The top-quality presentation quality helps too (that was the biggest criticism of 9News regional).
I could never watch Nine News Local for more than five seconds. At least with WIN News I could watch the first segment or two before switching to something else.
the nations capital with a population of over 460 thousand should have more than 1 live local news service (ABC) its a joke that it doesnt have that. WIN Should be LIVE in Canberra and PRIME and SCA should do more than noodle updates. Once having worked in Canberra and it having 3 news services. Surely there is enough news going on there??
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maybe if you watched it for more than 5 sec you might have appreciated that while most stories were not relevant the production quality was fantastic.
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Really? I worked in very close proximity to the news room with the local reporters doing stories for Canberra on nine news local and while they all did a very great job I didnât like how it was all stitched together at the end.
Iâm glad Harry Frost seems to be doing well on ABC these days
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If they donât try to connect with the audience production quality doesnât matter.
Tasmania has slightly less total households/individuals than Canberra (Source: 2021 RegionalTAM Universe Estimates), yet the island state is able to support two near-metro quality TV news services.
With its population size + status as our nationâs capital, I see no reason why Canberra canât/shouldnât be able to support at least two fully fledged, live and local news TV services with production values that are comparable to anything youâd see âin Sydney or Melbourne.
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How is ABC Tasmania News slightly inferior to ABC News NSW and ABC News Victoria?
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Not really from a journalistic point of view but Iâm pretty sure ABC News NSW & Victoria have larger, more elaborate sets than the Tasmanian edition! 
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I felt the same way growing up in Wollongong. I didnât live in a household that got reliable Sydney reception, and when we got our new TV in the mid-90s our VHF antenna got bypassed completely. If we went to certain friends and family they could pick up the Sydney channels without any issues.
Getting regular exposure to the Sydney offerings put in perspective how ham-fisted some of the regional coverups were. For example, WIN had a pretty strong brand identity in the region and I can appreciate that, but their more ostentatious coverup efforts (Ă la the Today Show during the dotless-9 era) seemed pretty foolhardy.
10-11 year old me would love the state of regional branding now - 9, 10 and (as good as) 7. Itâs an awful shame that regional news has been sacrificed in the shuffle, and I hope that a commercially viable strategy exists to bring it back in some meaningful form in the futureâŚbut Iâm not hopeful.
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Watching the affiliation change the other night reminded me of the anticipation of waiting for the arrival of aggregation in March 1989. I wasnât aware of anyone else who was as keenly interested in how these new stations would be branded and what they would offer. I sat up by myself and flicked between the stations as they came on air. I was initially happy that the picture quality would be better but drifted back to the Sydney stations when the novelty wore off because the metro presentation was much better and the local ads were annoying.
It used to irritate me to see how Prime and WIN would ruin elements of the network presentation or introduce something different that was clearly inferior. I was glad to be living in Sydney by the time they introduced watermarks in the mid 1990s. Those rebrands were always pointless and the money wouldâve been better spent engaging the audience with relevant local programming. Still canât believe Bruce has finally realised his stations are little more than relay stations for the metros now.
I should be happy that the affiliates now all closely follow the branding of their metro partners but I donât watch enough free to air to really care these days. The recent changes have been interesting to watch as all stations jockey to consolidate, stay profitable and stop the audience drift to other outlets. I just donât believe theyâll ever get me back watching much beyond news given the quality of the âentertainmentâ they produce these days.
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I donât think itâs a matter of choosing âSydney news over ACT storiesâ, itâs more a matter of there not being any real choice.
Prime7 pump out Sydney news, so no real options there.
WIN News is not designed to cater to a capital city audience in my opinion. The format is stale, and the presentation and story selection donât reflect what the audience want.
I moved to Canberra from Townsville where 7 News is a very polished product, expecting something much better for the nations capital⌠and it just doesnât exist. I really wanted to like WIN News Canberra, but I just canât watch it. Itâs just a boring one camera angle shot of the presenter reading stories, story plays, story read, story plays. The way itâs recorded comes off very disjointed, thereâs no live crosses to reporters, no enthusiasm. Thereâs nothing appealing about it. Itâs designed for a small regional city where not much is happening, which Canberra is not. Most recently when I watched it, they had a story about some kid who was baking cakes⌠like, seriously⌠we live in the nationâs capital and youâre seriously spending 3 minutes of a 20 minute bulletin (minus ads) talking some kid that bakes cakes. This isnât some small town where that might actually be newsworthy.
Nine News Local wasnât too bad, there was some good elements too it, but it suffered a similar problem. Stories about a new roundabout in Orange may be a big thing in Orange, but a new roundabout being installed isnât newsworthy to Canberrans. Any commentary I saw about NNL on social media was always negative because it was weird having capital city stories mixed in with stories about small regional towns.
Canberra is extremely poorly-serviced news-wise in my opinion considering it is the capital city of Australia and a city with a population near half a million. My hometown of Mackay in Regional QLD (Population about 140,000) is better served for local news than Canberra is!
When Nine can produce a decent quality bulletin for Darwin and SCA can produce a decent quality bulletin for Tasmania, itâs ridiculous to see Canberra missing out.
I think a proper metro quality bulletin would be well received in Canberra and would definitely out-rate a Sydney bulletin any day, once people got used to watching it.
We need a bulletin with a good set, local live backdrop, live crosses to reporters, etc. covering local news, national news and international news⌠but unfortunately the fact that Canberra is considered âregionalâ when it shouldnât be, means that will probably never happen.
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I firmly believe if we ever get a merger between Win and 9, Canberra and Tasmania should both receive full capital city bulletins. If Darwin can sustain one, these to definitely can. Canberra is probably underserviced. There probably is enough news happening in Canberra to do a polished local bulletin. NNL was more polished than Win News is, felt livelier with live crosses. Win News just feels flat.
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Yep, I agree with all the points NQCQTV2 has made.
Thatâs the type of story youâd probably expect to see being introduced by Amelia Moseley on Behind The News, not Bruce Roberts on âWIN News Canberra! 
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[citation needed]
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Honestly itâs a shame the ABC doesnât do more local TV news, or even a local bulletin in some areas.
Obviously it would require a lot of work and money, and the ABC is currently quite limited by budget cuts. But maybe it could even be a piece of election policy, as ABC3 was.
Areas where there are just local noodle updates could serve as a good testing ground. You wouldnât want to give WIN an excuse to close further bulletins after all. But SCA, WIN and other regional networks no longer see good local news as profitable in many areas. It would be a great differentiator for the ABC, especially as ABC critics complain that the organisation is competing with commercial outlets and is too metro-centric. If the best commerical option is a 4 minute update with no vision then there would hardly be any complaints from regional networks.
In cases like that, where there is no profitable, commercial way to do it, shouldnât the public broadcaster be an option. Even a 10 minute window in the state bulletin would be nice for these areas.
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The only areas without local news bulletins are Mildura, South-east SA and remote country.
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It would be interesting to see what the average audiences are in Canberra these days, as we can publicly see Tassieâs (which appear to hover around mid-5 digits, or 10-50k more for big events / SC News nights).
ACT being more mainland and perhaps feeling more connected being between Sydney and Melbourne and being Australiaâs political centre would be interesting to see whether their audiences are on par with Tasmania, higher or lower.
But unless a Canberra newspaper obtains such info or RegioanlTam are kind enough to let MS, TVT etc have such info, itâll probably remain a mystery, as that aforementioned article from some years back would no doubt be unreliable to go off now, but itâs the only thing I had to go off.
Regional WA has GWN7 and Seven Central has News Updates if you call what they do News.
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WA removed, even better!