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.