Nine have some clear advantages. Brisbane has been traditionally a nine market. The days of Heather & Bruce for example, Nine dominated. Melissa & Andrew have been in their roles for quite some time. They have the NRL which is the dominant winter sport. They have Wally Lewis. They sponsor riverfire. Their set is much better.
7s set is awful and has been since day 1, although I’m not sure it makes a big difference to ratings. When 7 was at the height of its leadership they had Kay & Rod + John Schluter on weather - who was a very familiar face to the old nine audience. The late 2000s 9 was also going through their presenter changes. And 7 had hired Sharyn on weekends - she absolutely dominated with ratings of 3-400k+. They also had Riverfire for quite a time - which used to be one of the highest rating events of the year in Brisbane.
Sharyn & Max are very capable. Get a new set, be seen in the community, and keep hold of great reporting talent like Marlina Whop. They’ll make gains eventually.
7 News Melbourne ran a reader voiceover on a new/refurbished Kmart store opening at Highpoint tonight. Nothing amazing about it. Just a stock standard Kmart store. That’s it. I’m tapping out.
And that’s something that could’ve kept them competitive. But no in 2013 some idiot thought it was a good idea to shunt the A team to the weekend and introduced Sharyn and Bill in place of them. They’ve hardly recovered ever since.
If they still had Rod and Kay today they’d still be dominating or at the very least very competitive. Seven underestimated the appeal of Rod and Kay and they were too arrogant to admit it. Now they’ve lost both of them whilst their weekday news continues to flounder.
Exactly. Start Sharyn (who was already on weekends) and Bill on weekends and if one or both of Kay and Rod retired move one or both of Sharyn and Bill to weekdays. Viewers wouldn’t mind a transition like that but they didn’t like it when Kay and Rod were moved for no exact reason to weekends. Ratings quickly went from dominant No.1 to a distant No.2.
What they did was overestimate the appeal of Sharyn. Sharyn was doing huge numbers on the weekend and so it seemed logical to move her to weekdays. The transition should have always been on Kay and Rod’s watch though.
Having said that, it was almost a decade ago. Sharyn & Max are performing ok, and if they have learnt anything it would be stability is key in Queensland.
