I think having Jonathan join Sam is a huge mistake. The set isn’t built for it, all the promos are done and I can’t imagine Sam being too happy to share anyway.
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Wow that’s a move I didn’t expect!
In regards to the set being too small, perhaps Nine will now use the opportunity to use the old set, considering Brisbane has their new one?
Wasn’t there talk months ago of Qld needing so many bulletins - and concern how early some of the local windows would need to be pre-recorded - so wouldn’t it make more sense if they somehow split the work, perhaps two studios, Jonathan presenting half of the bulletins while Samantha does the other half?
PS: Although all the announcements to-date say Samantha is presenting the regional Qld bulletins
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I agree with everything you’ve said. Sam finally gets her own bulletin after all these years and then they go and chuck someone else in after launch. Not good if true!
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Didn’t Sam have her own bulletin with WIN News…?
I think she co anchored it with Paul Taylor at the time.
It’s good that Darwin viewers will still get to see Jonathan Uptin present (at least some of) their edition of Nine News after the streamlining into the Regional QLD operations.
Re, the possibility of an Uptin/Heathwood presenting duo: I have mixed feelings about this. While it’s not good that they’re making a slight format change so soon after the Regional Queensland bulletins have launched, I do think that the Regional Queensland editions of Nine News probably needed two newsreaders just like the main South East Queensland edition of Nine News has.
Overall, I think we should wait for the results to come on-air before saying whether or not this is a good idea.
From memory, Paul Taylor & Samantha Heathwood presented WIN News together for a while but later on, it was Paul presenting WIN News solo in some regions of Queensland and Samantha presenting WIN News solo in others.
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Considering how small the Darwin market is, it is a smart financial move to bring it in to the Regional Queensland operations and get better bang for their buck.
From the Darwin community perspective, it is an unfortunate move, but with diminishing returns from FTA, every dollar needs to count.
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Let’s hope this move encourages them to ditch the nasty keys and adopt a versatile non keyed background.
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In recent times, Nine has probably spent hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars on upgrading to new sets, automation and HD. This would’ve been taken into consideration when Nine decided to integrate their Darwin news service into their Regional Queensland operations.
From memory, the Darwin TV market has something like 130k residents. While I’m sure it’s disappointing from a local community perspective, I think Nine knows that it’s probably not sustainable in the long run to continue producing a fully fledged, live and local 7-day a week news service for 130k people which has production standards on par with a metro market like Adelaide.
While certainly far from ideal, having Nine News Darwin streamlined into the Regional Queensland operations is considerably better than what the alternative would likely be: Nine completely axing their Darwin news and just broadcasting either the Brisbane or Sydney news up there.
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I read “with Heathwood” to mean they would split and do four bulletins each. Seems more efficient.
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Mr Uptin will co-host eight regional bulletins with presenter Samantha Heathwood
I think this would indicate that Sam and Jono will co-host alongside each other for each bulletin, like Andrew and Melissa in Brisbane.
Will be interested to see the 2- and 3-presenter shots that they will use. Hopefully in time they’ll expand the regional QLD set to GC style for standing presentations as well.
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Quote from Mike Dalton in that press release about 9 News Canberra winning at 6pm… “If anything, it only spurs us on to continue to improve and deliver the Capital the very best bulletin we can.”
Let’s hope better improvements are made sooner rather than later! Although if they continue to win, they might think that they don’t have to change anything 
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So I guess this means Darwin’s bulletin won’t be live? I guess in times of breaking news they’ll have between 6.30-7.00pm (7.00-7.30pm in QLD) to update viewers.
Be interesting if Nine News Queensland Weekend will cover local Darwin weather (rather than a temperature on a national map) or have a reporter based in Darwin covering NT weekend stories which I’m sure will surprise Queensland viewers. Perhaps a local weather update to air just in Darwin in the commercial break like Prime7 does?
You have to feel for Samantha. Perhaps if they had made this decision earlier they could have launched the Cairns bulletin with Jonathan and Samantha together, rather than this mess where they’ll confuse viewers with the change of presenters so close to its launch.
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With Darwin being 30 mins behind, the whole hour is likely to be a delayed broadcast.
Darwin may well get the “live” local window read to help compensate for the time difference.
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Doubt it. They will likely either:
- Have Jono, Sam and Paul all at the desk for the cross to and from sport (given currently both are a wideshot). Then have Paul pre-record the sports stories in front of the plasma.
- Have just Sam and Paul at the desk for the cross to and from sport (like Nine News Adelaide did about 10 years ago). Then Jono re-joins her for the news after the break.
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By reading the Darwin windows live, I presume you mean in sync with the QLD bulletin and delayed into Darwin. So any story is a maximum of 30 minutes old, which is probably about the same length of time the QLD regional windows are recorded prior to broadcast.
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Yes, Darwin window read “live” on QLD time, but the whole hour is delayed into Darwin by 30 mins due to the different time zone.
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For anybody curious, here’s footage of NNN Adelaide doing just that. However, I believe that they simply moved the camera positioning on the desk, but the presenter positions at the desk stayed the same: Rob sat centre, Kevin on the left, and sport on the right.
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I haven’t seen a full length Darwin bulletin, so I’m not sure what a typical bulletin comprises. Obviously Darwin news and important national and international stories, but how much of the wider NT is covered? I’ve seen Katherine stories featured but I don’t think the 9 Darwin News is shown there, or anywhere else in the territory on Imparja or any regionals, so they have a pretty small catchment area.
What types of stories (and from where) currently “pad out” the hour long Darwin bulletin? They have been accustomed to Brisbane news in the past on Seven Darwin/SC Darwin, but I think NDT has always had bespoke local news on weeknights. The pan-regional stories are where I see challenges - Brisbane/QLD stories that feature in the Regional QLD bulletins are not necessarily relevant in Darwin, but neither are NT stories likely to be relevant in QLD.
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