Nine News Local

SCA Nine’s ratings continue to slide in the Illawarra at 6pm a month after the introduction of the regional news bulletin to the market. Mark Ferguson’s Seven News continues to benefit by picking up those disaffected Nine viewers with Prime extending their lead significantly over the past four weeks in the 6-7pm slot. WIN’s ratings are fairly steady and they remain in second place with Nine now a distant third.

It’ll be interesting to see how long Nine will stick with O’Hanlon’s bulletin if this downward trend continues.

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Where are you getting this information from? @NewsWeary

Now the presentation has been fixed there are two big issues that need to be worked on as far as I can tell:

  1. Marketing & Promotion - other than news updates and perhaps the 6 week old launch promos re-versioned as “Weekdays” - does Nine/SCA do any advertising for 9 News SNSW? Do they do topical promos promoting what will be on the news tomorrow and tonight? Do they do off-their-own-air advertising? Do any promos at all run in other ness programming like Today, ACA and primetime?

  2. Social Media. Social Media can help fuel a massive “word of mouth” - they need to be running promos in each local area telling people to follow them on FB and Twitter. And they need to build up their social media presence. The more active they are - the more people like share comment and tag their friends on video content, and more people in turn like the page and start getting familiar with venessa and the Service.

Perhaps Nine needs to reinstate the Sydney bulletin in the Illawarra but with the inclusion of local content windows? Although it’s a bit of a double edged sword really. While the primary Wollongong/Nowra part of the licence area likely has strong ties to Sydney, I’m not sure that the same can be said about communities who live further down the South Coast.

Then again the regional networks seem to have separate feeds for the Wollongong/Illawarra and South Coast markets for local advertising, so perhaps this capability should be utilised by SCA Nine for different news content by having Nine News Sydney (with local windows) air on Nine Wollongong with the regional edition of Nine News on Nine South Coast?

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I think they need to get the bulletin up to scratch, stick
With it 12 months,market it well - and THEN decide a long term move

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Fair point. One month of ratings isn’t quite enough to get an idea of long term viewer trends.

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Winter ratings might be a better gauge. Also, not sure if they need to win the timeslot to make money; advertising from all markets combined might make the bulletin viable.

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9’ Perth also routinely comes 4th and that’s not on chopping block

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Correct. It believe these both bulletins are close to cost neutral to make, and in fact are already profitable for both parties.

  • SCA pay a higher percentage to Nine, but because they can sell advertising on Nine for more than advertising on Ten, they still make more money now after affiliation fees are paid.

  • Nine receive more money from SCA than they did from WIN due to higher affiliation percentage, which more than covers the additional costs of making these news bulletins.

The only reason they would need to worry about they bulletins is if they have a negative impact on sale, most likely by ratings dropping significantly.
Even if ratings don’t change, they will likely still be able use the lure of having local news in generate more advertising dollars.

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Not something I would compare it too. Nine hasn’t won in Perth for decades and TBH, I don’t think the main reasons why they rate below Seven is at all to do with what’s wrong with Nine, more what Seven have. Nine’s 6pm News has seen a dramatic decline from the number 1 position since the metro bulletins were replaced. I have said all along that replacing the metro bulletin in its entirety wasn’t a smart move, especially in the short term and I still believe that.

However, in saying that, Victoria’s local news seems to be well-produced and of a higher standard than NSW’S.

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Probably because they got Vanessa and Victoria got Jo. The presenters pretty much explain it all

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Don’t forget, Nine Perth is not only a metropolitan city, it’s also O&O by Nine. Not really a good comparison between that and a regional affiliate that Nine only produces news for…

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Right. But the idea you axe a newscast because it’s coming 3rd of 4th after a month on the air is not really grounded in fact. Obviously Nine and SCA see a long term future in local news providing local news to 22 regions in Australia. I think they’ll stick at it longer than one month.

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I don’t think Nine will have the stomach to stick with it if the primary channel share hits 16-17% between 6-7pm in the next couple of months. It’s already on the verge of dipping below 20% in the Illawarra. There’ll come a point when they’ll have to cut their losses and give viewers what they want if there’s no sign of improvement or they’ll risk damaging the entire Nine News brand.

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I can see it now

Regional gets dumped, replaced with what was on offer before and some promo along the lines of ‘9 News x, offering you more news from the reporters and presenters you know and trust’

At present I disagree with this

I doubt SCA really cares too much which way 9 News Regional goes. They don’t have to contribute anything other than their 50% cheque. The worst thing that will happen to SCA if 9 News Regional is cancelled is that they will have to make their own 2 minute noodle updates once more.

Can we say that Nine see a ‘long term future’ in local news? You’re right, they’re not going to can it after a month, but they’re not necessarily going to be committed to the product in the future after only airing it for a month. Any expansion of local news is great, but at this time I think it is more of an experiment for Nine than being a product they’re committed to for the long term

Still curious why Nine have tried their hand at regional news. There was no hint or sign that Nine were going to contribute anything in terms of local news when they were asking for 50% of WINs affiliate fees, so why now, now that they get 50% from SCA who has less terrestrial coverage to begin with.

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I would say that SCA would have insisted on Nine providing local news bulletins as part of the 50% deal… WIN went the other way and offered less but maintained their own local news.

Nine are probably secretly hoping that the Regional bulletins fail, it would certainly save them some $$$$, though if that happens, SCA may well be arguing for a reduction on the 50%…

Or a compromise might be that Nine may produce some Raiders, Dragons or Cowboys NRL games for SCA markets (in lieu of game featuring other teams that the rest of the network would get).

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If that was the case they would have limited the experiment to one market.

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the only grip i have is that after 2 weeks they still havent gotten maryborough vic weather right for what it was for the day today it said it was 21 and i know for a fact it was alot warmeer then that

Does Western Vic mention Geelong’s weather???

Here’s your explanation: http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDV60801/IDV60801.94849.shtml

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@NewsWeary @xyz223 @Radiohead

I’m not sure what ratings you have seen - the only ones I’ve seen were 2-3 Canberra Times and Illawarra Mercury articles on week 1. Giving ratings for a week, in only 2 (Canberra and Wollongong) of the 15 sub markets Nine will eventually have news. So to conclude the success of a 15 market roll out based on 1 week in 2 markets is beyond me.

We know that Wollongong is WIN’s hometown and they have 3 decades of local news dominance. We also know that Wollongong and Canberra both had a “high quality” Nine bulletin at 6 for decades that is now gone. It’s going to take time - and a lot of it - and an improving of the product. We all know that.

But 9 News SNSW goes out to 1.4 million people in 4 regions. We’ve seen ratings for 2 regions for 1 week.

As for the deal in place between Nine and SCA - we can only all speculate. But as with any deal it is a deal two sides agreed upon because they both agree it’s mutually beneficial. My guess it neither party could just “axe” the news as it’s party of the affiliate agreement. My GUESS is that both parties agreed it was mutually beneficial to have local news. Im not so sure it was all SCA’s pushing as they have shown they have zero interest in local news - and they would have got a massive bump just be tying up with Nine over Ten. So perhaps Nine wanted it, and did thesis and realized with 15% increased affilkaition fees they can more than cover the cost and in fact profit from it.

In 6 months to a year we’ll know - and as the quality of 9 News SNSW increases hopefully people will drift back from 7 News to a good quality local / national hybrid bulletin. Personally I think Vanesa is a big problem and needs to go. But that wont happen for a least a year.

Lets not be so quick to judge when we have seen ratings for 1 week in two press reports in 2 of 15 markets.

Especially when we know the quality of the bulletins was pretty woeful at the start.

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