That may be a better way of describing the desired outcome.
Is it really ‘all too late’? For the current bulletins in their current form maybe/probably. Regardless, media companies still get a right to operate in this country and make money so Government needs to better mandate and regulate news/local news/their community service obligations going forward including for ‘new’ media (streamers etc).
Interesting listen.. I think there were three or four people discussing it, only Tanya said she watches NBN News.
Says a lot about free to air these days.
Per week on average. I seriously doubted any one would read it as a daily number.
NBN has updated its Facebook Cover, It’s now just the “NBN News” logo with a photo of Tash.
Previously it was promoting “Shark!”.
I got a feeling Seven News Coast will have a large increase in viewers from next month.
Sad to see the path WIN has taken.
It will be interesting on 9Now seeing whether it will dump me back to the Sydney stream or keep the Northern Rivers stream with this Nine/WIN Hybrid with the NBN brand thrown in.
They are now stating a local control room will be built shortly in Newcastle, so there’s hope yet for staying in the city.
Construction of a new state-of-the-art control room at the NBN studios in Newcastle will commence shortly, meaning NBN News will be truly produced locally and not from a control room in Brisbane, and opportunities to expand news content to digital platforms are currently being explored.
Also still spouting the line that -
This new format will contain more local news than the current one-hour program.
Theoretically that could be true, being a longer duration than the local windows combined, but in practice that is unlikely to happen with filler material used across the board that is not truly local or possibly even from the NBN footprint especially if they start using WIN reports from elsewhere.
I guess in 30 minutes with no national news you’d get more local % than a nightly hour bulletin that has national and international news?
I’m not convinced that we need multiple local news bulletins in each market - a single bulletin of decent quality would be enough.
Make each licence holder in the market invest in a single provider for news and in NSW/QLD/VIC have each licence holder broadcast it in at least one sub-market each (example - NNSW, NBN would do the Hunter, Seven would do North West and Ten would do the North Coast). Have it broadcast under a non-network aligned brand.
Share the cost and the burden and have someone operate it who is willing to invest in quality.
Once the changes take effect what branding will the news bulletin take? WIN News or NBN News and will the dots stay or go?
Should, but would never happen. In a solus or monopoly market maybe?
Given the outcry, you’d assume it’ll still be NBN branded, to soften the blow.
Hopefully WIN News can take some of this idea.
Does the current site in Newcastle even have enough room for a control room? Might need to be in a separate Newcastle location.
Yes, sounds more and more like NBN News will be run separate from the rest of the WIN News network with no direct story sharing (but may share footage for use across bulletins eg. from a sports carnival whereby different regions are competing).
I suspect Nth NSW will get three bulletins (Newcastle/Central Coast, North West, North Coast) with the latter two getting more “out of area” NBN News content from the other two regions to make up the half hour.
By reference, the current 1 hour bulletin has probably 30% local content for Newcastle, 20% for other markets.
We are all dreaming, unfortunately.
The only thing that drives companies to invest in product is incentives. Either government or free market. Australia and state provides Hollywood hundreds of millions of tax breaks to come shoot their foreign stories here. Why are we not providing WIN and Ten tax incentives to shoot local news stories?
Free market incentives also drive local news. Look at nine’s investment in Perth. Seven’s in regional Queensland. Adelaide having local news at 11am. When there is a commercial incentive to be competitive in local news the market creates local news investment. That’s why I’m surprised at WINs move. I predict their solution to saving money here will be hurt them more.
and what are the actual cost savings? 6pm was a live bulletin with maybe 20 minites local. Now they need to do 20 mins local at 5.30.
how much can they be saving? And will it be greater than the revenue they lose?
Win have bet yes. I’m willing to bet no.
Not doing weekends and public holidays is the big one.
If you mean no competition, and each “local area” of population getting one news service then yes possibly.
so what NSW have say
Wollongong/south coast win
Central west seven
North coast - seven
Newcastle hunter - win
Canberra - ten
like that?
That’s a fair point.
However the Sunday bulletin is NBN’s single most watched show.
I don’t run a tv station. But If I did - I would not axe my #1 show
WIN says the new format will contain more local news than the current hour-long program because the existing bulletin includes a mix of local, national and international stories, while the new 5.30pm bulletin will focus entirely on local news, local sport and local weather.
I can see how that might be the case across weekdays but once you remove 2 whole bulletins on the weekend I don’t think it is true across the whole week.
Regional media were provided incentives - it had limited impact (and certainly didnt move the needle towards better output). They’re also beneficiaries of corporate welfare through the reduction of the broadcasting tax
Incentivising only works to a point - and we’re beyond that.
Have you seen the quality of any bulletins that ‘compete’? We’re not really losing much if we were to move back to a single bulletin per market.
It’s also often the worst one for true local news too (especially outside of the Hunter)
