer and then chief of staff for 60 Minutes. For the past 12 months, Burling has worked as the EP of ACA.
Fiona Dear has been appointed to replace Burling as EP of ACA. For the past two years, Dear has been the deputy director of news for Nine in Sydney. Prior to that, she spent a decade in the hot seat as chief of staff.
Meredith Marks has been appointed to replace Dear as the deputy director of news in Sydney.
Marks joined Nine’s Sydney newsroom as an associate producer in 2009, and worked her way up the ranks to a news EP at Nine.
The staffing changes just after Nine and Fairfax completed their merger on Friday afternoon, with the new-look entity revealing to shareholders that it had identified a further $15 million in cost savings on top of the $50 million it outlined in October.
Nine confirmed that $35 million of the $50 million in cost savings has been realised on implementation. These savings are predominantly from duplicated corporate costs, sales and digital publishing.
However, a further $30 million or so (for a total of approximately $65 million) has now been identified, $50 million of which (on an annualised basis) will be realised by June 2019, with the remainder to be realised by June 2020.
Nine said the rationalisation of technology costs is “still largely to be addressed”.
