I would have thought part of the rationale for SCA co-locating their radio and TV businesses in regional areas was so facilities could be shared eg. I would think the same journalist would file the same report for both radio and TV (where required for TV as I can’t imagine EVERY news item that is going to be on local radio will be on TV given it’s only an 8 minute local news window - which in some cases may cover 2 or 3 SCA radio markets).
However, I acknowledge they may need extra staff so that stories can be covered on location and footage be filmed and also the previously mentioned issue of staffing and facilities being required for non-SCA radio markets eg. Ballarat and Wollongong.
The $80 mil must also be including reporter salaries for the first year.
I agree with SydneyCityTV that SCA should start promoting their upcoming bulletins sooner rather than later in place of the new Peter Overton/Sydney promos. They shouldn’t be waiting until the bulletins actually go to air.
In most areas, SCA only have 1, maybe 2 radio journalists who only prepare bulletins during the breakfast show and a major bulletin at 12pm. Some areas don’t even have that, with their reports being prepared elsewhere. For example, Mount Gambier’s news is prepared and presented from Mildura.
All other bulletins are national and presented from the Gold Coast, where they have a slightly larger, but still small team of journalists.
While they will likely share resources between radio and TV, it would really be limited to getting some on-location reports for radio and using radio’s existing news gathering resources and contacts to get story leads for TV.
As for the $80 million, I think we can safely say that figure is made up. It’s so far out of the range of what technical requirements and staffing would be.
Absolutely agree that the reporters should be marketed and promoted - but not having signed them or shot promos with them yet is NOT a reason not to be running promos of SOME SORT promoting the new news.
As soon as they have the talent lined up they can shoot promos and get them on the air. But if that has;t been done yet ( and we have no idea) they should still have other sorts or promos on air by now.
It’s just 4 weeks away for Canberra - obviously the most important market - and this is a major news launch with a huge investment by Nine/SCA.
And the local southern cross station in Canberra (and really al SCA markets) have not had local news in almost 3 decades - it really needs to be promoted.
It’s to my understanding that these will be full hour long bulletins with live state/national/international content and pre-recorded 8 minute long segments for local content. Something like that.
And of course, that’s just on weeknights. We haven’t heard whether or not SCA Nine will continue to air the capital city versions of Nine News on Saturdays and Sundays.
The 1 hour bulletins are state specific regional bulletins completely separate from the metro city bulletins- with windows for local area specific content.
SC10 cancelled the Canberra version of Ten News in 2001, so about half that time for the ACT, but still over 15 years without a proper news service on their channel here.
Given that SCA run a dirty feed and their participation in this news initiative seems to be letting it run on airwaves they control. Everything seems to be run by Nine, so I’m guessing that it should probably (or will probably work out to) be Nine’s responsibility to make and run promos for these new bulletins.
SCA don’t really seem to care. They’re paying their affiliation fees, running local ads, sticking in the legally mandated noodle news updates, and banking the cash.
You may be right (and SCA’s history does show a lack of interest, and recent radio changes also show more cost-cutting), but since (apparently) Nine wanted their brand out there (and obviously SCA didn’t mind) it’s easier to use a dirty feed rather than recreate the watermarks & associated bits & pieces.
I agree it seems likely that Nine (NEC/metros) will be making the promos for their regional 9News bulletins, presumably with vision supplied by local camera crews & showing the local reporters, but there’s nothing wrong with that given the presenters & studios are at Nine in the state capitals, and they can use the same voice over people & graphics as for the existing state capital 9News/promos, providing that continuity with the current state capital bulletins.
While replacing ads SC9 should also be replacing the promos with Nine-supplied promos, including the new regional Nine News promos (when available, hopefully by next weekend?), and a few days ago I saw more than once just a few frames of a short Sydney Nine Newsbreak-style promo cut off & replaced with a (non-news) promo & then local ads, so there’s really no excuse for SC9 to be showing the Peter Overton returns promos (although mistakes happen & so it could sneak through accidently once or twice, it’s been seen more times than that).
Considering SCA and Nine both each take 50% of the ad revenue from ads sold in the 6pm news, both companies have a strong interest in making these new 6pm bulletins rate
If Nine didn’t see some sort or decent return on investment they wouldn’t be employing 110 people and 15 new newsrooms to do this
I was confused too but you are from Victoria right? So instead of receiving Nine News with Peter Hitchener from 6-7pm, regional Victoria will get Nine News with Jo Hall from 6-7pm instead of Pete. Then somewhere in that hour with Jo Hall will be a pre-recorded local news insert for 8 minutes or something for each market. Like what @SydneyCityTV said the local news will not air on weekends, so I would strongly believe that the current metro bulletin will still air on Saturdays and Sundays.
For NSW viewers, GG will still on Saturdays, and Pete Overton on Sundays, while weeknights are presented by Vanessa O’Hanlon.
For Victorians, they will see Jo Hall from Monday-Friday and Alicia Loxley on weekends.
For Queenslanders, Samantha Heathwood will be seen instead of Andrew and Melissa, but they’re still subject to Darren and Alison on weekends (unfortunately)…
EDIT: When regional bulletins are going to air, are the updates during the day exclusively regional or will the regional viewers see the news updates from the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane bulletins instead?
When I complained about the local news replacing the metro bulletins, members said, “You will still have the metro bulletins on weekends.” Well, I would rather not have Darren and Alison thank-you.
I wouldn’t say that there being no local news from SCA Nine is a certainty since there hasn’t really been an announcement related to weekend news yet, but there probably is more than a half decent chance of regional viewers still being able to see the metro news on Saturdays and Sundays.
If that happens to be the case, I wonder if Nine just might tweak the format of their weekend news bulletins a bit so there’s more statewide content on Saturday/Sunday nights?