Australia is also heavily urbanised and a massive proportion of those urban areas fall under metropolitian broadcast footprints, rather than regional broadcasters. You look at German population centres, and the fifth biggest city in the country is smaller than Adelaide, so their population is much more evenly dispersed in medium-sized cities. It’s the same in the US. There will obviously be more happening in their local areas than in our ones, which in many cases are simply too small to have anything of note going on.
As @Moe points out, Seven would eventually - while Seven is performing well on-air, affiliation fees will be good money for them (not to mention they don’t carry any extra liability of in effect doubling or tripling their infrastructure footprint)
I was more suggesting when I say “stations” should have local news inserts in today and sunrise - I was also referring to the stations in Adelaide sydney and Brisbane too.
Newcastle Gold Coast Canberra Darwin cairns etc are all
Big enough markets to have 3 minute local news at 7am. But agree Taree tamworth bunbury etc might be pushing it. But you could have say a regional Wa 3 minute news insert etc.
Don’t forget In the US and Canada too - markets as small as 500k (Newcastle size) have entire 3 hour long local breakfast shows.
It doesn’t always have to be “news” often weather, community info and interviews is good local content t too.
Tonight’s observations from Prime7’s hour of two news bulletins on the NSW North Coast.
*Probably a rarity for the local news: A pre-recorded piece by Seven News reporter Alex Hart in Bali for the Sara Connor verdict with him mentioning Kenny at the start/end.
*Two “generic regional issues” filler pieces tonight: One on the effects of plastics in waterways and another about the declining koala population and how they’re drinking more water, etc.
*WA’s new premier Mark McGowan being a Coffs Harbour High School student (including reaction from a couple of current students) was enough to make it a RVO piece in tonight’s local bulletin!
*Liz Penny and Lucy Langtry (who did a cross during tonight’s bulletin) were back reporting for Coffs Harbour and Lismore respectively tonight, after Christine Tondorf and Claire Simmonds filled in on Friday night.
*Natalie Forrest filled in for Daniel Gibson tonight…but the Opening Titles for “Prime7 News at 6.30pm” still featured Daniel Gibson and the super at the end of the local bulletin still read “Now Prime7 At 6.30 With Daniel Gibson” with Nat having to say “Daniel’s away tonight, I’m Natalie Forrest” after the Opening Headlines. Surely they could’ve at least made a generic version of the Local News Closer Super/6.30pm News Opener for when fill-in presenters read the bulletin?
On a final note, I really don’t like commenting about presenter fashion too often but when you’ve got red graphics and an overkill red set, I do have to say that having the presenters wear red (as Nat did on the 6.30pm tonight) is a bit too much IMO!
I wouldn’t attack Natalie by any means, she’s quite a decent newsreader (actually better than who she’s filling in for IMO) and seems like a lovely person. But that wasn’t the best choice by wardrobe. If it was a darker or lighter shade of red, maybe it would’ve worked but the colour of that top is too close to the colour of the set backdrop!
Yes, very true, however there is no reason Prime Productions couldn’t sell its content to Seven. There is no reason Prime couldn’t make a kitchen show or a travel program or any number of low-cost formats using their existing crew and post production assets. They’d just need some production staff and to start seeing themselves as a television company rather than an advertising outlet.
Spot on. As we all know - the selling advertising in programs broadcast over the air business (which is the business Prime is in) is DYING.
The content business is BOOMING! There is more need for content than ever. Seven is in this booming business selling content to Foxtel, the US, the UK and with production arms 7Wonder and 7Beyond.
Yes, nothing stopping them from doing this. Perhaps even go further and lease out their Canberra studios on weekends to external production companies for even more revenue or go into the Sports OB business like NBN does.
WIN managed to sell Fishing Australia and Goodsports (and whatever else) to Nine and if you go back even further regional television stations made and produced content for metro stations. It’s certainly not unprecedented in Australia.
Is Prime7 Border (Albury) local news shown in Shepparton? With SCA9’s Border North East (combined Albury and Shepparton) bulletin coming next week Prime7 would benefit to expand their local news to the Goulburn Valley.
Prime used to produce programmes of its own, for example in the 1990s they did a country music programme “Our Kinda Country” and in the 2000s a similar show “A Little Bit of Country”, the latter I recall it aired on non-Prime owned Seven affilates such as GTS/BKN and SCTV Central. And in the 1990s Cross Country a rural news programme (shown on metro Sevens at a 6am Saturday timeslot and later in the morning on Prime) was produced at Prime Tamworth.
