Susannah Carr and Rick Ardon official Guinness World Record holders

Susannah Carr and Rick Ardon may each have a super supportive spouse, but it was their proud mums who helped prove their latest monumental achievement. Not only are they Perth’s favourite news-reading team, the pair now officially hold the Guinness World Record for the longest-serving television news anchor duo, presenting from 1985 to 2021, for 36 years and 247 days, and they have their mums to thank for the verification. “I think my mother, like Rick’s mother, has cut everything out of the newspaper and kept all the clippings,” Carr says with a smile. “I stopped decades ago but my mum keeps going. When we were trying to find some information to verify for the Guinness Book of Records, we had to go back a long way to look at all the clippings, because when we first started reading it was recorded on video tape and people would record over and over on the same tape. “It was very difficult to find the early vision of us reading together. There were a lot of gaps at work.” Understandably, no one, including Carr and Ardon themselves, ever thought when they were paired up to read Channel Seven’s 6pm news together nearly 37 years ago that they would still be going, approaching their job more enthusiastically now than they ever have. Ardon arrived at the network first, fresh from a cadetship straight out of high school at The West Australian, where part of his job had been to watch the nightly television bulletins, prompting his change from print to broadcasting after realising there were more opportunities on TV for younger reporters to cover the top stories. He applied for a journalist vacancy at Channel Seven, but a teenage Ardon, who still lived with his parents at the time and owned only one jacket, blue in colour, quickly found himself in the role of news presenter after a memorable screen test. “They put me in front of a camera with a bright blue background,” Ardon recalls. “The further I read, the more I could hear them laughing through the headphones and I thought I’d stuffed this up really badly. They told me to come and have a look and my bright blue jacket had disappeared into the background, so I was the original talking head. “I was told the weekend newsreader had been transferred to Adelaide, so you’ll be reading weekend news in two weeks. Then a few days after they told me that, the main 6pm newsreader fell ill and they said I wasn’t reading in two weeks, I was reading tonight. “I was petrified at age 19. My dad took a photo the first night I was on and I looked about 15.” Similarly, Carr got her first break when the ABC 7pm newsreader had an accident and she was pulled in at the last moment, despite an original ambition to become an architect after studying an arts degree at UWA. “I went for an audition for a job I’d never considered in my life, which was a radio announcer at the ABC and ended up getting that job, moving into television at a stage when women just weren’t in news television at all, and then came over to Seven,” Carr explains. “Jeff Newman is the person we thank for that because for years Jeff used to say I should come to work at Channel Seven and eventually they offered me a job.” Carr and Ardon had previously met at an industry awards night, having paced each other’s career over a few years where Ardon recounts he had always admired Carr’s beautiful, mellifluous voice and her on-camera presence, so he had been thrilled when they were teamed up. He attributes mutual mild temperaments with little ego to their success together, focusing solely on the news and bringing viewers the facts, letting people know exactly what’s happening and allowing them to make up their own minds from there. “It’s an interesting combination and we’re both quite different people but we work together well,” Carr adds. “We have different interests but we’ve always found it very easy to be around each other and I think that translates when you’re on the desk. “I think when you’ve been working with someone for a long time, there’s that comfort level. We can anticipate what’s going to happen with each other and we often do cover for each other in situations.” Their ease is evident as the two chat, Carr talking about Ardon’s family and love of surfing (he nearly dislocated his shoulder recently) while Ardon reveals Carr’s passion for cooking, bike riding and reading. They both constantly compare notes on series they are watching. “Rick is really particular about the way he likes things done in this business and his attention to detail is astonishing because he takes it really seriously,” Carr says. “He’s really pedantic, but in a good way, because it just keeps the product more professional.” While Ardon confesses to being the grammar grouch of the newsroom, he declares Carr’s warmth and personality are the reasons behind their success in many ways because people love watching her. “It’s a team effort,” Carr chimes in. Having read together since before some of their current colleagues were born means they have had front-row seats to how technology has changed the industry, from the introduction of autocue machines to electronic vision making immediate news gathering possible from any part of the world, through the use of cameras and smartphones to dashcams. When Ardon first started as the weekend newsreader, the autocue was used solely by the older weekday newsreader and he would have to read from scripts on the desk. “People would say to me in the street ‘How come that older guy can remember everything but you keep looking up and down all the time?’” he laughs. “Now the world is so technologically adept that we will do the late-night news updates nationally from the Perth studio sometimes too. They don’t have to be recorded in Sydney anymore to go out nationally. “We saw that in the Lindt Cafe siege when Susannah handled that nationally from Perth because they shut down Channel Seven’s headquarters right near the siege scene. “But I have an appeal to make to any readers out there. If you do want to be news gatherers for us with your iPhones or Androids, please turn them on their side. Most people do it for Insta or Facebook vertically, please turn it (the device) horizontally because it’s for television. We have a different aspect ratio and need it on its side, otherwise we have the big black strips each side.” Before the pandemic days, the duo were no strangers to leaving the desk to cover breaking news overseas, from Carr travelling to London when Princess Diana died and being in South Africa for the first all-race election, to Ardon almost being shot at the Jordan-Iraq border for holding the wrong letter of permission to have travelled beyond the city limit. He was also at the courthouse when the three Bali bombers were facing their sentencing, fearing security was not tight enough to prevent suicide bombers from blowing up the building. But without a doubt, their most memorable time in the role was 9/11, when Ardon rushed back into work after seeing the initial footage on TV, making his usual 15-minute commute in nine minutes. “The whole team came in because it happened at about 8.30pm and everyone had gone home, but we were all in communication with each other and all came back in, and then it just went through the night,” Carr shares. “I think with longevity, you get credibility, so we’ve developed that over the years. When there’s a major story happening, we do get a switch on here. People know Rick and I will be here and they trust us because a lot have seen us their whole lives. “One of the journalists last night said they were born the year we started reading together. That made me feel a little old.” Good news stories are undoubtedly on their list of standouts too — most recently the finding of kidnapped Cleo Smith in Carnarvon — which Carr acknowledges are less frequent in their reporting, for good reason. “People will often ask how we deal with working in news because so much of it is bad news, but you have to explain news is usually what’s out of the ordinary, not what is the ordinary,” she says. “We don’t report what happens on a daily basis; we have what’s outside of that. And when you have something that has a happy ending, it’s just such a joy.” Given their longevity working together and continued passion for news coverage, the response is hardly surprising when this record-breaking team are asked what the future holds for them? “Another 37 years,” they say in complete unison.