Long post incoming…
As I’ve said before, one of the main priorities for Nine News Sydney in 2020 (although IMO it really should’ve been in 2019, 2018 and even 2017) needs to be improving their weather coverage.
Ever since Seven brought in David Brown, their weather coverage (which pre-2016 was probably the worst of all four networks for a while) improved with the addition of more forecast locations, a network of weather cameras and the comfort index. Meanwhile Nine’s coverage has largely stagnated since the March 2018 decision to adopt the “Weather Wall” style of forecast presentation that Nine News Queensland had been using for a little while before then.
I’d personally argue that the best weather presenter Nine News Sydney has had on in recent years (even if Sophie Walsh wasn’t on that often) has since moved to London, while the nicest thing one can really say about the presentation styles of Amber Sherlock or Belinda Russell is that it’s better than the absolutely pathetic excuse for weather coverage on 10 News First Sydney. Some will argue that TCN’s weather coverage is “adequate” but I personally think the market’s #1 rating bulletin can and should be doing far better in that regard when there are certainly other elements of Nine News Sydney that leave the other two commercial networks for dead.
Aside from that broken record, I’d probably also say there hasn’t really been a really “WOW!” major promotional campaign for a while - perhaps the last great one was the Early 2018 campaign where former presenters and reporters (among others) spoke about Peter Overton. Having Brian Henderson saying “I respect Pete. A lot.” in one of those promos was a stroke of genius.
In the year Nine is expected to start an exciting new era at North Sydney, I really hope there’ll be a major promotional campaign that respects the legacy/history of their Sydney news service while simultaneously positioning it as today’s main destination for information for a metropolitan area of five million and counting. Even something as simple as…
…should have the potential to tug at the heartstrings of Sydneysiders, if you can make the right use of footage (both old and new), graphics + obviously powerful/emotive music and voiceovers.