Several times you’ve made comments on people “not understanding media” or “not understanding regional TV” or “not even being from Canberra” and “not understanding geography”. These are comments on people, rather than the topic at hand. THAT is personal.
CTC was a good service. Unfortunately staffing in Seven’s regional newsrooms is not up to that historic standard and, beyond the top two or three stories, the majority of stories in their local bulletins are boring or irrelevant to most of the audience or both. I’d rank it similar in watchability to the bulletins WIN was producing in the 90s.
I’m sure they all do their best with the resources they have available to them. But it’s not a production of the same quality and polish as what comes out of Sydney or Melbourne and viewers do notice that. CTC was of that metro quality. Current Seven local bulletins aren’t.
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It’s Friday afternoon maybe everyone needs to take a chill pill
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I know my father preferred the Nine News brand to Seven and when we lived in Yass for 15 months (1989-1990), he would watch National Nine News with Brian Henderson religiously over Seven News. When we moved to Northern Rivers area the same until Nine News was no longer an option in late 1991. Then it was Ray and Chris on NBN over Ann and Ross on Prime and Peter (Hanrahan) on Ten
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Im not going to critique CTC vs WIN vs Prime, but all networks covered different local stories, some stories were aired across all networks whilst other less important ones were covered by the others. I was in my teens at the time, but i sensed a friendly regional rivalry, which I believe was destroyed by the corporate greed of the Packer family and Kerry Stokes that upped the ante on share of revenue. If the revenue share was still at entry level (20-25 percent of revenue), then I believe that most regions would have at least 2 quality local bulletins. when I say that I believe even Newcastle, Wollongong, Gold Coast and Canberra would have at least 2 local bulletins - even if they were structured like the WIN option
It’s arguable if there’s room for 2 local news bulletins in the cities you mentioned.
The main issue is there’s 1 dominant source of local news (like Newcastle and Gold Coast) so any commercial rival is going to have a tough time against that regardless of how much they need to pay (or don’t pay) their metro affiliate partner.
Perhaps there’s scope in Wollongong/Far South Coast because I understand WIN News is a shadow of its former self. Canberra already has ABC as a “rival”.
Yeah, I’ll normally switch from 10 to WIN at 5:30 to watch the couple of top stories or, at most, the first segment then I’ll go back to 10 because the WIN content is generally pretty terrible but it is local. I generally won’t bother with ABC 7pm at all unless it’s on streaming so I can skip ahead - I see enough ABC24 during the day to not want to sit through all the national/international stories in the 7pm bulletin for the token local story.
A decent, well produced composite local bulletin (eg: 7 Tasmania) is something I would watch but perhaps I’m in the minority these days.
Minor nitpick, but should this thread be renamed Seven News (Regional NSW/ACT/Vic/WA)?
All but one of their current east coast bulletins serve areas within the two NSW licences (which the ACT is physically located in), as does their 6:30 bulletin which is alternatively named Seven News Regional NSW on 7plus.
The current emphasis on their east coast services is on NSW, should the thread title reflect that?
Edit: @admins
I think Newcastle and Gold Coast would be a perfect testing ground to see if inserting a local news segment into the bulletin replacing the segment immediately before sport. The pre-recorded metro throw could be something short and simple like the message they used to have at end of Seven News bulletins pre 1 hour bulletins on weeknights that were obviously recorded for the regionals. something simple like “now here’s your local news”.
The most important state is listed first, as it should be.
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The “most important state” with only one bulletin, that doesn’t receive their news offering at 6:30, that also isn’t a TV licence area home to their headquarters?
Am I missing something, or am I being punked? 
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How about
Seven News (With … Rob…Brough 
)
Seven News (Without…Rob … Brough 
)
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Incorrect, ABC Broken Hill viewers were switched to the NSW state feed well near 20 years ago now. The ABC polled the local audience with the majority wanting the switch fulltime. Prior to this, they did receive the SA state feed fulltime, except for NSW State election periods when for 4 weeks or so they received the NSW state feed.
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More reason there will never be a local News bulletin on Seven Canberra again is the fact Seven reported a further loss in profits last week. It won’t happen, it is da da, dead.
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Yes, my bad, I do remember that now…
When SCA launched Nine in Broken Hill / Spencer Gulf (BDN / GDS), they initially took the Sydney feed ie. Sydney news, NRL and all - as they were unable to agree to terms with WIN for an Adelaide feed as they owned Nine ADL/PER at the time.
But off topic for this thread I know!
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So switch out the Sydney car crashes and house fire and replace with Canberra news, and it’s a win.
I am not suggesting a WIN News half hour local bulletin followed by Sydney bulletin- I am suggesting a locally produced 6pm newshour like Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Tasmania all get.
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You’re not getting a separate locally produced bulletin that needs to be paid for on top of existing department requirements, where is the extra revenue going to come from to make such a move profitable in this day and age? Revenue is dropping, look at recent comments from Jeff Howard about the networks looking to consolidate back office functions in coming years, a clear sign of an industry in terminal decline. There is no way back and 20 years too late.
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I think the whole point of this discussion is IF you could get more audience, COULD it be viable?
More audience = more revenue because you charge more for ads.
Yes, I do know the state of play with audiences and revenue (I am a media buyer these days).
But ABC Canberra has around double or more the audience of 7 News at 6pm. So there are some viewers out there. Yes the timeslot makes a difference.
But IF you could increase the audience by 20% at 6pm, would that make a local comp viable? It’s just a hypothetical.
The reason Sunrise became successful years ago was by attracting new viewers away from radio to TV. It can work. Not easy, but it can.
How many viewers does ABC News at 7 get in the Canberra market?
Data doesn’t seem to be publicly available, however, from the data that I can find from some of the weekly top programs data from the Regional TAM site, it appears that for the Southern NSW market, ABC News bulletins appear to be more watched than the commercial bulletins, which may be a result of Canberra viewers tuning in.