[quote=“WAtvVideos, post:139, topic:217, full:true”]
I found a movie opener! Apologies for quality.[/quote]Great find mate. Southern Cross used to do a similar thing to this with one of their idents morphing into a movie intro in the late '90s. I do have a recording of this somewhere that hopefully I can find to share.
Guys we don’y know how well the show did - the press release has no context - “the most watched program” - of what?
The timeslot? The hour? For Prime7? For the night? All very different.
And it says a peak audience of 400k - we don’t know what other shows in NNSW/SNSW/VIC/ACT “peaked” at to compare it to - so how anyone can draw a conclusion from this us beyond me.
1 Like
Hey, it was the 90s. No apology needed.
1 Like
Of course, that’s the whole point. They want to talk themselves up and be as vague as possible in the hope of getting a headline somewhere. That’s why we need journalism… to dig through the spin… 
3 Likes
Prime Local News North Coast promo from 1996. You can see current NBN newsreader Natasha Beyersdorf towards the end
5 Likes
Didn’t she end up marrying the Newcastle presenter Brett Lavaring? By the way great find with the video lol. Don’t suppose you have any intros/bulletins from Newcastle from the 90’s?
1 Like
Yes, she did end up marrying Brett Lavaring.
2 Likes
Prime Local News North Coast update from 1996. With Emma Griffiths.
3 Likes
Prime Local News for the North Coast was produced from Tamworth (with the same presenters on both the North Coast and North West bulletins all throughout that time, I presume) from Northern NSW aggregation in 1992 until production moved to Canberra last year, right?
And Prime’s local news didn’t last all that long at 5.30pm in most regions back in 1996, did it?
Unfortunately it’s only been in the last few years or so that I’ve had the opportunity to see the North Coast version of Prime7 News (during trips in the area and of course more recently, the nightly YouTube uploads), so I’d be rather interested to hear a bit more about the history of Prime7 News on the North Coast (or anywhere in general)!
2 Likes
About 4 months from memory.
It got to the point where NBN News outrated it in Tamworth 
.
As for the history of Prime Local News, here in Newcastle, it was launched with much fanfare in February 1993, with former NBN stalwart Murray Finlay as the main anchor. Janette Hankinson (who I still don’t know much about) was also a co anchor. Former Knights player Mark Sargent presented sport for a while too.
Prime’s studios were former squash courts I think in Newcomen Street, Newcastle, only a couple of doors down from the ABC.
Finlay lasted about a year, and Brett Lavaring took over the presenter role in 1994 I think. He had previously presented North Coast news out of Tamworth (I think David Evans still did the North West bulletin for a while before he retired, as he presented in the 9&8 Television days too).
Also in 1994, Prime launched “Prime Weekend News” out of Tamworth in response to NBNs popular weekend news across all of Northern NSW as a composite 30 min bulletin. The middle block was separate local/sport news for each sub market. It was hosted by Kylie Gillies, and it only lasted about a year as well.
4 Likes
Found this on another website:
Does anyone know anymore about the Elermore Vale studios (at 116 Lake Road). They can’t have lasted there long as they moved out about 10 years ago. I assume it was purpose built by Prime as it has some very similar architectural elements to their Canberra studios.
2 Likes
Janette Hankinson now goes by the name of Jaye Ford and is now an author.
1 Like
I know a bit…
They relocated there around 1995, and yes, it would have been about 2005 when they relocated back to smaller premises in the Newcastle CBD which was really just a sales office, as local news was axed in 2001. Local news bulletins were presented from Elermore Vale from 1995 to 2001.
As for the 5 minute news, yes, Prime commenced these on the 1st day of aggregation in 1992 in Newcastle. It aired Mon to Sat at 6.25pm and was presented by Garry Blair (who didn’t feature much in the Murray Finlay bulletins). He later joined NBN as a reporter.
3 Likes
The Prime Gold Coast bulletin had a very interesting and patchy past.
Premiered in 1992 to very strong competition with an already established NRTV bulletin and a geographically expanded NBN News plus all Brisbane television options, Prime attempted to establish a Gold Coast centric bulletin as a point of difference at 5.30pm (repeated at 9.30pm) with Neil McLean and Kathy Bourke at their studios at 60 High Street, Southport (now home to 102.9 Hot Tomato). At the time, it was probably the only Prime region which didn’t promote the bulletin as “Prime Local News” but rather “Prime Gold Coast News”.
It moved to 6pm a few years later and then 5.30pm again during the 1996 Prime’s failed network news timeslot disaster (which ultimately went up against Nine’s Gold Coast News launch year), then moved to 6pm shortly again.
Seven decided to co-produce the bulletin with Prime in 1998 with a young Melissa Downes as main newsreader. Seven Gold Coast aired the bulletin live at 5.30pm and repeated on Prime Gold Coast at 6.30pm during most of 1998-1999. Seven axed the deal so Prime took over production of the bulletin again and aired it at 6pm continuing with Melissa Downes before she went back to Seven but soon took over by Gold FM’s Richard Fowler. Seven wasn’t going to air another Gold Coast local bulletin until 2016.
Most of the time it was paired with the Sydney version of Seven Nightly News, as Seven didn’t want Prime taking viewers away from their 6pm bulletin.
The bulletin was officially axed by Prime in November 2000.
7 Likes
I’ll give you all a tip too - living in Coffs in the early to mid 1990s, NRTV Evening News was a better composite hour of news than what NBN dished up… it’s just a shame it got pummelled in the ratings.
1 Like
I think that one problem that Prime had was it was too heavily stacked with news items from Taree-Port Macquarie (it’s heritage market on the North Coast) to appeal to Coffs–Lismore viewers and NBN had a similar issue with Newcastle news. So that surprises me that NRTV Evening News got beaten in the news ratings.
2 Likes
That’s a good write up of Prime Gold Coast news.
Ian Buchanan presented sport.
He formerly was a reporter for Prime Local News in Newcastle.
Ian was retained as sports presenter for the dual Seven/Prime bulletin as well (even though Kathy Bourke was unceremoniously dumped).
Also during Daylight savings prior to 1998 (when Prime was made to delay its NSW feed into QLD after the “Pulp Fiction” “scandal”), Seven Nightly News from Sydney would air at 5.30pm QLD time with Prime News at 6pm. “Home And Away” was at 5pm.
Thanks 
Ian was their longest serving staff member in the end.
The decision to end the Gold Coast bulletin must have been sudden as they had just hired Richard Fowler a few months before. The last bulletin (which aired on a Friday) was apparently pre-recorded but they were allowed to say goodbye to its viewers. Most of the journalists and cammo crew ended up at other Prime News outposts like Tamworth and Wagga Wagga.
Just 10 months or so later, Prime would axe their Newcastle, Canberra and Wollongong bulletins also suddenly but without any proper farewell. I’ve read reports journalists were still filing stories but were told to come back to the studios and given their marching orders.
2 Likes
Yes, it was very sudden… I didn’t know that about the reporters all being given the sack quite like that. Why they were sent out to report at all beats me. That’s rather sad.
The last bulletins for NEW/WLG/CBR were on a Thursday night. I still remember seeing the end of the last Newcastle bulletin… Brett Lavaring had forgotten what he was doing and signed off with something like “This has been a KOFM News update” to the camera.
4 Likes
Wow that would have been so awkward to watch, let alone have it go to air