When 9 News Adelaide continuously get beat by 7 News, got to try something different. Maybe they think they can get more viewers across the two news bulletins than what they’d get with Hot Seat and 6pm. On last Thursday, they got 28,000 for Hot Seat in Adelaide, they must believe they can get more than that with 9 News in that time slot.
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Will be interesting to see how it goes but not sure 2 hours of news in a smaller market against 10 News First (& I think ABC news too?) will improve things - more likely just divide the audience further.
I would’ve extended their local news to 5.30pm and edited Hot Seat into 30 mins. Or if Hot Seat is bad in this market, just find comedy repeats or a point of difference for 5-6.
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It’s nice that they’re trying something different, but I cannot see it working. A new game show is the answer.
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I think it will have minimal impact on 10 news.
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I think it’s a test by the network, in the smallest market
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Yes, 2 hours of news doesn’t sound like a good idea, can’t see how this is a good lead into the 6pm news. Viewers will be fatigued by the time 6pm rolls around.
Going back to 30 mins of news at 6pm might be a better idea. Or how is this for a radical idea
4pm - Adelaide Today - magazine style program, interviews with celebrities relating to events in Adelaide
5pm - Nine News Hour
6pm - Hot Seat
I can’t see Nine moving news from 6:00pm as viewers wanting news would just switch over to Seven.
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5pm News (one hour), followed by the 6pm News (one hour), followed by A Current Affair (30 minutes).
Cant wait for Nine News Now to return, followed by the 4pm News in Adelaide 
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My guess is probably something among the lines of…
You get the general idea.
If anything I actually think this idea may even be slightly better than the 10 News First at Five/Six split, because Nine will have separate lead presenters for both the 5pm & 6pm portions.
With Tipping Point UK continuing at 3pm into the 2020 ratings year and now this experiment of a two hour block of local news in Adelaide, I’d be willing to predict that the chances of Nine in some way or another having a refreshed early evening lineup across the nation within 12 (or even 6) months are quite high.
Agreed. It pretty much goes without saying that both Seven & Nine are highly unlikely to ever change (outside of sports commitments and the like, of course) the timeslot of what is reliably, one of their highest rating shows!
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Unless the 5pm and 6pm bulletins are completely different to each other (ie; the 5pm bulletin doesn’t do what Nine’s 4pm local bulletins currently do and basically just be a ‘teaser’ for 6pm), Nine Adelaide’s plan isn’t going to work long-term
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Leaves the 4pm timeslot free of news competition for Seven News and the 5pm timeslot free from of game show competition for The Chase Australia.
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Was going to say the same thing. They’re giving free kicks to Seven and introducing the potential to erode the audience for the 6pm bulletin should viewers feel they’ve had their fill of news by that time. Stupid move.
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I’m 99% sure that Nine are likely to format the 5pm bulletin in Adelaide exactly the same as the 4pm one. More live crosses, “look lives” (or whatever the correct term is for those reports during the 4pm bulletins that are kind of presented like live/pre-recorded crosses but aren’t really crosses) and previews for the full story at 6pm.
If this concept is successful in Adelaide, it will have to be tweaked for the East Coast due to the existence of regional bulletins - you just can’t get away with constantly promoting the Sydney 6pm bulletin to a NSW/ACT-wide audience when something like 2.5 million people in Regional NSW/ACT are getting the 5pm hour but receive their own bulletins with Vanessa O’Hanlon or Paul & Tash instead of Peter Overton (Georgie Gardner if it’s a Friday) at 6pm! South East Queensland probably won’t even be able to have two straight hours of news, because the 5.30pm Gold Coast and main 6pm bulletins share a control room IIRC.
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What a weird move… 2 hours of news in a row… I can’t see this working.
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I don’t think anyone is expected to sit through most of the block. People certainly didn’t stick around for a full 30-minute bulletin at 6pm when those were the only things around. And it’s not just channel surfing - people have places to be at night, too.
The biggest thing they will look for - which we unfortunately can’t - is whether they can improve on their minute-by-minutes.
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While these sort of rolling hourly news bulletins work with some network affiliates in some US markets, I can’t see it working here, if anything it will erode the 6pm audience. It’s clearly a short-term test to gauge how it goes ratings wise in comparison to Hot Seat and if the flow-on from it impacts 6pm.
Would you humor this American by explaining some differences in viewing habits? I know a lot of discussion gets tossed around for why local morning news is so expensive and how late bulletins just don’t work because of freeform primetime scheduling…
I think doing 30 mins of news at 5 then a shorter sharper version of Millionaire in a refreshed format would be good at 5.30 maybe bring back the original concept or look at the US versions they made for daytime.
No idea why they haven’t tried to reboot millionaire from the tired hot seat format.
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@PointJules there are none documented. It’s people’s gut opinions. Back to back News never been done here. So it’s unproven
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Am I the only one on these forums who actually thinks Nine might be trialling in Adelaide what could become the future of local news on both of Australia’s “big two” commercial networks?
Granted that I don’t know everything about the economics of television production, but I would’ve thought it’d be considerably cheaper to produce an additional hour of news with mostly existing resources than comissioning a new gameshow. I mean, there’s a reason why Ten have exited/are exiting that market in favour of more news on weeknights!
Furthermore, the often brought up point about how people won’t watch the same station for news over two hours: Is this not the case with breakfast TV programs which run for a good 3-3.5 hours every morning? Traditional TV channels are probably slowly transitioning from becoming things that people will actively sit down to watch shows on, to becoming a medium that viewers dip in/out of, or have on in the background while doing other things.
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