Nine News Local

  1. They do a wider shot when they do the cross to sport
  2. Graphic designer renders out two versions
  3. He clearly needs some feedback from viewers based on ratings

This is about as zoomed out as I’ve ever seen the set. Thanks to @SydneyCityTV for the cap.

https://forums.mediaspy.org/uploads/default/original/2X/8/80802e22f21c125fbaf2465d45f360262ed1ee41.jpg

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That may be so, but if the ratings and advertising dollars aren’t there, that’s 8-10 staff too many.

TV Sales people always bemoan the fact that “news doesn’t make any money”. A regional news bulletin (anchored in another city) to produce can be upwards of $800,000 a year after you factor in staff and vehicle costs and equipment upgrades. A lot of stations don’t bring in $800,000 on advertising during their local news so they need advertising in other programs to make their money. If the station can’t bring in the dough anymore then the local news will be first to go. It’s even tougher when you have 2 other competing channels to find this $$ with a similar product.

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Yes, I do. But I personally think a 6pm news bulletin needs headlines. Viewers tune into WIN News
 they see headlines, viewers tune into Prime7 News
 they see headlines, viewers tune into 7 News Sydney
 they see headlines, etc.
Viewers tuning in to 9 News (Canberra/Illawarra/Riverina, etc.) should see headlines as well.

Headlines are important for a 6pm bulletin in my opinion, and the lack of them is very annoying to me.

I know that the set is tiny, but the zoomed in Vanessa shot where you can’t see anything but Vanessa and the green screen image is boring.
Fair enough, use it a little bit.
But the opener, a fair few stories, throw to ads, the closer, etc. should be zoomed out a little so that we can at least see the desk a little. Simpler to how they do when they cross to sport, or even better just like in that 9 News Now shot that @CBR has linked to.

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When the presenter appeared on 9 News Now at the start of the bulletin they used to slowly pan the camera in from a wider shot to a close up. In my opinion they should do that on the regional bulletins.

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This wide shot of the set:

With a shot like this for Canberra

And a shot similar to this for Wollongong

Could literally be achieved by this coming Monday - and would improve the appearance of the bulletin 10 fold. Actually I think it would look quite stunning.

Perhaps maybe one of our great mockers @Moe @RegionalTV or @Syd_TVChannel could show us what that would
Look like :slight_smile:

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In the appropriate mocks sub forum, of course.

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Absolutely. It’s funny how much of a cumulative impact several small things can have. I’d love for them to work on the issues in the following order of easiest to increased difficulty/effort:

  1. Fix the theme at breaks (make it stop properly like 9News Sydney instead of just fading away).
  • A quick & easy fix.
  1. Per-story backgrounds, excluding the 1st story. Ideally the city background should only be seen at the start of the bulletin, at the handovers to sport & weather, before short read/voiceover stories, and at the end of the bulletin, but as long as the generic backdrop isn’t constantly there (like now).
  • A bit more work, but backgrounds will already exist for the state & national stories, plus couldn’t they be prepared well in advance when finishing editing the local stories?
  1. Opening headlines, different for each bulletin (Canberra, Illawarra, etc.)
  • As this should happen as close to 18:00 as practical it’s a bit trickier during that busy time, but it is needed for the main evening bulletin.

PS: At least tonight the theme finished instead of being cut off with the switch to ACA.

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Same shot, different markets:

Some local full screen graphics

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That’s pathetic for SCA9 to quote “reach” (which I believe is every viewer who tuned-in during a program for at least 1min @TV.Cynic?)

When WIN News Wollongong clearly smashed them!

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Interesting that Ballarat is not the biggest regional city (second biggest to Melbourne) in VIC, Geelong obviously is. It’s just Geelong is part of the Melbourne TV market.

Ballarat: ~100k (although the TV sub-market catchment would probably be bigger, covering much of western VIC).
Geelong: ~250k

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Yeah that’s so interesting.

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I thought Bendigo population might of been bigger by now their has been talks of them overtaking Ballarat

Also very interesting :slight_smile: is the population of the Gold Coast for OzTAM ratings purposes - 783,000.

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Agree whole heartedly with NQCQTV2 and TV-ACT on these zero cost fixes. I don’t understand why the top story isn’t presented from a slightly wider shot (as used for the Sports cross) with Vanessa centre screen. I actually think they’ve made the green screen ‘window’ too large. It makes Vanessa look like she’s floating. I’d have gone for something like a plasma screen look as used by ABC a few years ago. They could easily reduce the size of the green screen by adding more of a frame to the inside.

Regarding the theme fade at ad breaks, this is likely to be due to timing out (though I’m just making a supposition based on NBN). As the local windows will vary in length, the transitions in to break will be used to pad the window back to time - so they can pick up the ‘live feed’ on time. It seems the method they are using is to have the full 60 second news them set to images, and they just play out until they hit the time marker, then fade out. The way around this is to ‘back time’ - a very simple trick where you start your time out music dead on time, in the background, while the recorded playout is finishing. Then you fade IN to the time out bed that has already been running on time. That way the hard finish meets your timing point.Uploading


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Some issues in tonight’s bulletin.

Opener, with the first story taking too long to play:

Closer, with the story cutting off half-way through:

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As requested on Monday night, here is a short montage of the Canberra bulletin:

To compare to the Illawarra montage from the same night:

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Yep, I agree 100%.
Viewers are clearly aware that Vanessa is sitting in front of a large screen due to the sport cross.
Why not, at least for the start of the bulletin, closer, and throw to ads, zoom the image out a bit so that we can see a little bit of the set away from the TV, as you say, just like is done in sport.

It would be easy to achieve now without needing to do anything major.

One other minor thing I’d like to see is a change to Vanessa’s script at the start. The way she goes from “Good evening.” straight into a story seems off and a little cold, especially when there’s no opening headlines.

It needs to be something a bit more inviting like “Good evening, thanks for joining us. Firstly tonight, 
”, just to make it a bit more friendly!

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I don’t think many newsreaders say “thanks for joining us”. Sounds very clichĂ©.

“Good evening” is usually enough if it’s connected directly to the subsequent sentence without an awkward pause. For example: “Good evening and welcome to Nine News. New South Wales is struggling to cope with another day of scorching weather, with the Premier warning of potential blackouts in some regional communities”.

Although maybe a lack of headlines beforehand makes the whole thing disjointed.

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I know it’s a much bigger screen but surely making sifting the presenters a bit further apart from each other would look good TEN10 did it (and their desk is roughly the same size).

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