Nine News Local

[CTC7-9-10]

@Nick

I’m not saying get rid of local backdrops entirely

I am. See the post I just wrote.

[CTC7-9-10]

@Nick

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?

Before the dual presenters Sam sat in the centre the whole time, except for the sports cross. So there was one camera locked on wide, one tight.

Now you have one wide, one tight left and one tight right.

I can screen cap the differences if you like.

[CTC7-9-10]

@Nick

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.

The keyed landscapes end up looking 2D, as the focus isn’t adjusted correctly. The image should be slightly out of focus to give a broader depth of field. I agree the photos they have chosen are at poor angles and are at the wrong time of day. There is also something rather cheap about watching a beach where the waves are still.

There are drawbacks to the two obvious solutions (even if the focus is adjusted).

1. If you have recorded vision, you have to update according to the time of year and sunset times. Also viewers will get to know the loop and see the same bird flying by each night or whatever.

2. If you put a camera on top of local Southern Cross buildings, to feed back to Brisbane you run the risk of a technical fault leading to no vision.

[Nick]

@CTC7-9-10

The keyed landscapes end up looking 2D, as the focus isn’t adjusted correctly. The image should be slightly out of focus to give a broader depth of field. I agree the photos they have chosen are at poor angles and are at the wrong time of day. There is also something rather cheap about watching a beach where the waves are still.

If they get half-decent, focused photographs, they could do what Seven News Adelaide have done for their afternoon bulletin and add fake moving clouds and crashing waves to the still image.

[webguy]

@CTC7-9-10

If you put a camera on top of local Southern Cross buildings, to feed back to Brisbane you run the risk of a technical fault leading to no vision.

Technical faults would be the least of their worries for this - if a camera were to go offline they could just have a recorded image to use as a backup.

Most of the SCA buildings would be in poor locations to get a good shot. They’d have a poor angle and the outlook would be to something that doesn’t really shout out the local town.
There’s also the bigger issue of actually getting the camera feed back to the control room. Many of the SCA offices would have fairly low bandwidth capacity compared to a metro TV station, and it would take up a big chunk of this link to provide a high quality uninterrupted live feed.

[NQCQTV2]

@webguy

Most of the SCA buildings would be in poor locations to get a good shot.

Yeah the SCA buildings just wouldn’t work.
In Townsville for example, the SCA building faces a busy road and a big McDonalds M.

Nothing appealing about that on TV.

My suggestion would be to have one of the 9 News camera operators film a continuous city shot from 6pm-7pm once a month and just play it back each night. (They already do smaller versions of this for the playout to Weather anyway).

It’s not perfect, but it would be much much better than currently.

7 News use a city loop each night, its obvious it’s not live, but it really helps make the bulletin feel like a proper local bulletin.

[TV-ACT]

Some good ideas and I think some good stills would work OK if only shown as much as in the metro bulletins which would be the case if they had per-story backdrops!

[MarkHD]

Rosanna Kingsun from 9News Canberra is off to 9News Darwin, along with Louise Rennie from NBN News

[NQCQTV2]

Another unhappy Darwinite on Facebook:

Opinion Rant.

The new format of the News on 9 News Darwin is disappointing.

The lead story last night was about a Brisbane Suburb.
The Sports Reporter is a parochial Queensland supporter so the NRL news will always be biased, good luck hearing about other teams.
The sunrise and sunset for Palmerston had [no data] recorded, pretty sure it would be the same time as Darwin.
The chemistry isn’t there between Jonathan Uptin and his co-anchors, who ever the blazes they are.
And the 9 News Darwin facebook page is now wrong in its claim “TV programme in Darwin, Northern Territory” it should now be “TV programme that may include Darwin, Northern Territory”

[Tom_TV7]

Disappointing to see Nine cocking this one up so badly. That’s the problem when you have a news bulletin for a particular area produced thousands of kms away.

From the little that I have seen of the new Darwin montages here’s a few things that I’ve observed:

*Not LIVE. Darwin is a capital city, yet it’s treated with the same thing received by regional QLD viewers on delay? That is unacceptable knowing that regional viewers get their news LIVE but not Darwin.

*No intro VO for Sam and Jono is a bit disappointing. I know Matthew O’Sullivan does a lot of VO for Nine News, but surely they could use that guy who did Darwin’s previous VOs? Might work better on a local angle.

*Lead story is always about something in Brisbane, and while it’s kind of expected as the production is in Brisbane, if Nine really wants everyone to switch to their bulletin they need to either start with the local window (complete with local/national headlines tailored to each region), or just have the entire national window air in the beginning (which probably won’t work since Seven QLD and WIN both start with local news and have done so for many years).

*Presentation. Well where do I begin. After getting a half decent set for Darwin for many years, Nine just plonked another chroma key loop there and f**ked off with that. What makes it worse is the fact that half of it is cut off when Sam and Jono are presenting, and to top it off Paul Taylor is pushed to another room to do sports just because there’s not enough space. This is not the Nine that we know of in terms of presentation.

*Interaction between presenters seem OK. Sam and Jono are both quality presenters and their on-air chemistry seems ok-ish. But really the sports presenting signing off to the break is just not good enough. Surely they can cross back to the main desk after sports (yes Nine News SNSW is another offender)? And minor as it is, can Nicole Rowles mention the presenters at the beginning or the end? It’s not like she doesn’t know their names or anything.

*Content as mentioned before is too QLD centric. There was just too much filler QLD stuff for Darwin. It might be OK for Regional QLD, but really Darwin needs to have a longer local window to replace the stuff coming out of QLD.

More observations and feedback welcome.

EDIT: TBH, Nine News Darwin and SNSW are really just below par in comparison to let’s say…Nine News Regional Victoria. Too much have been focused on presentation and the other logistical things. Nine should just focus on producing good news and the news that people care about. Then talk about polishing presentations.

[KICK-IT]

I think for the new Queensland / Darwin market - people need to remember a few things.

• Darwin may be a capital city, but it is quite literally the smallest TV market in the country. At 130,000 people, it is way smaller than Townsville, Toowoomba, Canberra, Ballarat, Bendigo - the list goes on. OK, I think Mildura is smaller. But you get the idea. It’s really tiny - so what matters here is not the capital city status - but the size of the market and how much revenue it drives - and Darwin is tiny.

• The regional QLD bulletin covers about 1.5 million people in QLD and 130,000 in darwin - So guess where they are going to put the emphasis?

• I do agree this could have be done better:

I think what needs to happen is the first entire segment needs to be pre-taped for Darwin, to allow a true local open, local stories up top, local banter and maybe even a local weather look. Then after break 1, it can return to the QLD bulletin with national and international news.

The reason being: Regional QLD has never had 9 News - this is all new for them - they didn’t lose anything. Darwin lost a lot - and I think 9 needs to meet in the middle somewhere - and give Darwin its own segment 1. Tailored for them

[Radiohead]

But then that is kind of saying that the regional QLD bulletin should be structured around what is best for Darwin, when it’s less than 1/10th of the total “regional QLD” population ?

I sometimes wonder if Darwin would have been better off with a 6.45pm 15 minute insert at the end of say, maybe the Adelaide bulletin ?? Since at this time of the year, it’s in the same time zone, it’s the closest state capital to Darwin, and the AFL sport news content would probably be more appealing than the NRL content from QLD?

[KICK-IT]

@Radiohead

But then that is kind of saying that the regional QLD bulletin should be structured around what is best for Darwin, when it’s less than 1/10th of the total “regional QLD” population ?

No. Darwin would get it’s own set 1 - what is that 10 minutes? The rest of the 50 minutes is structured around the QLD bulletin. 1.4m people V 130,000 people

[NQCQTV2]

@KICK-IT

No. Darwin would get it’s own set 1 - what is that 10 minutes?

The first segment of 9 News QLD/Darwin before the first ad break runs from 6:00pm - 6:17pm.

While your idea is good in theory… they’ve already got to pre-record 56 minutes of content for the QLD markets local windows as it is. (Not including all the afternoon/evening news updates).

By the time you add in another 17 minutes of pre-recording for 9 News Darwin, the first segment of 9 News Darwin would be getting recorded around 4pm EST (3:30pm CST) seriously reducing the time for journalists in Darwin to actually go out and record/edit stories.

[NQCQTV2]

One thing that I think could dramatically improve the quality of 9 News Darwin (and the regional QLD versions) is to have fake live crosses embedded inside the local window.

This would be easy for Darwin to achieve - as it’s daylight at 6pm in Darwin all year. So they could actually cross to a reporter live as they’re filming the local window earlier in the afternoon, and just play it back during the local window without the word “Live” displayed anywhere.
Presenters could say “Now, we cross to … whose in … for more information”.

Not quite as easy in QLD given that 6pm is dark in Winter - but from about this time of year now, for the next 6 months, it’s entirely possible.

[NQCQTV2]

New Facebook cover image

[Nicholas]

I don’t understand why the regional and Brisbane bulletins don’t introduce the anchors name, either in a super or voice over.

[bubandbob]

The producers are probably all too busy to do that, what with all the specials and great savings to be had down at Aldi

[SydneyCityTV]

@Nicholas

I don’t understand why the regional and Brisbane bulletins don’t introduce the anchors name, either in a super or voice over.

Probably because it would be far too long (at least without speeding up the recordings to a level usually reserved for the disclaimers at the end of government/political advertising) having Opener voiceovers like…

“This is Nine News Queensland with Andrew Lofthouse and Melissa Downes”
“This is Nine News Far North Queensland with Samantha Heathwood and Jonathan Uptin”
“This is Nine News Queensland with Darren Curtis and Alison Ariotti”

Talk about an overload of syllables!

[Tom_TV7]

@SydneyCityTV

“This is Nine News Queensland with Andrew Lofthouse and Melissa Downes”

“This is Nine News Far North Queensland with Samantha Heathwood and Jonathan Uptin”

“This is Nine News Queensland with Darren Curtis and Alison Ariotti”

Nine News Perth does those kinds of openers:

This is Nine News Perth, with Tim McMillan and Emmy Kubainski

I noticed Matt O’Sullivan also did a few for Louise Momber, Alice Pooley. Tracy Vo and Michael Genovese for Perth. No reason why QLD can’t do the same.