ABC News Content and Appearance

David · December 29, 2019, 10:46pm

From Monday 6 January ABC will introduce a national bulletin at 6pm on the main channel followed by The Drum and a local ABC News bulletin at 7pm with 7:30 following that.

Leo_Puglisi6 · December 29, 2019, 11:12pm

Trying to take on Nine and Seven I presume?

lexington · December 29, 2019, 11:46pm

120 minutes of news!? What are they thinking?

This’ll never beat 7 and 9.

JBar · December 30, 2019, 12:13am

Whereas 10 has 150 minutes of news and that should do the trick.

Salty · December 30, 2019, 12:25am

I think this 6pm bulletin will only be for January with the Summer Drum (30 minutes) starting at 6:30pm.
The Drum returns at the start of February and will probably go back to the 6pm timeslot.

David · December 30, 2019, 12:27am

I considered that but why wouldn’t they just air normal ABC programming in the slot like they are now and why shorten The Summer Drum when they didn’t last year.

SydneyCityTV · December 30, 2019, 2:12am

If the ABC were to permanently air a news bulletin at 6pm on the main channel, surely it’d make sense for them to be state/territory-based editions?

BJT2 · December 30, 2019, 2:22am

Surely not?

The ABC should not be competing with the commercial stations in this time slot.

SydneyCityTV · December 30, 2019, 2:27am

Even though the ABC already competes with the commercial stations at breakfast?

Fair enough, have a national bulletin on at 6pm as over Summer filler programming but on a permanent basis? I’m not so sure about that.

At least with a state/territory based edition of ABC News at 6pm, you could have “All the news in 30 minutes with no commercials” as a fairly strong selling point. I’d probably watch the ABC News Channel if I really wanted to see a national ABC News bulletin at 6pm!

AustralianAerial · December 30, 2019, 10:18pm

If it’s a national bulletin then it’s barely competition for the commercials. No one wants national news at 6pm.

Snoozenooze · December 30, 2019, 11:08pm

But are they even competing? Seven and Nine are so tabloid and so trashy these days there wouldn’t be much of an audience overlap anymore.

JBar · December 31, 2019, 2:06am

I would prefer to watch a national news bulletin than the rubbish that passes for news today on commercial networks like car crashes, house fires, celebrity and royal gossip, petrol prices and supermarket specials.

AustralianAerial · December 31, 2019, 2:07am

As would I, but I’m not convinced there’s demand there

JBar · December 31, 2019, 2:08am

It doesn’t matter. Only old people and news fanboys still watch news on television these days.

digitaldan · December 31, 2019, 2:41am

Car crashes are “ok” as long as they are major (fatal) however, I notice that if a crew happens to be in the area any crash will make it to air. House fires are ok - but don’t over sensationalise it! Don’t get me started on mobile phone footage taken from the likes of Facebook - bad quality and phone not turned on its side to make it widescreen! I’ve seen whole news reports ripped from social media. Weak as piss! Don’t start me of frigging “Breaking News” when it’s either old news or not important. If the pictures look dramatic, they’ll show it with a meaningless live cross to top it off.

Lastly, the utter crap promos from the likes of QTQ9 over the past few years - over the top tabloid rubbish. They are so cringeworthy, tacky and desperate - Is this what Amanda Patterson demands? If it is, I’m not sure if the presenters and reporters agree - or maybe they have so much of an ego these days to even notice. Lets go back to 30 minutes of solid news because much of the hour news is ACA type material now.