Nine News Local

Nine News is a much stronger brand than WIN News. I believe currently WIN News is 3rd in its time slot against national bulletins of Nine News and Seven News - that shows the little impact a ‘local brand’ has on viewers.

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Let’s hope the intense competition forces WIN to evolve and lift their game.

It would be fantastic to have a competitive landscape keeping all stations on their toes

Unfortunately I see WIN doing nothing but making their big bigger and dying a slow death

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I think a lot of that is due to the TEN affiliation, whereby National News is at 5pm.

I’m pretty sure WIN News wasn’t rating as low as 3rd when it was aligned to the Nine Network prior to 1 July last year.

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The point I am making is Channel 9 is a strong national brand not a strong local brand. People think that Channel 9 Wagga is channel 9 Sydney and its not a station for local news. Melbourne, Adelaide and Darwin their has never had this confusion because they never had a replacement service with the same name and airing in the same time slot. The general population don’t have a clue at the moment that their is going to be change.

For Seven Queensland its a established service which dropped the word Local after how many years so of course people know its still local by this and the local content but with a new service replacing a old one which will have the same look and nearly identical content with a few small local windows added within its a different story. SC is still heavily adverting the metro news service which will no longer when the replacement service comes in.

@djpower

I agree with that.

And I think Nine/SCA have been really bad about communicating the change.

Facebook pages with local news content being posted should have been set up months ago - and have 15,000 followers they can market the new news too.

Those promos for 9 News Sydney and 9 News Melbourne should NOT be airing at all in SCA areas, instead coming soon promos for the new local news housed be running.

And INSIDE the current airings of 9 News at 6, they should be heavily running promos about the new nee - as you are selling to an audience already pre-disposed to news at 6

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I would also have the three main presenters of these regionals bulletins reporting or filling-in on the metro-bulletins now, particularly Vanessa O’Hanlon who would have a very low NSW profile.

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I tend to disagree somewhat. I think what SCA/Nine are trying to do is not advertise until they have a product worth advertising - it would be a disaster if the audience decided their product wasn’t worthwhile simply because it wasn’t ready yet.

A Facebook page would need to start posting news immediately upon launch. That requires journalists to exist to source and write news articles/videos. Simply posting whatever is in the existing noodle updates (which we’re off air over Christmas anyway), or worse, less or nothing, would be a perfect way to get people to follow and then unfollow those pages. Sure, 7Qld were able to do this for Toowoomba, but they already had an existing structure and team to work with a build on. Nine’s new staff have only started this week.

Same with advertising the new bulletins on TV. If they have any doubts about exact launch dates, it would look bad to advertise a date to only change it later. And an ad that gives some sort of hazy “soon we will have more news in your area” message would be overlooked as a network talking up something that won’t happen. (From my experience people refuse to believe that the city will do anything to benefit them until it is happening).

I also don’t think there’s any need to generate a huge audience before launch. It’s not like a series where it becomes hard to follow after episode one. A “create a good product then the audience will come” approach will work fine. And they will likely be able to convert just the fact that they have news into sales with advertisers in the short term before any audience is established. In fact, it is probably a good idea not to have too may viewers early on - with new staff, new crew, new studios, new sets, new program feeds there’s bound to be some hiccups along the way.

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@webguy

This.

Is that your take on any major new show launching? Or just this one?

No, it is same branded news to save money. It involves resources (read: costs money) to have variations such as Seven Local News.

Bingo.

Why promote something which isn’t right now doing anything? All you’re reminding audiences of is that the competition is already providing a service whilst you’re still getting your ducks in a row.

Also, WIN really need to update their news.

If you read the rest of my sentence you’ll find it clear that it’s very specific to Nine Local News- and more specifically the earlier bulletins to launch such as Canberra.

The Albury/Sheparton news will have to cover a bigger range of local news than the other places due to the large area so I wonder how they will deal with that

@webguy why on earth would you not want to market a major new show launching ahead of time?

I have to disagree with the idea that the new regional news bulletins should be named differently.
Look at the local branding in the state capital city bulletins, such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge background and doesn’t it say 9News Sydney at start of the programme? Apart from similar (9News Canberra & appropriate background) and then the presence of local news stories in the bulletin, I think it’ll be fine. I’m not seeing a problem.
Oh and of course once the bulletin has commenced, there’ll/must be promos all over the place and advertising out and about (e.g. replacing Peter Overton with Vanessa O’Hanlon on the side of the bus[es] plastered with Nine programme advertising, new 9News Canberra ads on Hit104.7, etc.).

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I think the reason we’ve seen no promos is SCA/Nine haven’t been organized / far enough in advance planning to shoot promos and get them on the air.

Marketing stuff have likely had their priorities working on promos and campaigns for all of nine’s feb schedule

As well
As reduced promos / marketing stuff.

I really doubt they are not airing promos because they have no faith in their product.

I think it’s worth having at least a couple of short promos with something like:

“Nine News with Vanessa O’Hanlon… ALL of your local news from across {insert region name here}, plus ALL of your state, national and world news… COMING SOON… on Nine”

So that viewers get used to the idea that Peter Overton etc (by and large) will be disappearing and a new face and bulletin is coming.

I don’t think local viewers will appreciate such a change happening without notice.

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Knowing Nine, I wouldn’t be surprised if the launch of these bulletins is hyped up as being “A major evolution for television news in regional Australia” or something among those lines.

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Samantha Heathwood anchored Nine News Queensland tonight - would have been good to see Vanessa O’Hanlon doing NSW instead of Peter Stefanovic. Give her a chance to familiarise herself with Nine reporters and the studio surrounds

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I know most news reporters but wouldn’t know Vanessa if I fell over her.

Would be a huge mistake to put someone unknown in the main chair for the prominent Sydney bulletin.

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I agree the idea sounds good, but I suppose it could’ve also been a bit of dropping Vanessa in the deep end too (often reporters & presenters have started out somewhere on a regional job before moving to one of the big markets, rather than the other way around; and I realise she is a journo & has been on ABC News 24/Breakfast).

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