I think I know why there has been a HUGE switchoff of Nine News Melbourne lately.
With Peter Hitchener not working Fridays anymore, Alicia Loxley is. Compared to Peter Mitchell who started in the industry in 1977, she only started in 2003. In fact, Alicia wasn’t even BORN yet when he started. So why would you watch a news service with a presenter who has only 19 years on experience when you could watch one with the presenter having 45 years, over DOUBLE?
This is why ratings will go STRAIGHT down when Hitch retires. If Nine decide to have Dougal Beatty as weekend presenter, that will NOT help. Dougal started in 2010 while Mike has way more experience. And Rebecca Maddern is a loved face in Melbourne, unlike Dougal. Not to mention having AFL lead in. The same thing happened to TCN in 2003 when Hendo retired and 2009 when Ian Ross retired from Seven.
I hope Brett McLeod gets the main newsreader role, if Nine doesn’t bother poaching someone from Ten/Seven. Even Tony Jones would of been better than Alicia, having more experience than her. Brett is similar to Mike Amor, having lots of experience as a overseas correspondent. I highly doubt this would happen, but Nine could even poach back Peter Mitchell. But I doubt that will happen, and Tony wont be getting the main newsreader role, so that is why Brett should when Hitch retires and Alicia remains on weekends.
Somehow I have a feeling that when Hitch retires, Seven, ABC and even 10 will get ahead of Nine, and Nine will become third or forth. Seven has always been a huge competitor, ABC has won a few nights over Nine lately and Ten used to be very trusted. Not to mention Ten has Jennifer Keyte. Like Peter Mitchell, Alicia Loxley wasn’t born yet when she started, and she has 42 years of experience compared to Alicia. With Ten on the brink of going national, this is the perfect opportunity for Nine to poach Jennifer Keyte from Ten.
Alicia is a brilliant presenter in her own right, but we can’t read into the future and I honestly couldn’t say whether Seven or Nine will be No. 1 in Melbourne when Hitch retires. As much as we might like to think they do, the average person at home probably doesn’t care about the readers experience.
There’s lots of other factors at play too. Game show lead-ins favouring Seven, sport and weather presenters/segments, AFL lead-ins, bulletin content etc.
Completely disagree with that one. Maybe not over one night but a long term trusted news presenter always pulls a good number. This is very evident in all markets.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I think people choose the news service over the news anchor.
I know people who will still watch Nine on the weekends when Alicia is away and the inexperienced Dougal Beaty is presenting (compared to the experience of Mike Amor and Bec on Seven), because they prefer Nine’s news service.
Rebecca Maddern is a perfect example. I’m sure Nine Melbourne are thinking why the hell did we let a well liked presenter like Bec go? And yes she has played a key part in making Seven no 1 in Melbourne this year. She has greatly improved the Seven brand and image.
Also, were you around when Ian Ross took charge at Seven Sydney, or too young?
But that is only for one weekend, not permanently so it is not a fair comparison. But I get your point.
I agree. Nine will go from the longest serving presenter to the shortest. Jennifer Keyte and Peter Mitchell are familiar faces in Melbourne due to the lengths of there careers. It will be a bit hard for Alicia Loxley to get that level seeing as their careers started before she was born.
I guess it’s a bit of a balancing act. Jen is now in her early 60s and won’t be reading news forever. By putting Alicia (or someone else her age) in when Hitch retires, she gets to have a long stint in the main chair and will become more familiar over time. Short term pain for long term gain.
I think it won’t matter by then anyway to be honest. News figures are dropping considerably by the decade. It won’t matter soon who’s the main presenter as the numbers will be so low.
Correct… the presenter does play a big part, but it’s not the reason why. A lot of it comes down to consistency.
Nine Melbourne don’t have many options unless they go for someone interstate, which has never worked in the Melbourne market. Nine need to stick with Alicia on weeknights… but really build her profile up more. This is happening within the network. Election coverage etc.
Dougal is going to be a problem on weekends… unfortunately he’s just too green. Nine could opt to bring Brett home or get a co-anchor in with Dougal. My pick would be to test Jacqueline Felgate with him.
Nine would be more likely to strike a blow to Seven by poaching Mike Amor than worry about a reader in the late stages of her career fronting a bulletin that isn’t taken seriously. Amor is clearly being groomed to take over from Mitchell and I’m not convinced HSV has the talent to maintain their position should Mitchell retire and Amor move to Nine.
This is a ridiculous comment. People don’t watch the news based on the news presenter’s years of service. Part of it is based on familiarity but mostly it’s based on how good they are at newsreading and the bulletin itself.
Many years back, when Nine replaced Brian Henderson, they chose Jim Waley who had been reading the weekend news for decades. He was replaced after a couple of years. Peter Overton didn’t have the same years of service when he took over.
I know that Seven have claimed to have won the Melbourne news battle this year, but that is only on the one definition that they have chosen to go with which is weeks won during the ratings period for the 6-6.30pm segment of the bulletin Monday to Friday in linear broadcast ratings (they have excluded BVOD viewing).
This is one of the very few times that Seven have chosen to go with “weeks won” as the measure of a win. In most previous years they have gone with the average audience watching which is afterall what most other programs are measured by,
If you look at another measure - average audience across the the whole year across the full hour of the bulletin Seven is ahead of Nine by an average of just 5,000.
And let’s consider that it is only week 35 just finished.
Also consider that Seven had Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games during the year.
There is still plenty of opportunity for Nine to win the year in Melbourne based on average audiences - they did win this week.
Not exactly quite - in 2003 Nine still retained an average winning margin of 100K over Ten and Seven, even taking into account that Mark Ferguson had to fill in for Jim Waley in the final quarter of the year when the latter had skin cancer.
In 2004 (Ian Ross’ first full year presenting Seven News Sydney), Nine News still won the year in Sydney but only claimed 27 out of 40 weeks as Seven News started closing the gap. By this point, ATN-7 had completely replaced its 2003 news presenting line-up (Ross Symonds, Ann Sanders, Mark Beretta and Adam Digby) with Ross, Matthew White and Nuala Hafner. Then when Ferguson quietly replaced Waley in 2005, that’s when Nine’s news ratings dived in the Harbour City.
As for what happened after Ross retired in 2009, the 2010 news ratings battle in Sydney was extremely close - the first week of the official ratings season was tied (316K viewers apiece), Nine took an early lead but then Seven News ended up narrowly winning by 21-1-18. I must admit, I was one of the many viewers who sampled Peter Overton on Nine at the time and was impressed by his delivery of the news.
Nine News Sydney reclaimed its crown in 2011 and haven’t looked back since.
Both Mike Amor and Michael Rowland could be possible. I would say Nine will put Alisha (solo) in the chair first. If numbers drop they could pair her up with the above mentioned.
I’m certainly cynical when Seven West Media Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, James Warburton says
“All networks need to greenlight the addition of BVOD viewing to the overnight linear viewing numbers to create an industry-wide daily total TV report.
The seven-day total TV data sent out each day by OzTAM is great for telling the catch-up viewing story over the previous week, but it is not enough. We are capturing overnight BVOD viewing data and we should be providing that information publicly.
“It makes no sense to hide overnight BVOD viewing information from public gaze. As an industry, we need to be celebrating our success and the strength of free-to-air TV across all platforms.”
And yet their news ratings report excludes BVOD viewing
