The Liberal leadership circus is now at point that Nine have decided it was important enough to get Peter Overton & Melissa Downes travelling to Canberra so they can present coverage for the 6pm bulletins in their respective markets. Even though she really should be there, what’s the bet that Vanessa O’Hanlon won’t be presenting the Southern NSW/ACT editions of Nine News (including Nine News Canberra - a bulletin that federal politicians will likely be watching) from outside Parliament House?
As it’s no doubt been mentioned before, viewer loyalty and trust for news presenters is built by getting them outside the studio when the big stories break and the leadership crisis will probably end up being one of Australia’s biggest news stories of 2018.
It would be an extremely bad look if the Nine newsreader that Canberra viewers (with MPs and political junkies likely among them) actually see on terrestrial TV wasn’t on location, and a decision which I would hope is criticised by other local media outlets.
At the top of the bulletin: “Good evening and welcome to this special bulletin of Nine News on the leadership crisis that’s crippling the Liberal party. We’re now joining network coverage anchored by Peter Overton at Parliament House”- Vanessa O’Hanlon.
Overton: “That’s it from Canberra for now…” then a rather obvious pause to allow the regional bulletin to cut in before throwing to Deb Knight in Sydney.
Hopefully she has some short piece-to-camera instead of an immediate, stale handover like last time.
The Liberal leadership crisis has entered its second day with more uncertainty gripping the nation as the hours pass. What’s fast becoming a three-horse race has encapsulated all political affairs with parliament suspended until the crisis has passed. We cross now to network coverage with Peter Overton live at Parliament House.
She did, as seen above. I edited that quote to accurately reflect what O’Hanlon said. I paraphrased because I was watching both bulletins at the same time, wanted to see all reports and only quickly switched to the regional bulletin to see what they would do.
The start of the bulletin tonight we saw the live vision of Government House awaiting the swearing in of Scott Morrison.
And it was mentioned they’d cross to it live.
Anyway, conveniently the swearing in occurring right as the local window was playing.
So all we got was a quick 30 second summary from Sam after the local window.
It would have been a logistical nightmare, but I think it’s unacceptable that they didn’t either leave the local window until later in the bulletin, or just cut straight into the local window to show it live.
Also, still sick of getting unedited Brisbane stories, the one airing right now is talking about “south of the city and on the Gold Coast”, and “if you’re competing in the Bridge to Brisbane this weekend”
Which was in itself pointless, as the wet weather is only affecting the Wide Bay, Sunshine Coast and Darling Downs bulletin regions, and not affecting the other 5 markets the story aired in.
I just thing it’s ridiculously lazy that they can’t just quickly edit the Brisbane-centric bits out of the report
Looked and sounded very clunky and disjointed. Why not use a split screen for the “handover” and maybe say “we are joining Nine’s Peter Overton in Canberra” rather than mention “network coverage”?
Did the Melbourne and Brisbane bulletins cross to Peter or have their own anchor/reporter on scene?
If a major story of national importance occured in Canberra or within Nine News Regional’s coverage in the east coast, I’d prefer the respective main regional presenters to go live on location, then have the local windows and other stories handle by somebody else.
Any major news story happening in Southern NSW/ACT which is deemed to be important enough for Peter Overton to present on-location really should be deemed important enough for Vanessa O’Hanlon to present on-location. Even if that means getting…say, Mike Lorigan and a fill-in Sports presenter to cover the local windows and everything else from the studio, then so be it.
Especially when it comes to big Federal Politics news from Canberra, there probably would’ve been some not insignificant people (MPs, public servants, journalists, political junkies in general) who were monitoring Nine News Canberra in recent days - whether the Nine News presenter for Sydney is outside Parliament House doesn’t really matter from a TV perspective because that’s not who Canberra viewers get to watch on weeknights anymore!
Fair point I suppose, but that doesn’t make the scenario of Peter Overton on-location in Southern NSW/ACT and Vanessa O’Hanlon in the studio any less ridiculous from a viewer’s perspective!
There are also well documented issues with Nine News Sydney (which Seven & Ten may also have, although Nine is the main focus for obvious reasons) when it comes to their coverage of Regional NSW.
Geography and TCN reporters going into the regions to file stories which (aside from the more familiar face to Sydney viewers) would probably be adequately covered by NBN or Nine regional reporters being all but two…but don’t get me started on those again!
Although that would be ideal, I’d imagine that the presenters of Nine News Sydney are already extremely busy on weekdays without having to pre-record segments for regional areas.
Where’s the time to record windows for regional areas in between rehearsals, checking scripts, recording news updates, promos, radio spots and anything else that I’ve missed?
