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Nine News drops Grant Hackett

Former Olympian Grant Hackett is no longer a weekend sports presenter at Nine News in Melbourne.

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ghackFormer Olympian Grant Hackett has been dropped as weekend sports presenter on Nine News Melbourne.

TV Tonight understands the swimming champ was given the bad news on Friday by GTV9 boss Jeffrey Browne. Hackett has been with the network since signing in September 2008, after being pursued by Channel Seven.

He has been in the role on weekends, occasionally alternating with Darwin-bred Lisa Andrews, as well as taking over in weeknights in summer in place of Tony Jones.

Hackett was also  recently announced as part of Nine’s Winter Olympics presentation team, to present “colour pieces” on the Games and Vancouver. This week he appears as a presenter in What’s Good For You This Summer and has also appeared intermittently in 20 to 1.

Melbourne’s Nine News presenting team will soon switch to its summer team headed up by Jo Hall.

Update: The Herald Sun now reports Hackett will remain with the network on other programmes.

31 Responses

  3. i wonder if overton is worried? i don’t live in sydney, but he sure does get a lot of negative comments on this site i don’t think i’ve heard any positive about him.

    i know that melb and syd are run by a total different bunch, but surely if melb dumps someone because no one liked him there, and looks like this decision has public support, sydney would have the decision in their cards.

  4. Nine, I hope you’re paying attention, and also checking the ratio of comments for and against Hackett.

    Shouldn’t haven taken you anywhere near this long to get rid of him.

    now let’s talk about Richard Wilkins….

  7. I like Grant Hackett but my lord, hes a bloody awful presenter, glad to see that common sense has prevailed. I always think its a shame when high profile sports people get these roles just for being high profile sports people, theres a number of sports journos that would have worked their guts out for years who have the credentials and would love the opportunity but got overlooked for Grant.

  8. Good! Sack him, he was absolutely pathetic at his job. I immediately changed the channel when his creeppy, unwelcome presence in my lounge at dinner time would occur. I can’t stand swimmers who go into the media. Can’t stand ’em. I also cringe when I see my state government, Victoria, has paid this guy taxpayer’s money to front a pro exercise and eating healthy ad…. ‘go for your life’ it is called. Who does he think he is telling me how to live? If I wanted to be a boring, vanilla, no personality ‘fit guy swimmer’… I would have done the unimaginative thing at let my parents decide the course and outcome of my life since I was five years old by putting me in the pool…. I think he’s got to be the lamest mistake channel nine has made in some time. Let’s hope to a higher power he doesn’t end up on channel seven in a more prominent role. Sorry Grant, you’re a Hack.

  9. Great comment Kyall.
    Shame though as Mr Wobbly Head never improved and many TV watchers saw all his faults early on.
    Hackett was more well known in Melbourne for getting his photo in the paper at”events” than anything else.
    It will still take a lot for me to watch Nine on weekends though – they need the right professional people.

  10. I agree with one of the comments below about Tim Watson at Seven, he needs to go as well. He ruins the news and sevens football shows. Maybe he is the reason seven cannot make a high budget prime-time afl football show to challenge nine.

  11. Hooray! The only time he should be on the TV is if he is in the pool. I am sick of swimmers switching to media careers. Thank goodness Nine had the brains to get rid of him (from the news).

  14. Oh my, can’t believe he was giving the job in the first place, when i’ve seen him on telly he’s been terrible. Nine need lessons in picking their sports presenters, we have Troy Gray here in Adelaide (he owns men’s hair salons) and he is woeful.

  15. Terrible move in the first place – did they not even test him out beforehand?

    Might as well have had Scott Cam reading the news, or worse, Carrie Bickmore oO

  20. every time we saw him on the news someone in the room made a comment on his autocue reading inabilites. great guy and i hope they can find a new use for him, but 9 news is better off without him.

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