Dateline staff axed as show is cut to 30 mins

Dateline will be cut back to a half hour show with lighter content as part of a refresh by SBS, with many staff told they would not be needed next year.

Fairfax reports video journalists have been offered redundancies, some have been offered freelance arrangements and editors have been re-deployed into other departments.

Dateline supervising producer Allan Hogan, who criticised the show’s new direction on the day of SBS Upfronts was sacked on Monday.

Last week SBS managing director Michael Ebeid said Hogan had been a contributor and was a “disgruntled employee.” But he denied the changes were related to government funding cuts.

Presenter Anjali Rao also resigned on the weekend.

Fairfax reports on Tuesday, 25 Dateline staff were called into a meeting with Head of News Jim Carroll and new executive producer Bernadine Lim and told the show would have a heavy reliance on syndicated international content.

Former presenter Yalda Hakim, wrote in The Guardian, “The fact remains, the world is not a happy place. The threat from Isis in the Middle East; innocent passengers are being blown out of the sky in eastern Europe and Russian warships are seemingly cruising off Australia’s north-east coast,” she said.

“These were just the sort of stories to which Dateline would dispatch its brave and enterprising video journalists to cover.”

An SBS spokeswoman said, “Dateline will be back in 2015 with a full season of original content and a full commitment to investigative journalism and rigour, telling ground-breaking and compelling stories in effective ways.”

Dateline recently marked its 30th Anniversary. Last month then-Executive Producer Peter Charley told TV Tonight, Dateline had pioneered video journalism in Australia.

“We were really the first people to start putting single reporters out into the field to break away from larger television packs, with 3-4 people. We became more agile and nimble in the field, and we found it was a very effective of capturing the sorts of stories that other people couldn’t get,” he said.

“It led us to all sorts of places and people.

“You can get under the skin or stories, so to speak, with new technology and small cameras.

“We’ve been going for three decades and there’s a very long, proud history there.”