It’s an issue that’s been discussed for decades. Here is an article from 1987 about the merits of having commercial TV news at 6.00, at a time when 7, 9 and Ten all had 6.00 news. Even then there were hints that people may have wanted a later evening news service as they’re not home by 6.00 but as we’ve seen the commercial networks have only really gone earlier in the evening with bulletins now starting as early as 3.00.
However, Seven did shift its news from an hour at 6.00 back to a half-hour at 6.30 the following January when it launched Seven Nightly News, but it wasn’t long before they changed it back again to 6.00 where it continues today.
I’ll have to see if I can find it again at some stage, but I distinctively remember coming across a very old article from The Daily Telegraph Mirror which posed the question of whether the commercial networks airing their main evening news bulletins at 6pm is too early for Sydney audiences.
This one would’ve been from 1990 or 1991. Of course since then, the Sydney metropolitan area has experienced substantial population growth (currently it’s over 5 million but what would it have been back in the Early 1990s, 3.5 million or so?) while the city’s urban sprawl, traffic congestion and public transport problems have only become worse since then.
I think the time has come for the networks to consider establishing a news presence mid evenings. Not much is working for them beyond the tent pole reality pap. Viewers have become accustomed to turning off after the reality offerings and not bothering with the imported dramas that used to attract an audience because such content now comes and then disappears without explanation. Something topical at that hour could entice an audience to stick around.
I completely agree but to for anything like that to even remotely work, they’d have to commit to a consistent timeslot across the week. No point having it at 9.15 one night, then 9.48 the next, or 10.12 the next. But with their love of reality shows and fluid run times, it makes any suggestion of a consistently scheduled late news an impossibility.
Melbourne TV listings: Sunday, August 9, 1992
from The Age
ABV2
6.00 Rage (cont’d)
9.00 Couch Potato with Grant Piro
10.00 Super League highlights
11.00 Songs of Praise
11.30 Faith, Hope & Clarity
12.00 Landline
1.00 Review
1.30 Sunday Afternoon with Peter Ross
5.00 Brideshead Revisited
6.00 Brush Strokes
6.30 The Return of Shelley
7.00 ABC News
7.30 Rumpole of the Bailey (ABC News at 8.25)
8.30 True Stories
9.30 The Ginger Tree
10.30 Compass
11.05 Hill Street Blues
11.55 Carol Burnett & Friends
12.20 close
HSV7
6am 1992 Summer Olympics (day 14)
1pm AFL: West Coast v. Richmond
4.00 1992 Summer Olympics
6.00 Seven Nightly News
6.30 1992 Summer Olympics (closing ceremony at 5.30am)
GTV9
6.00 Turn 'Round Australia
6.30 This, That & the Other
7.00 KTV
7.30 Bush Beat
8.00 Business Sunday
9.00 Sunday
11.00 Wide World of Sports
1.00 Life Goes On
2.00 Movie “Move Over, Darling”
4.00 Sports Sunday
6.00 National Nine News
6.30 Our World (World of Audubon’s “If Dolphins Could Talk”)
7.30 60 Minutes
8.30 Dynasty: The Reunion
12.00 Rugby League: Winfield Cup
1.00 Baseball: US 1992 World Series
5.00 Carson’s Comedy Classics
5.30 The Sullivans
ATV10
6.00 Discovering Paul
6.30 Mass for You at Home
7.00 Shorn Sheep Show
7.30 Totally Wild
8.00 Mind Twist
8.30 It Goes
9.00 Video Hits
12.00 Movie “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison”
2.15 Movie “The Naked Jungle”
4.15 Only Fools & Horses
5.00 Healthy, Wealthy & Wise
6.00 Ten Eyewitness News
6.30 New Faces with Bert Newton
7.30/8.00 The Simpsons
8.30 Movie “Platoon”
10.55 Ten Eyewitness News
11.00 Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam
12.40 World Sports
1.40 Movie “Home Fires”
5.40 Australia in Profile
SBS
11.30 English at Work
12.00 World Soccer
1.00 Anne’s International Kitchen
1.30 Italia News
2.00 Greek News
2.30 Who’s Mr. Alexiou? (Greece)
3.00 Dateline
4.00 The Cutting Edge “Can You Believe in TV Ratings” (an episode of PBS’ Nova)
5.00 MC Tee Vee
5.30 The Noise
6.30 SBS World News
7.00 Vox Populi
7.30 A Love Divided (UK; 2 of 4)
8.30 Movie “The Crab” (Egypt)
10.25 The Movie Show
10.55 Movie “Two Women” (Italy)
12.35 close
9:30pm The Graham Kennedy Show followed by at 10:30pm In Melbourne Tonight with Graham Kennedy. Do you know why there were two different live shows on the same night?
It appears that the Friday night The Graham Kennedy Show was an experiment to carry IMT interstate. The 10.30 IMT, which was only 30 minutes, I’m guessing was Melbourne-only.
It was not a huge hit, it was cancelled by ATN7 a few weeks later, but TCN9 was preparing to take it over. And QTQ9 in Brisbane was happy to continue with it:
Only when Seven got the rights back in 2006 was the Melbourne Sunday afternoon match televised regularly. Initially on delay, then the start time moved the 3.20. Until the 2001 rights deal, live Sunday matches were from interstate, sometimes triple headers, usually doubles. If just the one match, we’d get an hour of highlights on 7 afterwards.
That St Kilda v Adelaide match would have been live on Optus Vision.
Only Sydney and Melbourne. It was an initiative Kerry Packer tasked Gerald Stone with making work. I remember reading on the old forum that the two Brians would share the stories of national and international significance (there was a lot more world news in bulletins in those days). There was a window within the bulletin in which Brian Naylor would deliver news specific to Victoria and Brian Henderson would present news that was relevant to the Sydney audience.
Hitchener’s name is in the listing. I’d forgotten Naylor wasn’t at Nine at that stage. It kind of feels like Packer didn’t have much faith in Hitchener and thought having a big name like Henderson as part of the Melbourne bulletin would help them get over the retirement of Sir Eric Pearce because Hendo was successful in Sydney and had a national profile thanks to Bandstand. I guess Packer opened the chequebook and brought Naylor across from Seven when the News Centre Nine experiment failed and Nine continued to lose ground to Seven with Hitchener at the helm.
