Personally I think Vanessa O’Hanlon might’ve made for a better weather presenter on the Southern NSW/ACT bulletins (remembering that’s what she did at ABC News Breakfast before moving to Nine) although I can definitely understand why they decided on recorded forecasts from Gavin Morris in Newcastle.
With their histories at WIN News (important when targeting the key Illawarra and Canberra markets), either Danielle Post or Natassia Appoloni probably should be the main newsreader for Nine News Southern NSW/ACT. Nine had the right idea in that regard for the Regional QLD bulletins with Paul Taylor and Samantha Heathwood + Paul Murphy on Sport.
Having said all that, it’ll probably be difficult to crack the Illawarra market until Geoff Phillips (who to the best of my knowledge, is a local media icon) retires from WIN News, while Nine News may never be #1 in Canberra due to the unique demographical factors that make ABC TV and radio particularly popular there.
My main issue with any Canberra bulletin - whoever presents it on whatever channel - is that they are…well, Canberra-centric. The rest of the viewing area may as well not exist, even though all channels trumpet their news as being relevant to the viewing region as a whole. And frankly, I couldn’t possibly care less what happens in Canberra.
What do you expect? 3 stories a day out of Cooma? There’s a decent amount of Queanbeyan news in the bulletin but it’s still a crappy format with crappy presentation and a wooden presenter.
The local journos on the ground are the best thing about the bulletin but unfortunately you have to sit through the day’s car crashes and crime in Sydney first.
When it started, it was anything but. Vanessa would say ‘we cross to Canberra’… then they’d cross to Queanbeyan. Can you imagine Peter Overton saying ‘we cross now to Sydney’ ?
An occasional acknowledgement that places other than Canberra exist in the viewing region would be pleasant. But Canberra is such an insular, absurdly parochial place (the number of sportspeople, for example, who are from Queanbeyan or who lived in Canberra for 10 minutes but who are forever after labelled as “Canberra athletes”) that almost anything could happen elsewhere and it wouldn’t be mentioned.
Each to their own. As I said I don’t give a damn what happens in Canberra so I don’t watch any news bulletin that originates there. The insularity and parochialism are too cringeworthy for mine.
I am reading this from Europe and laughing myself silly at this comment. Have you never been to Sydney or Melbourne? I’m not even going to dissect what is wrong with this comment as the evidence is very clearly to the contrary. Simply open a week’s worth of Canberra Times newspapers or watch a week’s worth of ABC Canberra news and note down how many non-Canberra stories appear in the first three pages or five minutes. Compare to the similar outlets in any of the big five metros and you will find it’s plain wrong.
I started my career at 2GN Goulburn and also worked at 2XL in Cooma. I can tell you that in reality not much happens in these towns. I can also tell you that many people in Goulburn watch Illawarra television just as readily as Canberra.
As someone who watches 9 News Canberra from abroad, it appears there is a decent coverage of Queanbeyan issues.
I also lived for many years in Tuggeranong; a satellite city in the ACT of 85,000 people. Now, I could argue that “Tuggeranong” may as well not exist, because they don’t mention it every night on the Canberra news. The same might be said of Geelong, Campbelltown or Loganholme.
News is about prioritising reports of events that have happened in an order that appeals to the broadest audience. Admittedly 9 Regional is under resourced and is produced outside of its viewing area, which puts it at a disadvantage, but given WIN is now branded as “Canberra Region” I think we can forgive Nine for focusing on its main viewing city, just as Darwin, Gold Coast and every metro market does.
Presumably because all live crosses on Nine News regional bulletins go to the whole market and for whatever reason, it’s easier to have a generic backdrop behind the presenters during the live crosses.
