Question for someone who lives in Darwin. When they’re showing 9 News from Brisbane, do they get our Brisbane weather report too or do they have a bit where they cover NT cities/towns?
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So while 9 essentially abandons Darwin, they are funelling money into a Paramatta bureau and marketing for the SMH. Like sure, add a reporter or two to WFH, but office space and marketing?
Doing an ABC I see.
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Ironically ABC funds the NT
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what?
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I think he means the NT operations of the ABC.
Nine, keep digging a hole, because excavations might have to be the industry you pivot into, because you sure as hell can’t fucking run a media company properly.
Talk about the bad optics - you cancel one operation, the only one in an entire territory, but fund another in an area where you could just do WFH and not open another set of offices.
It’s clear now Nine are way more interested in Sydney/Parramatta than Territorians. Nine doesn’t give a crap about the NT at all, in fact they’ll do anything to shrink or remove their presence from as many areas of Australia as possible, outside of the 5 capital cities.
So just get 6 News to do a Darwin bulletin instead. I’m sure Leo and his team will step in to fill that gap. Heck, they should also do a bulletin for the Spencer Gulf (the area without a local news service since 2023). That’ll make residents there (and in the NT) happy, even if it means watching via the internet to get their important local news. Should be put into consideration I think.
@Leo_Puglisi6, I reckon now’s your chance to give the Territorians a dedicated local news bulletin once more. Good luck. 
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As much as we’d all Like Leo et al to show Nine how to do it, Nine’s the ones that should be doing it. Ideally both could be doing bulletins, but Nine have the broadcast spectrum license, should have the know-how and technical expertise and the moral imperative to actually do what they’re meant to be doing.
From a mug punter’s perspective, get rid of print and radio. Find a buyer and get out. They’re albatrosses around their neck. Put the money back into Darwin.
One has little to do with the other. It is great that Nine’s publishing division is recognising the million plus people in western Sydney to cater for that market, and hopefully will support advertising revenue from growth.
Darwin’s 200,000? does not have the economy to support a commercial bulletin when people are increasingly spending their time on TikTok and Facebook for information and entertainment and networks need to manage their cash outflow to meet reducing inflows from audience migration.
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Nine News and SMH have different budgets. SMH clearly has some money to spend while Nine News is cutting expenditure. It doesn’t matter who the parent company is. Happens in a lot of media companies.
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Media companies have been robbing one part of their company to fund another for decades.
But it’s not the job of, say, the print division to offset a loss-making enterprise in television.
Stronger local content minimums is the only way forward.
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I agree. Such is commercial business and capitalism without such regulations as you say.
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Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said she was not hopeful there will be any change from Channel 9 head office over the axing of its Darwin newsroom.
Ms Finocchiaro has written to Channel 9 executives urging them to reconsider their controversial decision.
“We’re continuing an open dialogue with Channel 9 executives,” the Chief Minister said. “I expressed our disgust at this shock decision and where this obviously leaves the Territory, Nine have certainly indicated to me that this is a commercial reality for them. “It is unfortunate and we’re certainly incredibly disappointed.”
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Opinion piece by Matt Cunningham on NT News -
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Canberra? What are you talking about? We have pretty much no local news in Canberra…
ABC News is barely local and WIN News is all regional stories that have nothing to do with us.
We are probably one of the worst served populations of 500K for news coverage in the world
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Canberra of roughly 500k in a single region has worse news coverage than Tasmania with roughly 500k across an entire state!
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Good points. But do you think any pollies or ACMA will look at improving this? I doubt it.
The Channel Islands (British crown dependency) has a population of 171,916. They have two TV networks each producing multiple local daily bulletins. I think each has a 10-15 min news bulletin each evening. This is the population vs local news output ratio everyone should aim for.
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What is the point of even maintaining a presence in Darwin at the moment?
The very minimal content coming from this newsroom since the bulletin axing is fluff stories, nothing of local matters like government, courts or crime in Darwin.
The story is related to crocodiles moving at Croc Cove - but this tourist attraction & NT tourism has spent lots of money on sponsorship deals with Nine in the past. Many Today Show and Nine News weather crosses and stories have been done in the past.
If Nine actually cares they should be utilising the Darwin team by making investigative stories for A Current Affair and Today Show.
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