Those studios I don’t think have produced anything (except maybe some commercials?) for over 20 years. Must be some major upgrading needed or at least cleaning out some major cobwebs if they’re going to consider using them? 
But if SCA were to use Bendigo it would be good to have some regional TV production back in Victoria, now that Prime and WIN have moved their Victorian news bulletins to Canberra and Wollongong.
I have found the following Real Estate listing of the other property: http://www.realcommercial.com.au/property-offices-qld-garbutt-501387299
It looks like SCA still have the lease on most of this property. Maybe being a local you can investigate further?
Yeah, i’ll definitely go and check it out when i’m in the area next.
So that means the Nine feeds in regional Victoria, Queensland and Southern NSW would initially be a clone of the broken hill and SA nine feed at first with local ads, 2 minute local news updates and state news bulletins being the differences from July 1 until further notice?
I’m sure that the temporary disappearance of Nine HD and 9Life will be an annoyance to regional viewers (if I lived in a regional area, I’d probably be annoyed too), but good to see that SCA are actually committing to broadcast these services. Considering that there was NO main HD channel from Nine broadcasting anywhere for over five years, a wait of maybe two or three months for some areas really isn’t that bad in comparison!
TBH, I would probably just be thankful that SCA even plans to run some of the multichannels from Day 1. We could’ve very easily been in a situation where viewers had to wait for 9Go! and 9Gem via SCA Nine.
It’ll be quite interesting to see what these new SCA Nine local news services are like, when they’re eventually launched of course.
Presuming that SCA plan to get all Nine Network channels On-Air before launching the new local news services, perhaps we might be looking at a Late 2016/Early 2017 launch? In any case, I personally wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see a few announcements of major presenter/reporter acquisitions (possibly presenters/reporters who would be familiar to viewers via exposure on WIN/Prime7/Seven Local News) for the new local news services.
Sure, while SCA could easily just use the current SC10 Update presenters for the new SCA Nine bulletins, would a relatively unknown presenter currently seen on short news updates really be the most ideal presenter of a new SCA Nine local news service against the established presenters on Seven/Prime7 and possibly WIN? I wouldn’t think so.
And yes I know that SCA Nine’s new news services will most likely be in an NBN-style format (no complaints from me if that’s the case) with maybe three groups of presenters for each market, they would need some on the field reporters and camera crew, etc for any packaged reports.
Ha. I thought everyone was talking about the old Townsville studios on The Strand. This is where local news was produced until 2001.
I think the most likely option will be a produced out of Canberra in a daily mini-news bulletin to be aired just before or during Nine News. Maybe using existing radio journalists (where SCA already owns radio stations) to also take on video journalist duties (maybe 1 news and 1 sports story a day) with lots of file or sourced video to fill (like archival vision of the local water supply or external council chamber shots). Weather would be written by the presenter. I don’t think we’ll see the vast increases to staff capital and opening of new studios but I wishfully hope they do.
I don’t think Southern Cross are planning an NBN style bulletin (yes, I have read what is in the forums) as it would require a huge amount of money (new set etc.) and don’t know if they have the facilities to do 3 bulletins live simultaneously. Also a relaunched Southern Cross News will lose credibility and viewers fast if they can’t get place names right or understand geography (barring the mess they’ve put to air the last 12 years) - producing updates is a different kettle of fish than producing an actual local news bulletin.
If SCA can’t get full local news up quickly - that opens the door for Prime, who would probably be in a better position than SCA to expand their news service.
There no longer being full local news on ‘Nine’ for any length of time will disrupt viewing habits. If Prime could launch a 7pm local news in Vic/SNSW in time for July 1 - they could just pick up pretty much all of WIN’s audience - even if WIN did keep local news, it probably would be on at 6 following Ten News.
With Prime already doing so well in the ratings in these areas, they are viewers who might well never go back.
With Life - SCA should run the metro feed until they have the capacity to localise it. Making sure that viewers can keep watching their favourite shows during the affiliation swap is worth it.
It would certainly be a slap in the face for viewers if Extra is up and running and Life wasn’t.
The only real options that satisfy the statement of a one hour composite bulletin are either SC local windows added to the 9 News metro bulletin.
Or a full one hour SC produced local bulletin.
I personally don’t think the first option is likely, unless the 9 News metro presenters are going to read out the local window headlines (which I don’t think is likely). Because otherwise it’ll be odd having random different presenters appearing in a chroma key studio during the middle of the metro bulletin, and I don’t think 9 themselves would be too happy with that, given their branding is used, personally.
So I think SC produced local bulletins are the most likely option. Although, I do agree that they’ll likely be produced from Canberra.
But I think if SC go down this path, they need some stronger presenters than the lackluster team they currently have, otherwise there’s no way they’ll be able to compete against already established local news services.
Personally, I’d like to see them do NBN News style bulletins, presented from within their respective states, opening with pre-recorded local news stories (live in 1 market), then followed by live national news stories.
The regional Victoria stations will take feeds from GTV Melbourne; Queensland from QTQ Brisbane; and Southern NSW from TCN Sydney, as well as 9Gem and 9Go! from each capital city.
It looks like in these areas will lose 9HD and 9Life, despite them being available currently via WIN. Southern Cross just don’t have the infrastructure, or so they say.
They could easily record a ‘now here’s what’s happening in your region’ throw - and plan the bulletin so that they don’t tease stories they won’t be showing in regional areas.
So this kind of thing, but professional:
Until they get nine HD and 9life up and running. Is GEM in meantime going to be a HD or SD feed to start with?
I think it could go either way. Is Nine still churning out a full HD feed of 9Gem for Imparja?
My guess is that Southern Cross’ Nine-affiliated markets (regional Victoria, Queensland and Southern NSW) will operate three SD services.
I doubt that 9Gem would be upscaled back to HD only to be scaled back down again when 9HD rolls out in those markets.
The main annoyance is, these services have just been introduced in March.
Most people are now used to the new LCN’s and using the new HD channel, and 9Life.
Only to have these services removed 4 months after launch, (with a possible LCN shake-up).
Then another 1-2 months (potentially) before the services are returned (with a potential 3rd LCN shake-up).
Of course It’s not SCA’s fault, it’s just a bad set of cirumstances due to SCA not being ready for these channels and the affiliation changing obviously.
But to the general public it’s going to be a complete annoyance having HD for 4 months, only to lose it for 1-2 months before it returns again.
From the SCA FAQs posted above it sounds like there shouldn’t be an LCN change.
So at the moment Southern Cross broadcast 5 streams:
Ten in MPEG-2 SD (Localised)
One in MPEG-2 HD (Localised)
Eleven in MPEG-2 SD (Localised)
TVSN in MPEG-2 SD (National)
Aspire in MPEG-2 SD (National)
In comparison, WIN broadcast 7 streams:
WIN/Nine in MPEG-2 SD (Localised)
WIN/Nine HD in MPEG-4 HD (Localised)
GEM in MPEG-2 SD (Localised)
Go in MPEG-2 SD (Localised)
Life in MPEG-4 SD (Localised)
Extra in MPEG-4 SD (National)
Gold in MPEG-4 SD (National)
So therefore, SCA currently have the ability to broadcast 1 HD and 2 SD channels in each region, plus 2 SD channel with the same content in all markets. (All in MPEG-2)
So surely the following would be the best option (complete with LCNs), using existing infrastructure until they’ve completed their upgrades.
8: Nine - MPEG-2 SD, Localised (Replaces SCTen stream on LCN 5)
80: Reference to 8 - place holder for future MPEG-4 HD
81: Reference to 8
82: GEM - MPEG-2 HD or SD, Localised (Replaces One stream on LCN 50).
83: Go - MPEG-2 SD, Localised (Replaces Eleven stream on LCN 55).
84: Life - MPEG-2 SD, National (Replaces TVSN stream on 54) - change to MPEG-4 localised when upgrade complete.
85: Reference to 86 - place holder for future Extra stream in MPEG-4
86: Aspire - MPEG-2 SD, National (Same as current channel on LCN 56) - change to MPEG-4 national when upgrade complete.
At least this way no content is lost to viewers. They won’t get an HD stream of the main channel, but at least the content from this is still available.
The only concern I have with this proposal, which is why I haven’t dumped Aspire and put Nine HD in MPEG-2 HD, is that it could be a bad idea to make content available in MPEG-2, only for it to be changed to MPEG-4 later. This runs the risk of upsetting views on MPEG-2-only TV when they lose access to content later on.
Ultimately it’s not exactly an ideal situation having to launch before everything can get setup perfectly.
9Life can remain in MPEG-2, as per the Nine mux, provided that Aspire and Extra are at a low enough bitrate.
Aspire and Extra would be too low, I think. Nine can use MPEG-2 for 9Life because they only have 1 home shopping channel.
Technically, would it be too hard to run Aspire and Extra in MPEG4 at a low bitrate with 9Life running in MPEG2?
Also while I know that it definitely won’t happen, I think a decent solution (at least temporarily) would be to run Nine’s main channel only in MPEG2 HD with the multichannels in SD because realistically, wouldn’t a majority of viewers in regional areas later to adapt Digital TV have access to at least MPEG2 broadcasts of HD channels? It’s a somewhat different situation compared to the capital cities where especially in markets like Sydney, you’ve got Pay TV retransmissions, more older Digital TV equipment and goodness knows what else that justifies the continuation of a MPEG2 SD service.
I wonder if broken hill and regional SA who is served by SCA nine, I wonder if the GEM is still in HD? Maybe what ever they have could be the case for the other areas?
But then it’s more likely GEM will be in SD, as there’s no point in up scaling it to HD and back while the area wait for nine HD.
Or they could just dump Aspire like they did in Tasmania when they launched Racing.com