Perhaps it confirms my thinking that an hour is a bit long for news, and a 30 mn composite bulletin would be best.
I doubt any of the Prime7 local news viewers leaving at 18:30 are turning over to Nine to watch the 2nd half of NBN News; some will go for Ten’s The Project but there’s probably quite a scattering to all over the place for 18:30-onwards.
(Not long ago 9News Canberra claimed victory for the 18:00 - 18:30 timeslot as opposed to the full 18:00 - 19:00 slot.)
I know it probably won’t work due to the half hour blocks the stations work within, but if they could insert 10 minutes of each regions top stories into the relevant market, it might make more sense than an hour local/national/international bulletin or a half hour local news and half hour national news bulletin.
Perhaps a Today Tonight magazine style show returning to 6:30pm on Seven and maybe allow Prime to come in part way through and have the host welcome “Prime TV” viewers in the same way it has traditionally done on Nine with the cricket over summer?
Back in the 2012-13 era I thought Prime7 had a fairly decent offering for the NSW North Coast during the 6pm hour. But these days? Somehow, I’d actually prefer to watch NBN News instead of Prime7’s two bulletins over the course of an hour.
Of course, that’s only from the perspective of a Sydneysider who’s occasionally visited the NSW North Coast viewing area over the last five years. I’d certainly be very interested to hear the perspective of locals (maybe @ByronBay?) who have Prime7 and NBN as their main sources for news every weeknight!
I’m pretty sure the NSW Central Coast would mainly be watching Nine (or Seven) News from Sydney, knowing how that region gets both metro & regional TV channels.
It’d be very interesting to see the Northern Rivers ratings for the Prime7-ised version of Seven News Sydney that is “Prime7 News at 6.30pm” with Daniel Gibson, that’s for sure.
Wasn’t it when Seven delayed their Sydney bulletin into the region at 6:30 and had pure local news at 6? I’m not too sure whether the quality is too different especially when Prime7 News at 6:30 is basically the same, just branded Prime 7 I guess.
If Seven and Prime had a Scooby Doo, they’d do what Nine and $CA does - but improved. Google Canada Now and you’ll see what I mean when the CBC did it.
A solid 30 minute block of local news, as live as you can get it. Even if you have to do it out of a broom closet with a small robotic camera (see TWIT.tv and any decent live video site). Then go back to Sydney for the more important state, national, international news and sport. Go back for weather in the last five minutes. Get rid of the metro-related stories - some idiot crashing their car on the M5 is important for me living in Sydney, but not for my parents in the Hunter.
I give Prime7 some credit for doing this 30 minute bulletin, but seriously, Daniel Gibson? Couldn’t they get someone a bit more senior and less reminiscent of the love child of Grant “Can’t Handle The Gees” Denyer and Tim “Leather Muppet” Bailey?
This is a nice theory, but there is a lot of evidence to show this is not played out everywhere. The first thing to note is that NRTV had a one-hour composite bulletin that was axed shortly after aggregation.
Viewers aren’t loyal to TV stations from 25 years ago and this is true of all of Southern Cross Ten’s stations. After aggregation, ratings with Ten regionals dropped so low every single bulletin was axed. People just stopped tuning in to their local TV station, with which they were familiar, and opted for the station that offered the better network programming.
This is true in Canberra, Cairns, Bendigo, Coffs Harbour and Townsville just for starters.
Additionally, WIN had a lot of success stealing those viewers in new regional markets, on the strength of Nine network programming.
Canberra’s a good case. WIN-9 started broadcasting there in 1989 with a 30 minute local news bulletin up against CTC-10 news hour. Within three years, WIN-9 was number one. Eventually CTC-10 Canberra news was axed.
Since WIN became WIN-10, we have seen exactly the same pattern. Viewers are migrating back to the Nine Network and the news service on CTC-9. We’ve seen viewers stick with Nine, not with the format or the station.
There is a lot at play with viewers habits - including chemistry of the presenters - which Prime has done VERY well to boost with their new format. The lead-in show is also vital. Prime also has very good camera work and their packages generally are far superior to WIN. But the main thing is Seven is a very strong network in the ratings.
I would bet penny to a pound that Prime7 would be number one in Canberra if they did a newshour with Kenny and Madeline.
You’ve made some very good points there.
Re, NSW North Coast news ratings from an historical perspective: Didn’t Prime win the ratings up there after NRTV/Ten Northern NSW axed their service in the mid '90s but lost the lead to NBN News when Prime Local News briefly experimented with a 5.30pm run in 1996 (to accommodate for live broadcasts of Seven Nightly News & Today Tonight)? I’m sure I remember reading something among those lines before anyway…
I agree!
Not that it’s likely to happen anytime soon, but a Prime7 Newshour with Madelaine & Kenny presenting live segments for state/national/international content and pre-recorded local windows in all of their Regional NSW/ACT markets would probably rate really well IMO.
I absolutely agree with this. I think Seven should (but they probably won’t, which is sad but certainly not surprising) restart bulletins in Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong and maybe GC (which still receives Prime’s signal if I’m not mistaken) and do inserts for every region. Maybe get another reader from somewhere to do something similar to Victoria, and knowing the quality of their broadcast in regional areas, I think they’ll definitely rate better than Nine’s second-rate bulletins, not to mention Seven News Sydney in its current state.
You could be right. When I was working at Prime in Canberra - it was very much a “Tamworth station” in terms of management (they wouldn’t show Will & Grace on Prime - thus was the red neckness). It’s always been strong in NNSW. Canberra experimented with the 5.30 local news thing too and at the time we were shipping Ross Symonds down from Sydney to read it. Total disaster in the ratings.
Even without that change in Canberra, as long as Prime’s “zero-cost” relay of Seven News Sydney is No. 1 there overall, a locally-based newshour may no longer be necessary.
On the other hand, I think if Prime7 wants to raise its level in its newshour by expanding and relaunching, seems like it’ll be a tough challenge. I don’t say it won’t work, but Prime makes their news service work slowly but surely.
Not now though.
Well, we may agree with that but I still need to wait for the official ratings year results before I make my thoughts out of this. Would Prime7 counter SCA if 21 weeks went to their favour? Heaven knows for me.
Not that good if you consider this:
Canberra is the state capital city of Australia Capital Territory and also the capital city of Australia. Canberra has population of around 390,000 which account for 1.64% of Australia population. The population is comprised of approximately 50.5% females and 49.5% males. The city is inland between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne, nestled between Australia’s highest alpine mountains and the South East Coast of New South Wales
Have those numbers consistently continued in Aug and Sept?
No, I don’t think so. I would say we’d need to see Prime7 in third place for a year before they’d consider a bulletin of their own. I’m sure they would be fine with second place indefinitely.
They’d need to go hard to steal the top spot (Adelaide standard of bulletin I would say) - and they wouldn’t want to risk their success in regional NSW (by borrowing presenters etc) to only get number 2 in Cbr.
Having said that, they have a great setup in Watson, it would be great to see it broadcasting to its own backyard again. If Kerry Stokes bought Prime, you never know - he used to own the station next door!
This is a great piece on Prime from 1993 - with a good discussion of the 60 minute composite bulletin they launched in Canberra that year. Look out for a young Melissa Doyle back in the day!
I’d also be very interested to know more info about how the Canberra TV news ratings are currently fairing, particularly how the commercial bulletins are fairing against ABC News Canberra.
Although since there probably isn’t a modern day Mark Wallace commenting on Canberra’s broadcast media, I highly doubt we’ll get any decent reports (outside of network press releases, which often don’t tell the full story) anytime soon.
Anyway, onto historical matters…
I’ve seen that clip before and it’s a great report indeed.
From the info I can gather, Canberra’s “Prime 6 O’Clock News” in it’s original hour long composite format only lasted about eight months before the format changed to a 30 minute local bulletin and a delayed broadcast of Seven Nightly News from Sydney at 6.30pm. A shame really because it sounded like a fairly high quality news service for it’s time, but I guess Capital and (to a much lesser extent, but still) WIN being more established competition didn’t really help Prime’s relaunched bulletin back then.
ABC Canberra news generally has about double the viewers of the nearest commercial local news - partly as there are more viewers at 7pm and also due to the demographics of the Capital. My quick google hasn’t been able to locate recent numbers.
Indeed, you are right. The bulletin launched the career of Jessica Rowe (weather presenter) and Mel Doyle. It was an expensive bulletin and really had a good stab at WIN and CTC. They stole anchor Geoff HIscock from Capital Television and a clutch of other staff. Though it was second/third in the ratings most nights and was scaled back to 30 minute local in 1993 until its demise in 2001.
