Nine News Local

TV News and Current Affairs Regional News Broadcasts
7134

Possibly because many regional Australians have a far stronger connection to where they live (more lifelong residents, etc.) compared to those who reside in metropolitan areas? Certainly the bigger ones like Sydney & Melbourne are made up of people from all over the country and infact the globe!

Also let’s not forget how large the Sydney metropolitan area actually is - approximately 5 million people, 35 local government areas, more than 650 suburbs. Of course TV, radio and the city-wide daily newspapers aren’t going to be able to cover every single news story that happens in the Sydney metro area so the priority for the mainstream media in this city (as opposed to suburban papers and community radio which can afford to do more grassroots coverage) has to be on local stories which are the most significant and/or affect the greatest number of people.

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7135

Firstly, can we please stop saying “country residents”, the regional markets in Queensland all centre around a city. There’s nothing “country” about the area I live in, it’s a city… albeit, a small city compared to the metros, but still a city.

Secondly, I think it’s fair to complain just from a sheer distance standpoint.
Those people near Sydney for example may not get much local news, but at the least the stories are all about nearby locations.

In Townsville, apart from local Townsville news, the stories covered are all 1500km away. There’s just no interest.

It’s like if those Sydney suburban areas had to watch the Adelaide news every night. They’d surely start complaining too

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7136

agree ''country residents ‘’ is now an obsolete word. its now regional or rural but now regional is the most common word to use. even our premier here in victoria has never used country victoria he always says regional victoria

7137

Geelong has never received local news and never will, despite being over 300k in population and as far as 150km away from Melbourne. You might get one story a night on the Melbourne news if you’re lucky, 50% of them are stabbings in Corio, the other 50% about the Cats.

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7138

The main problem Camo is that it’s not a service. It’s a bare minimum box ticking exercise of limited appeal. Nine is required by a commercial agreement to provide news content on behalf of SCA to fulfil their legal obligations as a commercial broadcast license holder. It ain’t a charity.

The frustration you are reading on this feed is borne of the fact it would only take a little imagination for Nine to produce something competitive and more meaningful to viewers.

Nine has several options to provide content that viewers recognise as local. For example, why not pre-record an 11 minute bulletin for each local market and air it at 6pm, then cross to a delayed start of an appended ‘state’ news? Prime does something similar in Albury.

Nine could go live three times. 5pm for CW/R, 5.30 for Illawarra. 6pm for CBR. Yes, you’d have to fill gaps with other programmes, but it is an option. 6pm Canberra could be a half hour local, followed by delayed TCN bulletin, again like Prime in Albury. Very fiddly and resource intense, but it would provide viewers with live local news they can’t get anywhere else.

Another option is to continue as is at 5.30, but pre-record the second half, so it can can be more relevant to each market. We’re talking about 11 mins of content (a quarter of that could be weather). Surely doable.

My favoured option is the Prime format, with as live pre-recs for each market. That would cost more but cheaper than live.

Nine News Local is actually more like a country version of Today Tonight than news, mostly filled with human interest stories. Nothing wrong with that, but it should be packaged as such. BBC makes a weekly programme called Inside Out, which Nine could copy. No studio, just a local presenter in a park throwing to long form packages of human interest pieces from that market.

Having local reporters and camera operators is amazing. Right now though their work is being wasted. And if this current programme turns viewers off, it will be the fault of naive execs when field crews lose their jobs, not this forum.

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7139

This is nonsense. Utter nonsense.

7140

Who decided that cities of over 400,000 are not metropolitan? I live in Europe and no one would describe a city that size as a “region”.

7141

Please do enlighten me further on how it’s “utter nonsense” to say that regional Australians likely have a far stronger connection to where they live compared with many who reside in metropolitan areas, or trying to put the Sydney area and its media landscape into some perspective.

I’m pretty sure much of the Australian media only regards the five cities (and their immediately surrounding regions) with a population of over 1 million people as being “metropolitan”.

By no means am I’m arguing this is right though.

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7142

You’ve made swathing assumptions that the only people who live in country areas are people from there. And the only people who live in cities are some kind of transient cosmopolitans.

Country areas are full of foreign farm workers and city types escaping their western suburbs McMansions.

I find Sydney one of the most parochial cities on earth. Melbourne would be up there too. I can’t imagine Melbourne people putting up with bland “Victoria” news for one minute.

I should ask, what parts of Australia have you lived in?

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7143

Of course, I’d never say that especially when I know of people who’ve previously lived in Sydney but have opted to move to regional areas.

But would it be inaccurate to say that residents of regional areas have a far stronger connection to where they live than those who live in metropolitan areas? I don’t think so.

While there’s no doubt some parochialism amongst our capital cities, I’ve long gotten the impression that they’re a lot more fragmented in the way they live compared to smaller towns and communities.

If someone was to ask me the question “What does it mean to be a Sydneysider?”, I honestly couldn’t give you a clear answer because different parts of the metro area obviously have vastly different lifestyles. What it means to be a resident of South Western Sydney is very different to what it means to be a resident up on the North Shore/Northern Beaches.

I’ve lived most of it in the Sydney metropolitan area, but have had trips to many areas of Regional NSW (predominately along the coast) over the years.

With my interest in television and the media, I’ve hopefully learnt quite a few things about our country over the years I otherwise wouldn’t have known.

Anyway, back to discussing Nine News Local. Recently I got the opportunity to hear the radio promos via SCA regional radio stations which I presume, are an audio-only version of what the TV stations are running. The “getting bigger” line (in reference to the “Local” bulletin at 5.30pm before the “Statewide” one at 6pm) in these is incredibly insulting, especially when we know the regional news operations of Nine/SCA are actually getting smaller!

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7144

City people telling “Country” people who they are and what they feel based on a few weekend trips is EXACTLY the problem with Nine Local.

And I’m guessing that if it takes a million people to not be a country town, Adelaide and Perth weren’t “metropolitan” until the 1980s when they hit the magic number. More like truck stops before that.

7145

While some of my trips to regional NSW have been of a few days, others have been for full weeks - a few years back I was even up on the North Coast for about three weeks.

Anyway…in the very highly unlikely chance I were to ever get a Sydney-based position at Nine’s regional bulletins, I wouldn’t be satisfied to simply assume what regional viewers want. I’d actually want to know what they want, even actually going out to the regions (at least occasionally, as conditions permit) to do proper market research with viewers who’d actually see the bulletins on their TVs every night.

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7146

It won’t happen then. Nine are not happy they are “only” getting $85 mill annually out of SCA, they expect $100 mill so of course they are reducing the resources - seeing what they can get away with - and we know SCA like to lie down.

7147

… this thread assumes that the only “local” thing that regional viewers are interested in is local news … over the years I worked for both metro and regional stations that did not have a news service at all, but they provided lots of other local programming …

7148

It’s definitely a backwards step compared to what people are used to, but it’s not as if they can’t be successful at it. Just look at GWN7 News. 80% largely irrelevant news every weeknight, followed like a cult by just about everyone who still uses FTA. Granted they have a history, a consistent timeslot and a well known local brand, but I don’t think it’s as bad as people are portraying it.

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7149

Like? Not doubting you, just wondering.

7150

As a child I visited Adelaide in about 1972. It was definitely a city then. The population figure didn’t matter.

7151

What?

Adelaide and Perth have been classified as city’s way before the 1980s :rofl:

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7152

Presumably GWN7 news is mostly relevant to the major centres like Bunbury/Albany - where most of the viewers are, so to them you have most of the audience getting fairly relevant news, and those in the rest of the state being all but ignored for the most part.

Still - I’m sure decades of experience, as well as better resources probably help GWN7 put out a better product. Nine’s effort is very disjointed, especially the Queensland editions posted, and when unlike WA there’s active competition from a very good Seven/Prime bulletin in most markets, I can’t see it being many people’s choice.

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7153

GWN7 News is the closest thing to Nine News Local at least in SNSW and Victoria, but IMO where GWN7 has the advantage is that stories with potential statewide interest are framed as statewide interest stories or at the very least with general noteworthiness.

Compare that to Nine News Local where every single story is framed as hyper-local, even stories that could be of general interest in other cities. Any stories of possible general interest are dilluted when hyper-local add-ons are inserted into the story. News about a cancer trial going on in Toowoomba, for example, is potentially relevant to viewers in other cities; but someone in Cairns, for example, doesn’t want to be watching that story when they cut to footage of a Toowoomba burglary then back to the cancer trial to wrap the story.

Nine has some good stories provided to them, it’s just a matter of curating them effectively. I’m not trying to blindly trash on what they have, it can be improved.

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