God. I feel old. I was only 12 when this happened 20 years ago and still in primary school.
It turned out to be a huge news week in the state with Sirengate (the infamous AFL match between St Kilda and Fremantle) occurring in Launceston on April 30.
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The news broke at 8:30pm that night. Wonder what Nine was showing around that time
1:30 PM AEST this Tuesday (April 28 of 2026) will mark the 30th anniversary of the Port Arthur Massacre. Happened during a Saturday Afternoon, were there any rolling coverage from Seven, Nine or ABC prior to 6/7:00 PM State News (Local Time)?
Full Aftermath Seven Coverage (ABC Coverage is featured in some scenes)
Youtube Courtesy: 7News Australia
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Sunday afternoon sorry.
I don’t think there was. My memory is sketchy but IIRC the relative isolation of Port Arthur and local/regional newsrooms in Tasmania being in weekend mode made coverage a challenge. I seem to recall mainland networks sent reporters and anchors down for Monday night’s bulletins.
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Nine ran a report on Today
It was one of the first times that networks started putting watermarks on vision
ABC on ABC
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And on 7News Melbourne tonight, there was a special report in which Mike Amor spoke to two of the survivors from that day.
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Beaconsfield mine rescue 20 years ago
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I visited Port Arthur in August 2023 and went to the memorial where the Broad Arrow Cafe was. It was very sobering standing in that now empty shell of that building knowing that something horrible happened there.
The first I heard of it was a national bulletin on Nine at 5pm. Hard to get pictures out of a remote area in 1996, hence the delay. Both Southern Cross and ABC travelling to Port Arthur then having to drive the footage back to Hobart to get the pictures back to Sydney for the world to see.
I vaguely recall there was some live coverage of the siege before the gunman was captured, but by that stage, networks had got resources into Tasmania.
It’s probably important to note for our younger members that rolling coverage was pretty rare in those days too - 9/11 kind of changed that (although in Australia we were highly reliant on taking various US network coverage).
I recall Nine relying on opting out of advertising during regular programming for “Newsbreaks” during events like Port Arthur (and then Princess Di’s death a year later). There might have been some rolling coverage of the Thredbo disaster in 1997, especially when Stuart Diver was extricated - but a bit like @TelevisionAU my memory is probably a bit sketchy
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the earliest i can recall was the Gulf War in January 1991, but like you say this was rare and largely reliant on overseas sources. And I don’t think we had anything like that again until Princess Di in 1997.
Although I believe there was rolling coverage with the rescue of Stuart Diver also in 1997. I think it was on a Saturday afternoon but I was out that day and missed seeing it.
ACA and Nightline were broadcast from Tasmania.
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Until the early to mid-90s, it was only really the Americans who did rolling news coverage, and it was largely their cable news networks, it was probably the OJ Simpson car chase that saw that change.
My recollection of Princess Di’s death was that there was a lot of coverage, especially on the Sunday evening (our time), but it wasn’t necessarily rolling (Nine’s coverage was interspersed amongst a swimming event from memory)
Locally, there was live coverage of certain events that were probably a precursor to the idea of rolling coverage - the Super League court cases are probably a good example, where the coverage was anchored from a studio with live crosses to reporters in and around the courthouse. While the commercials (and I guess the ABC) could go live for news events, they were heavily reliant on the availability of uplinks that were often not particularly stable (and a far cry from today, where you can get a broadcast-quality live stream using equipment that fits in a backpack)
It was probably the Sydney Olympics that contributed to a shift towards greater live content in news bulletins
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Reposting my own video recordings from Port Arthur. First report I saw was a newsbreak from Channel 7 during the footy (IIRC). Win News was well ahead of Southern Cross in reporting and footage to air, by the time ABC News was on air at 7pm they had time to get a reporter live. The video below is in chronological order as I was flicking channels to see if there were any updates.
Also worth noting later during the trial that there was a media blackout in Tasmania, so national news reports or segments (I remember especially prevelant in coverage on Today being blacked out) had to be censored.
I was only 15 at the time so my memory might be slightly hazy.
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7News report with Mike Amor
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Finally, some aftermath Nine coverage:
Youtube Courtesy: 9 News Australia
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Today marks 20 years since Todd Russell and Brant Webb were rescued from the Beaconsfield mine collapse, after being trapped for two weeks.
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