That they really have not a lot of competition because Local regional news in Victoria with Win news is crap as well.
now u got me thinking i think the local windows for the local news here in victoria has been shortned
No downgrade, all the Illawarra journalists and camera ops were at Natassiaâs wedding today.
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WTF. You mean thatâs why Nine and SCA did not deliver local news today to their Illawarra audience?
Surely they do not have such a poor attitude to the audience of their news product?
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To me it sounds like Nine needs to hire more reporters/crew for their Illawarra news service (although realistically, Iâm sure they wonât) if theyâre having shortages on a day one is having a wedding! 
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Not the beginning of the end as such, but perhaps the end of locality specific bulletins in favour of the hybrid version Mackay are getting.
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Surely the second best solution would be to merge Mackay with another bulletin like Wide Bay or Rockhampton and Toowoomba with Sunshine Coast? This is bad news all round.
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Who said they didnât deliver local news to the Illawarra?
Several local stories still featured, either as an RVO or using TCN reporters.
If that is good enough then they can save their money by doing that every nightâŚ
with the hybrid do you mean having the metro bullitnines but inserting the local stories in? ie like they do here with the 9news melbourne at 4pm
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Comparing the RegionalTAM universe estimates for 2018 & 2019, I might be able to understand why Nine wanted to make cutbacks in Mackay (aside from Seven most likely dominating the local news market): The number of households in Queenslandâs smallest regional sub-markets dropped by 100 while the number of individuals has dropped by 500.
However, I think the axing of the Toowoomba/Darling Downs service might be entirely ratings related. Although the number of households in that market dropped by 100, the number of individuals increased by 1,800 on the universe estimates for 2018.
If I was to make a guess as to which market might be the next in danger of losing a Nine News regional service at some point in the future, Iâd have to say Rockhampton/Central Queensland with there being a fall in total individuals by 500 between the 2018 & 2019 Universe Estimates up there.
The bulletins just about everywhere else in Queensland, Northern NSW, Southern NSW/ACT & Victoria should be safe for now with most sub-markets experiencing growth. As much as Iâm sure some viewers from that region on this forum would really like weeknight editions of Nine News Sydney back on their screens, unless viewer ratings drop alarmingly it seems unlikely that the Illawarra bulletin will be cut anytime soon because âWollongongâ (as the designated name for the market by RegionalTAM is) is growing, so too Canberra and all the Victorian markets.
Of course I canât finish without mentioning by far the biggest/largest growing market in regional Australia: Northern NSW with currently a pinch over 2.2 million residents, up considerably on the approximately 1.85 million figure of sixteen years ago (2003 being the earliest of the RegionalTAM Universe Estimates on their website). While Iâm aware of the various factors which make it a unique market such as intense parochialism in Newcastle + overlap with QTQ/TCN in the Northern & Southern fringes of the licence area respectively, I still wonder how Nine have been able to resist the temptation to rebrand NBN News to Nine News for a consistent brand at 6pm right up and down the East Coast.
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if they did cut 9 news here in victoria it would probably be the 9 news boarder north east if iam reading the unviverse estimatesf for 2019 right
Slack bastards.
If there were any justice, Nine and SCA would be made to service every frigginâ market, and if they cut even one, threaten them with the revocation of their license.
Every TV network should have that hanging over their heads. We donât need them, we need the spectrum they pay a pittance for. If theyâre not going to do anything even remotely local, well f##k them. Cut 'em off, lease the spectrum to the NBN.
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Either that or just combine regional stories into a single bulletin like they sometimes do across the summer.
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Cranky making the case for a Channel 31 Mackay.
Well, maybe I am, maybe Iâm not.
The fact is, successive governments could have, and maybe should have, introduced more television stations, or at the very least, put in very rigorous content rules. They are f##king lucky this hasnât been the case.
If a smart person within the halls of power saw how much money they could be making from the spectrum, and the wastes of space commercial television has become, theyâre f##ked six ways from Sunday.
Cutting local news bulletins should be seen as a strike against them. Personally, I reckon 7, 9 and 10, and WIN, SCA and Prime should have had their licenses revoked already based solely on the shit show people see in Newcastle (Iâm not ruling out NBN moving its news production to Sydney). Yes, Iâm pulling in the metros too as theyâre equally as responsible.
Aggregation was meant to see competition in local content - not the same shit pumped out of Sydney with f##k all variation or consideration for what the local market wants and needs.
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I find the cutbacks a little odd as itâs Nine that funds and produces the bulletins, not Southern Cross. And Southern Cross pays 50% of its revenue in return for having bulletins produced for each market.
So does this mean that the 50% rate is under review, or a different rate applies for markets without local news bulletins?
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Aggregation was about choice, I donât think thereâs EVER been any suggestion that all regional TV stations would pump out the same amount of local news and programs that NBN used to back in the 1980s. Terrestrial TV is much different now in the Netflix era.
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Agree it was mostly about choice.
The regionals were ambitious that they could keep doing local content but that was short lived.
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Thatâs all we get in the metro markets, are we complaining? It might be nice to see a locally produced program every now and then, but thatâs just how TV has to be when competing against online services.
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