Seven News Content and Appearance (2015-2020)

Lovely set!! Pity about the newsreader though…

Stop hiding the f**king globe! Show us how ugly it is!

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What is the lasted News Update graphic in Sydney with (my) Mark Ferguson? Has that been refreshed at all the last month or so? I’m in Sydney late June and honestly I can’t wait till then to find out.

What a selective list.

Bill actually started as a Sports Reporter/Fill in Presenter with Seven News in the early 90’s before going to Ten. He came from DDQ Toowoomba.

Paul Burt was a Reporter/Fill in Presenter for “Brownie’s Coastwatch” on Seven in the late 90’s before heading to Nine.

Just a footnote: Melissa Downes started her presenting career with Seven and hosted the first incarnation of Seven Gold Coast News. Kendall Guilding and Talitha Cummins (up until recently) started their careers with Seven.

The list only talks about current newsreaders. BTQ had Brian Cahill, Frank Warwick, Mike Higgins, Billy J. Smith and Noel Stanaway and plenty of others start with Seven and move to other networks in their time.

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Yeah. Although my focus point was the fact that most of Seven’s talents aren’t even originally from Seven. I’ll probably cop it from all of yous here on MS but I personally believe the reason why Brian Henderson was so successful in ratings was because he was at Nine when he first started (well when TV started), and hence everyone else (even Roger Climpson) didn’t have any long time success compared to Nine.

Seven started falling back in Sydney not just because of the content, which is quite mediocre, but also because of presenter. As far as I remember, while Chris Bath is a great presenter, it seemed to me that Peter Overton out-shone her in 2011 by winning the ratings, and (happy to be corrected on this) it seems to me that most of the most popular newsreaders (Brian Henderson, Peter Overton, Peter Hitchener etc.) all started their journey at Nine instead of from Seven or anywhere else. I can almost bet that if Brian Henderson started at Seven instead of Nine and continued till he retired, Seven would’ve had the same load of success Nine had from the 60s to 2002.

Of course many will disagree with me, but I think that if Seven wants to have long term success in news, they need to develop talents from their own news department instead of poaching people to do short-term favours (a bit like Ian Ross and now Michael Usher).

@SydneyCityTV I am not a Sydneysider so I would like to see your views on this from a Sydney perspective. Of course criticisms and grillings are most welcome :wink:!

I’d say it’s on its way. Probably sill being built and wouldn’t expect it till later on in the year.

As it’s been pointed out before, almost all TV newsreaders currently on the air (whether they’re at Seven, Nine, Ten, the ABC or anywhere else) started out at a different network to the one where they made it big. I really can’t stress that enough.

Even Peter Overton, it’s quite well documented that his TV career started at Club Superstation (a pub/club TV station for horse racing coverage and the like which was initially a rival to, but later merged with Sky Channel) and then Channel Seven in Adelaide before joining Channel Nine Sydney in 1991.

I’m sure all will agree that Brian Henderson played a very significant part in the history of Sydney TV news. However, Hendo actually didn’t join TCN-9 until January 1957 and probably only read the weekend news there on a regular basis until around the mid-1960s.

The very first newsreader for Channel Nine Sydney was Charles “Chuck” Faulkner, who was there from the very 1st bulletin on the 2nd night of TV until 1964. A bit more on the early history of news at the station can be read at this fantastic website.

It’s hard to say whether it was a case of Seven News Sydney falling back or Nine News Sydney really improving (by trying out new things while also going back to basics…if that makes sense). I would probably say a bit of both.

The current success of Nine News Sydney didn’t happen overnight. It took a good 2-3 years for them to go from being a ratings basketcase to a dominant #1 again. Similar can be said about the rise of Seven News Sydney back in the Early-Mid 2000s and I’m sure the cycle will happen again at some point in the future.

While I personally think Nine has (for the most part) traditionally/currently maintained the highest quality commercial news bulletin in the Sydney market and has largely had the ratings to match that, at the same time I wouldn’t completely ignore the success that other networks have had over the years. It would also be ridiculous to pretend that Seven or Ten have never had quality news bulletins or presenters in the Sydney market, because they have.

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Bill started at BTQ in 1987 along with Mark Ferguson :wink:

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You remind of ‘mercat’ from the old forums who had an intense fascination of Jo Hall!

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No thank you

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Something different on the closer at 5:

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What’s so different about this closer? The wave being shown in the screen at the bottom of the desk and then in full screen because this sort of thing has happened before I’m pretty sure

Can we please tone down the blue! It’s so cold and uninviting - it’s winter. Get some red in there !

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Spelling error on the weather tonight in Sydney

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Before the clicker started to be a bit slow for Brownie tonight too, needing some new batteries…

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I believe this one has been used since the start of the year:

The endtag voiceover was given a slight update recently (previously it was “Seven News: Australia’s Number 1” but it’s “Seven News: Australia’s Most Watched” now - both were same guy who does the Opener VOs), but that’s about it really.

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I know this has already been posted in the history thread, but these promos are really unique and different to anything else I have ever seen from Melbourne before and for 1994, I think they are quite good.

Thoughts?

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Is there a reason as to why 7News Sydney has been “live” on Facebook for the last 19 minutes - looping the opener story from Sydneys bulletin about the London Incident today? It finishes and then just keeps looping. And it’s not LIVE as claimed.

I would guess it would probably be a mistake but the reason they may be doing it is that all users get a notification their live thus driving more viewers to their Facebook page over the usual video upload.

You’re great SydneyCity. I appreciate the update :slight_smile: