They’re really taking Brisbane presentation to a new level.
The reporter & QTQ video wall combo has been used a few times since my last post with different reporters.
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I quite like this presentation. Reminds me a bit of the 2005 News look which was great.
I’m suspecting Darwin has been impacted by recent Nine cuts. Seems to be only 2 reporters actively filing for the bulletin locally, and QTQ staff chipping in where they can.
Paul Murphy has been absent for some time with rotating QTQ presenters for the past month (Wendy Kingston, Alison Ariotti etc) I assume he’s on extended leave?
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According to their site there are only two reporters on the team,
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Wonder if they will even do election coverage this time?
Might work if they had short updates, and cross to the two reporters at each parties HQ.
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Shame that it’s been downscaled so much. How many reporters did they have when the bulletin was produced in NT pre 2017?
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That’s old. Georgie Dickerson is at Sky in Melbourne, and Zoe is with 7 in Sydney.
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Apparently when the bulletin was first axed, they lost one reporter, three producers, a camera operator, and eight studio staff (about a third of the workforce).
They were left with four reporters, and three camera operators.
Also IIRC the weekend presenters also filed all the local reports in addition to presenting duties.
@TV-QLD mentioned above that there are only two reporters at any time thesedays - the rest are done by spare staff at QTQ.
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They had 5 when they converted to QLD Regional, now down to 2. I’ve noticed a ENG has filed a couple stories recently.
It’s good to see Nine is trying to maintain a service in the NT but I can’t see it being a financially viable operation knowing the current media landscape.
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They are the only commercial network providing news to the region if i am correct. The the media landscape isn’t ideal a lot of that is of their own doing. The station as a whole would be making money and having the spectrum to broadcast content comes with certain responsibilities and without it they would not have that revenue which I am sure they would not say no to or the ability to say to media buyers that they can broadcast advertising to every state and territory capital city through Nine and WIN. If they aren’t prepared to broadcast news they should hand back the spectrum.
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Apart from ABC and NT News, there isn’t much other options for local news up there.
We don’t know if it is profitable. Darwin is an isolated market of only around 140,000 people and whatever ad revenue there is to that market has to be divided between two commercial operators (and to a minor extent also with SBS and pay-TV)
Unlike larger regional markets, I don’t think there is any legislative requirement for Nine to provide any local news service in Darwin, so the fact they are doing anything at all is really a bonus.
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It really is (a bonus). The time will eventually come they will find it the best way to resize expenditure with the ongoing revenue reductions.
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it could have been very easy for Nine to just leave it shut down after suspending the service in 2020, but they have kept it going, as bare bones as it is.
One thing to consider is Darwin would be more lucrative than your average 140k population city in the sense there’s a whole bunch of territory government advertising contracts up for grabs, and Nine would be able to charge a premium given it is considered more local than Seven or Ten. No other medium-sized city in the country has the bonus of a whole state government being based there.
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Lots of pressure from both internally and externally of the network to maintain a local news presence for Darwin. Nine was publicly reported to have been given regional news grants to relaunch Nine News Darwin with a local format over COVID.
Potentially with these grants running out, the overall quality of the bulletin and local resources on the ground seems to be decreasing.
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Darwin is also the “gateway” to Asia and in the coming decades that will be more and more important. The media in the south forgetting this will be self-endangerment.
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Doesn’t matter if it isn’t sustainable (break even/profitable). We’re very lucky that sometimes organisations even let some go with small losses because they understand/support their importance, but there comes a time that the cord must be yanked in a time of continuous reversals unfortunately.
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Territory Government and major court cases happen in the NT as-well which impact nationally. I’m in no way trying to start axing rumours but it’s noticeable there has been some changes in the bulletin in comparison to 2020.
Paul Taylor was a major loss for NTD as-well.
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Lighting looks a bit different, appears to be coming from the Gold Coast.
Thursday night -
Tuesday Night -
NTD studio seems to be used for live crosses these days.
Monday -
Poor reporter was robbed from good lighting compared to Monday lol
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