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No change to TEN programming during maternity leave

Departmental heads and Scheduling staff lead TEN programming while Beverley McGarvey takes maternity leave.

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tenpyTEN has confirmed Programmer Beverley McGarvey will remain in her role when she returns from maternity leave.

McGarvey began just 6 weeks leave the week before last (and one wishes her all the best for impending motherhood).

The confirmation follows TEN’s abrupt hiring of veteran Programmer John Stephens as Head of Scheduling and Acquisitions, now the subject of legal action, including reports at one stage he was allegedly seeking the top job.

Yesterday Mumbrella reported that TEN refused to reveal who will be filling in as programmer while McGarvey is on leave.

However, TV Tonight asked McGarvey about her plans earlier in January.

“I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of help. This kind of job is ongoing so it’s not like you can switch off for 6 weeks and come back, so I will be home watching TV and doing bits and pieces,” she said at the time.

“I will be at home all day watching everything, so nobody will be able to get away with anything!

“We will make decisions during that period that have an impact for the next 12 months, so it would be a bit slack of me to disappear and not be accountable for that. I’m perfectly happy to find a bit of balance and, as I say, we’re lucky enough to have some good help. ”

On the question of who would run TEN Programming in her absence she said, “We have a great senior team. Because we divided our team into Genre heads we have a Head of Entertainment, Head of Drama, Head of Comedy and we’ll be announcing shortly a new Development person. So we have a strong production team and they have teams who work for them. So we’re in very good shape across all of the shows, and from the Scheduling side of things we have several senior people in Acquisition and Scheduling jobs.

“So really each of those Heads of Departments will continue to run those departments as they always do.

“We have a lot of great people and they will continue to do their jobs and I may stick my nose in.”

A TEN Spokesperson yesterday indicated there was no change from these plans.

Meanwhile The Australian reports TEN has filed a claim  in the Supreme Court of New South Wales yesterday seeking to prevent John Stephens from working for Seven.

The statement of claim contains 13 claims and gives Seven 28 days to respond.

6 Responses

  1. I’m not sure why TEN has so many Indians and no clear chiefs? All the other networks have clearly defined roles and experienced execs. The only way Ten can rebuild is to get rid of everybody and start again. It’s the old wood that isn’t fixing anything because in their deluded and inexperienced minds they don’t think it’s broke.

  4. A repeat of The Queen’s Mother In Law beats TEN’s expensive ‘reality’ show.
    “Head of Comedy”. Wow. He/she must be really busy – or is he/she in charge of juggling “Modern Family” reruns?
    So many “heads” and “teams” and “teams who work for teams”, and “several Scheduling people” (memo. Ep. 5 follows Ep. 4, not the other way around). Meanwhile, Nero fiddles while…you know the rest.

  5. So one minute they need a $400K Exec to revive the programming strategy and the next Beverly can phone it in while managing a newborn. Makes perfect sense as usual.

  6. Wow 6 weeks maternity leave is amazing. All the impending mothers in my workplace can’t wait to get out for at least a year. Good luck to her though.

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