ABC New Year's Eve Coverage

In other news sounds like the sound is broken on ABC, cutout during Uptown Girl.

Audio is A-OK here. Listening to some Rage! :grin:

As per the thread, haven’t watched back the coverage yet, but going by some on here (and elsewhere) it wasn’t that great again…

The pub quiz was fantastic. Eddie Perfect was very ordinary as a host. They need to just stick to introducing performances and fireworks and minimise the chit chat because that’s where they come unstuck every year. This year was no exception. Awkward banter overload.

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Agreed. Just make it like the Carols by Candlelight shows. The hosts should just link the musical performances together.

The Pub Quiz should just run from 9:15-11:15 and the rest of the night should have those musical performances, even if they are pre-recorded from the Opera House earlier that night.

Fairly large drop in rating from last year’s fireworks’ numbers

                                               Last night	     2014
NEW YEAR'S EVE 2015: MIDNIGHT FIREWORKS-EM	1,331,000	1,460,000
NEW YEAR'S EVE 2015: FAMILY FIREWORKS-EV	  829,000	1,041,000
NEW YEAR'S EVE 2015: AUSTRALIA WIDE PARTY-LE	  689,000	  782,000
NEW YEAR'S EVE 2015: INCLUDES PUB QUIZ-EV	  531,000	  574,000

Melbourne local firework numbers the same as 2014.

The Big Bash, however was well up.

Down on last year due to criticsm on social media.

Fairfax getting in on putting the boot in. Why do people call for a return to channel 9? They were just as bad. Richard Wilkins hasn’t done the coverage for years. Also I always thought channel 10s coverage was actually the best.

Clearly the networks aren’t bidding for this because they don’t think it’s financially viable.

I also think most people hate watch as it has now become a tradition for right wing haters of the abc to bag out the coverage.

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I also don’t get the hate for ABC’s coverage. I mean it wasn’t brilliant but NYE coverage rarely is (I also don’t see why Nine is being held up as such a shining example of NYE coverage. I don’t think they ever did anything particularly brilliant with it and all they used it for was as a lead-in to their new year promos just after midnight)

I think ABC did a pretty good job although I didn’t watch the whole coverage from start to finish, but what I did see was fine. I have no interest in kids TV but I thought the Family Fireworks coverage with the various kids characters was not bad, I’m sure the under-10s would have loved it.

And I actually enjoyed the Pub Quiz although I missed the start of it.

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I actually have to agree with that. Nine’s NYE coverage from 2009-12 wasn’t anything spectacular at all and from memory, people still complained about the network cross promotion on the coverage!

Aside from those special music countdown shows, it’s to my understanding that Richard Wilkins hasn’t presented any NYE Fireworks coverage for a decade (last time was for NYE 2005-06, before Ten picked up the rights) now!

In any case, I couldn’t be bothered to seriously watch the coverage (but to the tweeter who added me in one of their complaints seen in the SMH article, thanks for the free publicity!) let alone fully analysing it on social media.

You’re probably right. Like the Logies and Carols In The Domain, it’s becoming a bit of a yearly tradition for people to hate watch NYE coverage and complain on social media regardless of what network it’s airing on.

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This is the thing though. I’ll guarantee that no matter which network airs the Sydney fireworks this year, similiar articles along the lines of “Viewers Slam (Insert Network)'s ‘Pathetic’ Coverage” will appear. The simple reason is the nature of social media means it’s easy to find negative comments about pretty much any topic and use that as a basis for an article. It’s incredibly poor and lazy journalism but that’s the environment we live in.

About the ABC’s coverage, it was much tighter than their previous attempts. The Pub Quiz & the various performances from other NYE events provided strong ‘anchor points’ to focus the program between the fireworks around which it benefited from. The only real criticism is that banter between quiz segments & the performances should have just been links to what’s coming up or ‘essential’ segments (eg; ‘scene setter’ before the countdown to midnight). Apart from that, last night was the ABC’s strongest NYE broadcast since they got the rights

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ABC’s response was to release ratings info on night:

ABC defends New Year’s Eve Coverage plus Ratings Report

When is the ABC going to commission a short series of Pub Quiz? It could fit in nicely in the timeslot when The Weekly or Mad As Hell have finished.

What about Dirty Laundry? It is quite similar to the pub quiz (although not the same)

I shall be slightly controversial and say that the ABC simply shouldnt bother - cover the fireworks by all means, but there is no real reason to put together several hours of what is effectively filler

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Personally, I have to agree. The ABC should just show the 9pm & midnight fireworks and as I’ve previously suggested, show a Rage Special counting down the year in music between that.

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There have been suggestions that it won’t be coming back. They left it off the list at the ABC Upfronts.

Personally I’d like to see Seven or even SBS get the rights to Sydney’s NYE Fireworks when they’re next up for grabs. IMO, it would be far more interesting to see how they’d cover it before Nine pick them up again!

Any network is free to have their own New Year’s Eve program even if they don’t have the Sydney fireworks as part of the coverage. However, none of them are interested. Considering the logistics, costs and returns, I really doubt any other network would want to get involved.

SBS knows how to do big events well. Tour De France, FIFA World Cup, Eurovision etc are the big events they cover well over the years. Wouldn’t mind SBS showing Sydney NYE2016. They will do a better job than the ABC.

All events where they don’t have to host broadcast. They just run off the back of other people’s resources.