Bridie Barry is co-anchoring in Queensland/Darwin tonight.
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Nicole Rowles presenting the weather preview live from The Strand here in Townsville
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One stories that aired tonight on the regional QLD bulletin featured the sign off “Jayde Cotic… Nine Gold Coast News”
Whoops
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That’s happened on NBN News here in Newcastle too.
Bad typo in the first 5 seconds tonight.
Wasn’t quick enough to get a picture but the first headline on the NQ bulletin said
“Thnk You”
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Thursday -
Dougal Beatty presented in Victoria tonight.
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where was jo hall?
Maybe called in sick?
Looking at her instagram she was at the Races at Flemington today for ‘ladies day’.
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Not taking any sides but with the debate about GTV using TCN as their news backup last night, I’ve had an interesting thought.
Regardless of the fact whether Nine would or would not use an in-state regional bulletin as a backup versus an interstate bulletin, Nine should seriously consider this fact: If they wouldn’t feel comfortable putting a comparatively “sub-standard” regional product on metro screens, why should regional viewers be stuck with it?
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Because its cheaper. Or they’re lazy. I’d say both.
Given that the technical difficulties at GTV and TCN usually occur early in the bulletin, which is when the local news windows are played out, it would be suicide to air a block of Wollongong or Ballarat news to metro viewers.
To answer your question, it’s the same answer as to why only metro viewers get the flashier sets with the video walls, and why 6pm metro bulletins are a dedicated one for each Nine metro market rather than a shared bulletin (as with across the various Southern NSW or regional Victoria sub markets).
That being due to economics, as there’s a lot more advertising $$$ at stake in the metro markets, and the $$$ spent in producing metro vs regional bulletins reflect that.
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It wouldn’t take much effort to improve the look. Remove the fake set window for starters and have a clean local backdrop keyed in. Heck, they could borrow NBN’s repurposed OTS as well. And that starts them off with just with the push of a couple of buttons!
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Although I won’t be holding my breath for this to happen (because in fairness, there are other issues the program needs to cover), I really want to see the ABC’s Media Watch program do a special edition looking at the Nine Network’s completely out of whack priorities when it comes to allocating resources to their news services - both regional & metro. Surely I can’t be the only one?
With the regional bulletins there are well documented issues with the presentation/production values, scheduling of local content and the lack of on-location broadcasts for major news events in their viewing area (eg, Tathra Bushfires in March & Liberal Leadership Crisis in August) which are deemed important enough for the major capital city newsreader to present the bulletins on-location for. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, if a story happening in Southern NSW/ACT is important enough for Peter Overton to present Nine News Sydney on-location, it’s definitely important enough for Vanessa O’Hanlon to present the Southern NSW/ACT editions of Nine News on-location even if that means having another presenter holding the fort in the studio for the rest of the days news & a technical difficulties backup like Nine News Sydney does on such occasions.
But then there’s Nine News’ metro bulletins who are continuing to send their reporters to regional areas to cover relatively minor stories which would probably be covered just as good if not better by locally based reporters. From my observations this has been particularly evident with Nine News Sydney coverage of news from Northern NSW, which genuinely makes me wonder if there’s some form of internal rivalry between TCN and NBN. Hopefully not because it would be really sad if two strong heritage stations in their respective markets were fighting with each other when they should be working together to provide the leading TV news product(s) in the state of New South Wales.
And as we saw on Thursday night, the East Coast metropolitan bulletins still appear to have interstate metro bulletins as their back-up rather than regional editions which would be more likely to have state-based issues. If this is technically possible, Nine should try and incorporate a “metro backup” feed to the playout of their regional news service which would simulcast whatever regions local content is presented live, while including a backdrop of the capital city so the switchover is less jarring to viewers!
Perhaps there are a few things I’m simplifying here without knowing the full story as to how Nine News operates internally but at the same time, it’s also quite possible that we on Media Spy have only just scraped the surface when it comes to the allocation of content & resources at a news operation which should be providing their viewers with a high quality commercial TV news service to all their viewers no matter where they live.
Making needed improvements would probably improve the overall quality of Nine News, while maintaining the “oh, we don’t need to do anything because we’re #1 in Sydney & Melbourne” status quo will likely just breed more complacency and mediocracy that has this year saw them lose the Brisbane/South East Queensland market to Seven. There are other issues with Nine News aside from regional coverage that need to be addressed (such as their Sydney weather coverage which has been shedding viewers to Seven this year) but that of course is for another time & topic.
As per usual, I’d be very interested to hear what others think.
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The only thing that can be done is to increase local content quotas. The current 120 points system is a bit light on in my view, many regional areas are barely meeting this quota ad it is.
As for the other points re allocation of resources, production values, lack of on location broadcasts in emergency situations etc a lot of it subjective, and not something you can measure or enforce as a result.
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what does 120 points equal to in minutes??? coz atm its only 5 minutes of local news which isnt very long . what i would do is increase the points system and make the local news go from 5 minutes to say 8-10 minutes .
Watch another service then. Nine on Southern Cross is not the only option.
Educated guess: a point is a minute (or a majority of a minute), but the point requirement is spread over a week.
The other metro & regional news services also have their flaws but I’ve mainly been focusing on Nine (as I personally think Media Spy should be) because when their regional news services were launched, we were all expecting a news service which would revolutionise and improve the landscape (certainly regionally, but on a metro/national basis to a lesser extent) but so far that hasn’t really happened.
Except when individual presenters/reporters are involved in dubious or sensationalist presenting/reporting, most of my criticisms of Nine News are aimed at the people who are making the dubious content decisions (eg, bulletin directors and producers) on a nightly basis because they ultimately make the final decisions about what goes to air. Similar deal with my previous comments on Media Spy about the news services provided by Seven, Ten, WIN, Prime7 and the others because unless you’re being paid by them, no media organisation should be above fair criticism.
I will when I actually visit a Nine News Regional market.
But before then, I’ll be on the Central Coast for a week from tomorrow. Time permitting, I’ll try and do what I did last year by providing Media Spy with a nightly log of what local content (or lack of it, from all reports) NBN News is providing to their Central Coast viewers in the relevant thread - hope to join you there! 
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Central Coast is an interesting example… but I’m not sure that it’s a good example of regional news coverage.
The central coast is both underserved and overserved as a television market. Overserved because it’s a de facto part of both the Sydney and Newscastle markets and because a significant proportion of the area serves as dormitory suburbs for Sydney that section of the audience will be drawn to a Sydney service. Underserviced because neither Sydney nor Newscastle stations really devote any resources to the area, certainly not as many as a comparable “fully” regional or metropolitan area. (NBN may be an exception).
Given all of those factors I suspect the central coast area may prove your case one way or the other.
But I don’t want to be a party pooper… you enjoy 
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