Prime had a guarantee from Seven that the local news would continue after a merger between the two companies. The owner of WIN and the front man of ACM blocked the merger. It is their actions that have threatened the future of Prime7 News. I have sympathy for the employees of WIN, Prime and ACM. But I none for the owner of WIN and the front man of ACM.
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Both Gordon and Catalano are terrible shareholders of the worst kind. They’re even worse than the organisation they run and they have no idea of how to run media properties properly in the 21st century.
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Why was the WIN logo at the top-right? Were they too lazy to get a version without the PRIME7 logo?
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BuT TheY SuPpORt LoCaL BuSiNeSSeS by taking their money for advertising and sending it to a bank account in the Bermuda 
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They should be made to produce local news bulletins full bulletins not just noodle updates presented in the local area their station covers as a condition of their broadcast licence. No excuses instead of taking the community’s money and contributing little.
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Would it be too conspiratorial to suggest there may be a wider agenda of eliminating local news competition (at least amongst the regional media organisations participating in the latest “Save our Voices” campaign) in regional markets?
Catalano & Gordon seem to want the removal of the “minimum voices in a market” rule + restrictions on owning multiple licences in the same market, which I personally think is something that should scare all media consumers in regional Australia.
Same.
I think the people working on the field (whether on-air/in-print or behind the scenes) for any regional media organisation are deserving of respect & sympathy. However same probably can’t be said for the upper level management of these companies, who are trying to present themselves as “the little Aussie battler” when in reality Prime, WIN, SCA and ACM are fairly large media organisations with a presence in multiple states of Australia.
I think it’s a production choice, with the name supers in the program dominating the lower third of the screen.
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When the local content requirements were updated they should’ve tweaked the news requirement along the lines of “if a broadcaster chooses to fill the majority of their local quota with news content, the content must be aired in a bulletin format”.
Unfortunately, even then the rule wouldn’t have actually come into effect until a trigger event such as a change of ownership.
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And both Prime7 and WIN aired this across the Gold Coast where Prime7 hasn’t produced a bulletin since 2000.
Thankfully their metro brothers have a news presence here instead.
It would also be questionable this aired in Newcastle and Central Coast too. Both Prime7 and WIN don’t even try competing against NBN.
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If it was 10-15 years earlier, WIN would have produced news bulletins for Northern NSW but they can’t afford to in the current climate no different to Mackay and WA.
The point is WIN, ACM and Prime produce news by regionals for regionals - proper regional voice by proper regional companies. You won’t get that anywhere else.
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…especially SCA, who runs the Hit and Triple M radio networks, which are more well-known than their TV affiliate stations.
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I’d like to see this “Save our Voices” group actually articulate what they want - they are trying to get people to support a campaign where its incredibly opaque and from an outsiders view, a number of the companies who are involved don’t have a great track record when it comes to maintaining a local presence.
If you’re asking for public support towards a cause, outlining what the cause actually wants to achieve is a fairly basic expectation, right? The target audience aren’t completely stupid. Own the position, however bad people might perceive it to be.
My fear is that COVID is used as a turning point, particularly if this group is unable to gain any traction - services get wound back (and we’ve already seen this with ACM papers being published less, SCA/Nine moving from “local” to non-metro news, SCA radio consolidate breakfast radio) to the point where its uneconomical to run so they simply shut or get cut to the bare minimum.
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I think they were trying to stir fear in people by saying this is what the govt is doing to local news and unless this changes then local news might go away and by doing this drum up support to get people to sign up there campain
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Yeah, its just Bruce’s propaganda. He just wants more money from the Government.
well its not just bruce its the whole ‘‘save our voices’’ group’’ but i do think you hit the nail on head though
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The industry is not interested in government (other people’s) money - they want to consolidate to be able to sustainably provide the local news they still provide with a sustainable business despite the fact they do not have to - particularly WIN they could have cut their bulletins 20 years ago - that is ALOT of money foregone. They do it because they still believe in the commitment as a broadcaster to their audience - however every year it becomes harder to keep as revenue dwindles. Hence the cuts last year. When revenue drops to a point, cuts need to be made.
The voices test is stupid because of the influence that Google/Facebook/Daily Mail et al has these days as news sources. Even Seven, Nine and Ten broadcast online to the regional audiences yet expect higher payments from Prime, WIN and SC for the privilege - nothing but a hypocritical money grab.
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Yes and no. There’s plenty of voices for National and international news, but for anything local there’s only a couple. The online news providers also only service a part of the community that is willing to expand their horizons by using the internet (which is a big scary thing for many older people who have lived their whole lives in small towns) and are already likely to think critically and search for differing views.
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As every year passes, that point becomes more moot as the internet is so intertwined with people’s lives. We are all ageing.
They aren’t? Well, let’s reinstate the licence fees and see how much they squirm.
Legislation hasn’t kept up with the times, there’s no doubt about that - but I dont think its unreasonable to have limits on how much one person or entity can control.
Claiming Google and Facebook as news sources is fanciful, neither produce their own content - rather they aggregate and disseminate content, how they do that last one deserves more oversight. Daily Mail take the no fucks given approach and refactor existing stories into clickbait.
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Business is often the first group demanding a handout. Networks have used job keeper this year and finally got a reduction in license fees.
Win hasn’t cut their news because of local content laws and because they probably charge 4 times the amount for ads during the local news.
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And if they were producing the revenue levels required to pay for that and local news sustainably there wouldn’t be so much of a problem.