Have a week on location in the Darwin studio… heck… make it full time there 
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If Nine can demonstrate they are getting more people to turn on their sets at 6pm, there is a business case for more investment - particularly if they hover between 1 and 2 in the ratings.
If a few tweaks can cement them at number 1, I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Even a 50% cut of the spoils is decent enough to evoke a commercial interest for Nine in having a quality product that people continue watch. A few adjustments to the set and camera set up is peanuts for a bulletin that goes out to over a million people.
Let me put it this way, the stake Nine has in the SNSW bulletin (which goes out to 1.44 million people) is much higher than the stake they have in the Gold Coast bulletin (which goes out to around 580k). Not only is “half” of the SNSW market bigger than GC, more homes are watching TV at 6pm so per capita the SNSW bulletin is ‘more valuable’.
In a roundabout way I’m trying to say that there is a business case for Nine to care just as much, if not more, about their SCA regional bulletins as their fully owned GC bulletin. And, to be fair, Adelaide is not much further ahead.
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SNSW would be a more expensive spend because they need 12 journalists (3 each in 4 sub markets), Gold Coast probably has half that number?
And as you said, Nine only gets 50% return, but they have pay for 100% of the costs under the terms of the deal.
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“Story” (to use the term loosely) on 9 News Regional tonight about some new unlimited data internet plans.
Story was by Brisbane reporter Brittney Kleyn, but thankfully tonight seemed to reworded for regional audiences rather than Brisbane.
There was a brief segment with a QLD map where the reporter said “in Regional Queensland, the biggest data uses are in Townsville and in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast” with no mentions of Brisbane.
I doubt she would have said that on the Brisbane bulletin, so it looks like they’ve listened to my advice and reworded it.
Good to see!
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Not 100% as wages are not the only cost. SCA9 journalists are housed in SCA buildings - so no deskspace costs for Nine. Gold Coast has a dedicated office and studio which is a cost borne exclusively by Nine.
We are splitting hairs here but you are right, there are more field journalists working on SNSW9. But the bulletin only has one presenter and no dedicated weather presenter (sharing with NBN) while GC has two presenters, sport and weather. So six-of-one half-a-dozen of the other is my round-out on this because GC9 simply has a smaller audience given their timeslot (if you look at dollars spent vs viewer actuals).
My point was, there is a clear commercial incentive for the Nine Network to keep ratings high on the SCA bulletins (Number 1 in Cbr at 6pm from last count). Gold Coast is their only locally produced non-metro bulletin, so you’ll forgive this being used as a comparator.
One could argue the level of investment in a bulletin that goes to a market of nearly 1.5 million people (more than double GC) should attract roughly the same level of investment in the studio and cameras, given that these are one-off cap ex investments. I mean, SC in Tasmania has been using the same set for 20 years and it actually looks better than SNSW9.
I noted that Nine set up three studios within 12 months, so would likely want to delay any further investment. However, I feel it’s highly UNlikley Nine will never spend another penny if the franchise continues to prove popular. There has been a huge increase in the amount of live/nearly live television in the past five years (partly owing to the Netflix effect) so I don’t see why Nine would stubbornly let their product fall behind the competition.
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There is a version of the 9 News app promo playing on the SNSW bulletins that has Vanessa doing the voice over.
Previously they used the Peter Overton one.
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We’ve had Samantha Heathwood voicing ours in NQ from the get go.
In other news:
I think it’s only the second time I’ve seen it occur, but tonight we had a story from Cairns (with Sacha Passi) shown within our local window segment. Although, the story was still very relevant to the Townsville market anyway, it’s very rare to see a story from outside the local region during the local window.
6:41pm… story posted on Facebook “55 mins ago” (i.e. 5:46pm QLD time), even though the local window started at 6:06pm.
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Story sharing happens from time to time between Riverina/Cbr/Illawarra on SC9. Especially anything to do with the Hume Highway!
TCN and NBN have been sharing stories for years.
Prime7 shares stories a lot.
News is news and big stories are still big stories. More of this please!
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That’s good to hear.
Some NBN markets are not so fortunate by comparison (see NBN News thread).
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A random thought I had, but bear with me…
Let’s say in theory (ignoring the current unlikelyness) that Nine Adelaide started producing two regional SA bulletins (one for GDS/BDN, the other for SDS/RDS) at the same time as the east coast. Would Adelaide be a good candidate for moving a full Darwin bulletin to over Brisbane?
Distance-wise, DAR-ADEL is comparable to DAR-BRIS with only a 200km difference (would mean little in the digital and TV realms). Adelaide would also be far more similar to Darwin than the bustling sensationalist Brisbane (but still very different). The time zones are also synced throughout April and September (not sure whether bonus or not). The SA bulletins would hopefully be less eastern-centric due to central location.
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The only flaw I can see in your plan is that I can’t see NWS ever producing a bulletin for regional SA simply because the advertising returns would be too small (based on the east coast model that Nine and SCA are using).
Aside from that, I agree that Adelaide would be a better base for a Darwin bulletin than Brisbane for the reasons you mentioned, plus Adelaide AFL sports news would be of more interest to Darwinites than the NRL news out of Brisbane.
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I did say in theory, recognising the unlikeliness of such a scheme. Just a harmless thought experiment. On the plus side it could’ve saved Darwin from Brisbane’s Aldi-mania on weekends 
Though it is interesting to note that (based on 2016 figures) the Darwin TV1’s 122k population was roughly equivalent to GTS/BKN’s combined population of 132k. But yes, NWS would not have the revenue (or perhaps even the studio space) to allocate to a regional bulletin.
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The model we are seeing emerge here with SCA is regionals ‘outsourcing’ their local news requirements back to the metros in exchange for ad revenue. It makes sense for the local news to be on the highest rating network, so if that were Nine in the Spencer Gulf, I could foresee SCA ‘paying’ Nine to produce a local bulletin for them. Given that SCA owns all TV feeds in that market, I don’t see why they wouldn’t consider switching their news to Nine if the ratings aligned.
Though for now, my money is on GTS/BKN news moving to Launceston in the New Year. They have the ability to read it live there (though I’m not sure they would) and it’s SCA’s only functioning TV newsroom and studio. I’ve noted before that Perth’s news on Ten was read from the Sydney studios for years for similar reasons.
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SCA television are still recruiting for newsroom jobs in Canberra, a vacancy for a journalist to produce and present news updates closed yesterday.
No doubt. But the Canberra building will be demolished soon - so they will need to move GTS news somewhere. Why wouldn’t they move it to their only operating studio?
Before this happens, they still need people at CTC to produce news where it is currently made for markets like Darwin.
Thought this was an interesting article from September 1989. Back in those days, CTC Canberra’s Ten News attracted 92,000 viewers! There were only 4 other channels to choose from, but my god how things have changed.
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Yes, it certainly took a long time for viewing habits to change after aggregation.
I think it took about 10 years for WIN News to start to sneak ahead of TEN Capital News At Six.
If only CTC/Capital had the Nine affiliation since aggregation (which they do now under Southern Cross Austereo), then I think today’s Canberra news bulletins across all channels would be quite different to what we have now.
I agree, CTC would probably be more like NBN today if it has aligned with Nine.
The interesting thing is, even if you total ALL viewers at 6pm today watching the three main commercial channels in Cbr, you get nowhere near 92,000 (it’s about 50,000). Also worth nothing, Canberra’s population was about 100,000 people lower - fewer people watch linear TV at 6pm.
Pre-internet the 6pm news was more of an event, it was the only way to see moving pictures of what had happened that day. From memory (it’s had a stop/start history) there was not a full bulletin on ABC Canberra in those days. The other thing to consider is, people would have flopped in front of the news because there weren’t as many viewing options (aside from your 5 weeklies for $5 from Videoville).
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