Is there any idea on how Nine News Canberra is performing against Win a few months down the track?
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That makes me feel old, I remember before WIN started in Canberra!
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Youâre right, itâs not altruism, but I doubt itâs all to do with the higher affiliation fees either. Sure thereâs a benefit there on both sides, SC can get rid of all promo and journalist staff in exchange for a few bob more off the top of their profits - great. And itâs clear they are winding up their operations at the Canberra hub very rapidly now itâs bound for demolition (how long before GTS/BKN is flogged off?). However there is also a longer-term game at play.
Nine has made it very clear they want to acquire Southern Cross TV assets (Prime is making a LOT of noise about a Seven takeover too). The Government has made it very clear that should it change the law to allow such an acquisition, local content requirements will be increased. Nine is demonstrating in the leanest possible way what local news âNine styleâ can look like to prove that an acquisition can improve local content. To be fair, it has worked so far, purely because the SC news updates were absolutely atrocious (not casting judgement on those who produced them, I know first hand how tight SC is!). Also, there is no doubt that the SC news updates tainted the Nine brand.
Should local content requirements go beyond the current 90 points per week (see acma.gov.au) which equates to a paltry 9 minutes per weekday of news (news earns 2 points per minute) - the economics and logistics of producing this content from a central desk in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne may change.
I can foresee WIN campaigning fiercely for a minimum of closer to 180 points per week or 18 news minutes per weekday. For WIN, this is roughly what they produce. After all, why should WIN continue to produce a âfull half hourâ of news each weekday while its competitors donât have to.
Of course the local content doesnât have to be news, it could be a kids show, sports coverage or a local magazine programme which attracts one point per minute.
Whatever the outcome, the next five years will be a very interesting time for local television. Certainly canât be worse than the past decade!
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What about Darwin, Gold Coast and NBN? They all have a better quality presentation than Nine regional NSW.
The economics of a good quality bulletin stack up quite nicely in a market like Canberra where the local commercial competition from WIN isnât that strong. Nine has the potential to dominate if they invested properly and steal WINâs advertising. The trouble is the news isnât worth making an âappointmentâ for - unlike the high quality ABC bulletin which gets double the audience.
Prime7 is doing a great job of this in regional NSW and Iâm sure the advertising rate card has increased accordingly!
Southern Cross in Tasmania is another example - smashing it in the ratings.
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I think the key to Nine News Regional is that there is effectively only a 50% return on investment for Nine, and it sounds like thatâs being reflected in the quality of the bulletin.
As for the comparison with NBN, itâs main advantage is weekend news, and they have OTS graphics. But they have many downsides as well, including being an SD production with some questionable picture quality, no local headlines or openers and branding that is a total dogs breakfast (that includes its penchant for Nine News coverups)âŚ
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Really, only 50% return? Last time I checked Nine was a shareholder in Southern Cross to the tune of 10% - effectively Nine is the biggest stakeholder in Southern Cross. Nine makes more money from SCA advertising than SCA itself.
When we discuss quality of the bulletin, there is a lot more to it than the definition of the screen pixels and a few graphics. Editorial choices, accuracy of the pictures (I saw a Canberra story about public transport showing footage from Sydney recently), quality of the newsreader and even having a camera operator (remote on hands-on) all make a huge difference to the bulletin.
More interaction between News/Sport/Weather presenters also bring a bulletin to life. Difficult with the current pre-recorded nature of these segments, but there are tricks that can be employed that currently are not.
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NBN is also guilty of some of those criticisms youâve leveled at Nineâs Sth NSW bulletin, some of their editorial choices arenât great either. Whilst they donât air as much of the Sydney specific items, they are guilty of airing Newcastle items in other regions and sometimes Victorian news as well. NBNs presenters arenât exactly world class either, though they do get to have some interaction with the weather presenter.
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My original point was related to the big 5 getting some sort of quality priority over the new category of âNine Regionalâ. Iâm not talking comparing anything to âworld classâ.
I find it hard to believe that NBN would air news from Victoria that was of no interest at all to people of Northern NSW. Just because they pick up on stories from Victoria, doesnât mean theyâre not of interest to all Australians.
The sort of poor editorial choices Iâm talking about include a recent item about a bus service between Campbelltown and Wollongong which aired as news in Canberra. Clearly this is a poor editorial choice. However a murder in Wollongong or a bushfire near Campbelltown would be of interest to people in the Canberra area - as would the results of a state election in Western Australia or a crocodile attack in Darwin.
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Why would that be hard to believe when youâve seen Nine News Sth NSW do something similar with Sydney news?
Simple really, the Nine News Canberra editorial choices are made at TCN and then foisted upon CTC viewers. I do get the fact that itâs hard for someone to remotely make that decision of âwhat would a Canberran be interested in?â Especially someone who hasnât ever lived over the border in the ACT. I get that they have to fill up an hour a day and so on and so on. I get that everyone is doing what they can with very limited resources. I used to do it!
However, NBN is in Newcastle and the editorial choices are made there. So someone in Newcastle (presumably the EP) has decided that a Victorian news piece is newsworthy of a run on NBN. I do also understand that for NBN, they may make the wrong choices for markets outside of the Hunter, this would be especially noticeable on the Gold Coast - where youâre over the state line and things suddenly look very different.
Iâm not disputing your point that Victoria stories are run on NBN, but the choice was made by NBN to run it rather than GTV forcing them to run it - do you see where Iâm going with this?
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I am not taking the piss here, but this piece shows how a regional one-hour local/national/international bulletin is put together. Including how story choices are made. From CTC 10 (Now Southern Cross Nine) in 2000.
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They sold it in September last year
I stand corrected!
Yes I do, but the issue is still the same for both NBN and Sth NSW - filling an hour of news when both only have about 10 mins of their own local news to use in each. Theyâve each just gone down different paths in determining how best to fill those gaps - neither approach is really any better or more appealing than the other.
Also, the news used in the Melbourne bulletin is generally only of interest to Melbournians, the same as with Sydney. GTV arenât going to produce something more relevant to other people simply because stations like NBN might want to use it.
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I will respectfully disagree with you. Itâs not good enough to pad out the Canberra news with local council issues in Sydney - when there is a whole world of news out there! The Nine Regional News is decidedly parochial with very limited international content.
The bulletin put together for Melbourne is selected for a local audience, sure, why not? But if you think a journalist doesnât know when they are working on a Big Story - youâre wrong my friend. No, GTV doesnât make âgeneric newsâ hoping NBN will pick it up, thatâs absurd. But if something big, like a terror attack, happens in Melbourne, of course the local journalists know they will get a national run.
The issue is different for NBN because they get to make editorial choices - CTC doesnât.
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Is the Nine News Canberra also shown in Cooma and the Snowy Mountains? Already know itâs in Queanbeyan, Yass and Goulburn of course.
Considering that itâs in the Canberra viewing area, I would definitely presume that to be a yes. WIN News Canberra is also broadcast into Cooma & the Snowy Mountains.
Interesting viewing. I think they might still be using some of that gear today!
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CTC is a direct feed into Cooma, Snowies and Goulburn. In Goulburn though, itâs very easy to pick up Illawarra with a decent aerial.
believe it⌠the amount of times we get stories from Allan Raskall or Madeleine Slattery or their sports stories which have no relevance to anyone up here is almost daily. Now we often get fillers from Nine Gold Coast News and Nine Brisbane too.
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