You don’t run a one hour news just in case there is a big breaking news story. How often does this happen? on those nights, just ditch Today Tonight.
1 Like
That surprises me re Perth news. I had thought if they needed to run an extended bulletin on any given night, it would go for 1 hour and Today Tonight wouldn’t be screened at all.
2 Likes
Well try telling that to the Seven Perth people. TT has always shown every night, even on nights of a breaking news event which is where I’m coming from. Seven Perth have rarely ever shown a 1 hour long news on a weeknight as a result. This annoys me particularly because TT then runs late causing everything else after that to be late when the rest of the country still gets it on time because of what I explained earlier, having the freedom of 1 hour to spread the breaking news and then the rest of the day’s news over.
Your argument makes no sense. TVCynic suggests it shouldn’t be an hour on the off chance there’s breaking news and you start raving about how Perth has something different. Forget ‘spreading’ the news content, programme what you can fill 365 nights a year and change if required.
2 Likes
i don’t see the point of dedicating an extra half an hour for breaking news events when all they do is repeat the same thing… Today Tonight always starts late approx 6:36pm then till 7:00 but really it only goes for 15 mins cuz of weather and add breaks…
I’m talking about when he was saying to ditch TT on these occasions and Perth never do that.
He wasn’t saying they did, he was saying they should.
Sorry, I may have been looking at the wrong response. @Radiohead was saying he was surprised by this.
1 Like
Yes they do. And have done.
Honestly, ditching TT on the East Coast has not benefited viewers. The same content is still there, just spread out and disguised as news content.
A concise half hour news bulletin is much better.
6 Likes
To be honest, I don’t think the journalistic quality of Seven News on the East Coast would be all that much better even if it was only a half hour bulletin. Especially in Sydney, some dubious content choices were made (remember when the arrests of Joel Madden and Brian McFadden were lead stories on Seven News Sydney?!) before the move to a full hour of news.
1 Like
When? Several years back surely. I’m pretty sure they haven’t in recent times like since their move to The West’s studios to cover the more recent terror attacks that have occurred. Even if they have, I’m pretty sure it was only a one-off and may have been for a more local Perth event, not a major international news story
Well if all these stories were not in the news or TT then where would they go? I admit there are certain stories that are shown that are utterly ridiculous but the vast majority of these stories can be quite useful to and benefit the everyday person for various reasons, like the usual finance, health and consumer reports and hearing about someone who may have serious health problems or overcame them etc. All these things can still be considered as news, you would read about them in the newspaper so it is still news. Just not the more serious and more demanding I suppose stories that you would see around the start of the news. These sorts of stories, in my opinion, still need to be shown somehow each night along with the other serious ones at the start so as a result the news would need to be an hour long to cover them all, simple.
Yes to the first, yes to the second. But why not use the existing TT brand to their advantage and reformat it as a national edition airing at 7pm against ACA?
3 Likes
Because Nine already do it and it will be yet another scenario of what we all on here say we want to avoid, having the same genre or type of show go head to head with each other. I think if Seven want the upper hand on Nine with ACA they need to be a bit more creative and innovative with the ‘current affairs’ show they would launch, taking somewhat of a different direction with the genre however that would be done, thus beating Nine at their own game. Maybe it might mean thinking of something like The Project on Ten and combining that with something like TT and see what you would get, I don’t know…
1 Like
I don’t think a ‘national’ TT would last long TBH. While Adelaide’s TT is still TT, I think it improved after the East Coast versions were axed. Personally it went from something I’d rarely watch to something I’d sometimes watch because it felt more local. Without an ongoing source of East Coast TT content, all the stories needed to be produced locally (or sourced from perth TT, or borrowed from a Helen Wellings 7 News report). So based on this I’d probably watch a fully national TT… never. Somebody from Adelaide would more likely see little relevance in a story on let’s say a Victorian politician than another person who lives in Melbourne.
1 Like
I personally think that there should be a 7pm national bulletin straight after the 6pm news (on the main channel, keeping the hour long news). The difference is more like a news-in-review style which eliminates all the tabloid shit and sensationalist crap and reviewing the biggest news events of the day (with perhaps some interviews with some experts). All cities will switch to the hour long news, while Perth and Adelaide can have a local edition of a 7pm news presented by the presenters of TT right now.
But right now, Seven should be focusing on improving the content. They should completely eliminate consumer reports, supermarket wars, celebrity stories, speed ticket prices etc. Might improve the ratings of Seven’s bulletins across the east coast.
Seven will never touch the format in Perth and Adelaide because it consistently smashes the competition.
8 Likes
Montage from last night’s QLD bulletin:
1 Like
This is still no reason to leave it as it is. You just have to look at all of us on this forum, bashing on about how messed up the current format is to know that something’s wrong and needs to be changed. No doubt there are plenty of other people especially in Perth and Adelaide like me, who are thinking exactly the same as us. Also, in Perth and Adelaide, it only smashes the competition because all the other options at 6PM are no better than this as ratings show. Thus as I have said before, improving it like this should only make more people want to watch in these places and smash the competition even more. These viewers will probably stay with Seven no matter what happens, also like me and will likely not be tempted to switch to something else at that time.
I think everyone on Media Spy is more than aware that Seven News currently gets absolutely incredible ratings in the Adelaide & Perth markets which newsrooms in the big three East Coast markets (where the 6pm news market has become considerably more competitive over the last 15 years or so) can now only dream of.
However at the same time, it’s also fair to say that Seven quite simply will have to evolve their news services for Adelaide & Perth at some point in the future. Of course I wouldn’t suggest that major changes should happen to the format every few months because people do like stability and consistency, but I do think all news services need to gradually evolve over time to keep up with an ever changing marketplace.
1 Like