I think 9News should decide on each day whether to lead with a local story or a national/international one, based on what’s the biggest story of the day (across each bulletin’s viewing area).
The decision could be made in the afternoon. It wouldn’t be perfect, but better than always leading with a national story when there isn’t one of any significance.
A significant limitation/difficulty given this format is the time they need to start pre-recording the 1st local window for each region, and the deadlines for those stories, the v/o wording, etc.
Local news coverage is perhaps more important right now than it ever was before, I get that.
But if there’s a significant story happening on a state, national or international level, I think it’s quite reasonable to expect both the metropolitan and regional editions of Nine News to have live bulletin-leading coverage of such news.
Interesting to see the story choices between the states. NSW choosing the birth of Serena Williams’ baby as their international headline, while Queensland went with the security scare at Price George’s school. Victoria on the other hand only had local and Victorian headlines. It definitely gives the impression that the Victorian edition contains more local news.
Lead story on both Seven Local News and WIN News was the fires. It looked like they may have shared some vision. Much better pictures from both bulletins compared to Nine.
Who in the regions (or metro for that matter) cares about Serena’s baby? Sure, it’s international news but it could easily be covered in the international rundown later in the bulletin. Prince George security scare would certainly be more significant, but if you want to win over the regions, make local news the priority.
Out of interest, which part of the bulletin are we talking about, the opening stories, or after the first ad break?
Noticed via Facebook that 7 News Mackay ran a story as a “7 News First” on Thursday night, after the exact same story was shown as a “First on 9 News” story on Wednesday night
I was only commenting on the headlines shown the afternoon update - based on the compilation of them all posted above.
I’m sure the actual stories were shown deeper in the bulletin, sometime after the first ad break.
After scouring the presenters’ Instagram pages, it’s interesting to compare the setups that each of the regional studios has in more detail.
QLD has done a good job at replicating the backdrop and side panels of the NSW set in Sydney, but the key is far too small on-screen. Such a shame though that VIC has been reduced to a cupboard (if only GTV had built a second smaller studio before the initial move to Docklands).
They do have a second studio - although it is used for other productions so couldn’t be consistently used for news.
The main studio is huge though - it currently houses the News and Footy Classified sets - they could fairly easily move Footy Classified into the second studio and then put a wall up to split the main studio into 2 if they wanted to.
I think the main reason they’ve opted for the “broom Cupboard” is for consistency between the local editions and so that they only need a single camera. The advantages of using a bigger studio would be lost if they were to still use a single camera, and using more camera would be more complex and require more effort/staff.
There’s also potentially a consideration of where they could fit the control room for the local editions and it’s proximity to the studio.
Nine should the the afternoon backdrop photographer to take some of each region for the local bulletins (the metro 4pm backdrops are on point!). Position them as if a live backdrop camera was there, versus the unnatural angles of those drone/copter pics. A late afternoon/twilight shot would also be ideal.
And for god’s sake, get rid of the keyed set. All you see in the metro bulletins is an uninterrupted backdrop, why should regional bulletins get any different?
And if written differentials for each region is still necessary (RQLD has proven that it’s not), they could always go for an afternoon/Gold Coast-style permanent watermark.
(Also, shift Sam and Jonno into the centre of the backdrop when they’re doing solo reads, so that we don’t just get blue + the bottom corner of the screen)
I image (and yes, I am guessing because I am not acutally in the studios of QTQ) they have three locked-off cameras for the bulletin, without operators. This only gives you the three shot choices.
A better method would be an automated dolly operated from the control room, but that costs money - which this bulletin doesn’t.
I believe they are trying to get a recognition response from viewers, where they see their ‘local market’ on screen and instantly know they are watching a ‘local’ bulletin.
I agree the keyed set looks awful - but it would be ‘un-local’ to pick one city and key it in for all markets - or so it would seem.
They were able to get a tight shot of Sam before dual presenters (presumably from the wide camera zoomed in?), there shouldn’t be any reason that they can’t do the same now. Would the cameras not have an automated zoom function?
I’m not saying get rid of local backdrops entirely, I think it’s a good selling point. Key them in but remove the “set” surrounding it so that viewers are left with a clean local landscape. See my previous posts for examples and comparisons.
