Given that they’re now on at different times I decided to watch 9 News Sydney tonight before 9 News North Queensland… knowing that the Sydney bulletin is one of the most liked in the country, while the regional bulletin is widely critisised.
Comparing the two of them, I can only conclude the criticism from the regional bulletins is mostly influenced by having the local stories crammed in one quick block, and the poor presentation.
The amount of hyper-local Sydney stories on the Sydney bulletin was relatively comparable to the amount of hyper-local Townsville stories on the Townsville bulletin… the remainder of the bulletin filled with nearly the exact same national stories airing in nearly the exact same order.
The only glaring differences were that the Sydney-based stories were spread out a little, presentation is obviously far better, and there were live crosses in the Sydney bulletin.
In reality, if the regional bulletin could utilise a bunch more live crosses, and had the local window spread out as multiple smaller local windows, with a better looking set, the bulletin would be so much better, and I can only assume, critisised far less.
There’s also the expectation of what local news means. In the city, people consider news from that city just as important and relevant as national and international news, and even major stories from other cities are viewed as being acceptable.
In regional areas, viewers are used to local news being almost 100% local - with a lot of “out-of-region” stories still having some sort of local significance - sometimes even being generic enough that they seem like they’re local when they’re not - but more importantly, they’ve never contained big city news. While I have no doubt that your suggestions would make a better bulletin, there will still be the factor of viewers not expecting their local news to contain any city, national or international news.
Oh dear, regular Jo Hall updates airing tonight that are one week old (Brownlow red carpet, Trent Cotchin cleared to play in grand final, etc).
I assume it would just take a typo at SCA’s playout for it to happen - wonder if it’s just with the 9 Border North East Vic updates or if other regions have noticed it too?
I’ve noticed over the last week watching 9 News NQ that there’s an issue with the temperatures in the nightly weather report that’s just recently appeared and is occurring every night.
At the start of the report, we get a full screen overview of the current day’s conditions in both Cairns and Townsville, before we see the current day’s conditions for all other NQ centres on a map.
The problem I’ve noticed is, every single night, the figures for Cairns and Townsville shown on the map are completely different to what was just shown on the graphics beforehand.
These caps are from Friday night as I didn’t record the bulletin tonight (but the same error occurred).
A check with the BOM shows that the values displayed in the full screen overview for Townsville are correct (Cairns is incorrect), and the values on the map for Townsville (and a shockingly large amount of other centres) are incorrect (Cairns is correct).
The issue isn’t with the forecasts though.
The forecasts are always correct, and reflect the BOMs 4:30pm issue.
The issues are occurring with the observations.
I could see how there could be issues with the observed maximum temperature if one of them was entered too early.
But we’ve got a case here where the minimum temperature from the morning is displayed correctly in one place, and incorrectly in another… there’s no logical reason for that, as you can get the observed minimum temps from the BOM website at 7:30am in the morning.
That prerecorded story from Damian Ryan aired on the Sydney bulletin to open as well, with the live cross afterwards.
The prerecorded story that aired in Regional QLD 1 hour later had been slightly modified with newer information from when it aired on the Sydney bulletin 1 hour earlier. The new information was mentioned in the Sydney bulletin at around 6:45pm AEDT, so I was really impressed to see it had been slotted into the regional story so quickly.
On a similar note, I don’t see why 9 News don’t use these live crosses on the regional bulletin?
If it’s a national/international story that has a live cross shown on the capital city bulletin, why don’t they also get the reporter to cross live to the regional bulletin when the story is covered on the regional bulletin.
They could have had the live cross, then prerecorded story on Brisbane, and run the prerecorded story first on Regional with the live cross straight after.
The live crosses are essential IMO to make the bulletin feel current, and the more of them, the better.
