Won’t happen as the licence area is legislated.
Southern NSW TV1 LAP
If Prime Canberra were to be split off, so would Southern Cross Canberra, WIN Canberra, as well as ABC Canberra and SBS Canberra.
The Federal Govt has better things to do than deal with regional TV market licence areas.
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Largely agree. I can’t see the point of maintaining the Prime brand now. I just see benefit in fully changing to 7
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The irony is Seven’s Parliament House Bureau in Canberra has more news staff than Prime7 Canberra so in theory they could produce a Canberra bulletin straight out of Parliament House if they wanted to, but they won’t.
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Yeah, but the Parliament House bureau staff would likely be busy covering Federal Politics for Seven News.
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Exactly, but occasionally they’ll cover a Canberra story for Seven if ATN/Network wants it (ie-fires, something in Queanbeyan that matters).
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If only you knew how many resources are needed to produce a fully fledged stand alone bulletin. The Seven Canberra Parliament House bureau is just that, a bureau. It only has a edit suite and simple shoe box single camera single 2 way studio which doubles as a voice over booth and a very small router. There is no production switcher, no local autocue, no mass server storage to record and playout interstate/international packages, or graphics system for lower 3rds, let alone weather graphics. They only have enough resources to look after Seven commitments where they live cross into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth bulletins, sometimes only minutes apart, sometimes less than that. There are no extra resources for a separate Canberra Seven only bulletin at Parliament House. As it is, they struggle with network commitments. Only the ABC has the ability to produce stand alone bulletins out of Parliament House. Everyone else needs to downstream outside of Parliament House.
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I guess in the right circumstances they could do it with proper equipment, resources and more space, but I guess the question is why would they bother if they could do it anyway?
Prime7 in Watson have two actual studios, two active control rooms and a newsroom so in theory they should be able to do it themselves.
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I dont think Prime have the money to hang onto the bulletins they have now, cuts in TV everywhere else, advertising downturn, their metro affiliate is financially struggling good on them for surviving, but for how long can they keep going
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They tried back in 1993 with a full one hour local Prime Canberra News from 6pm to 7pm weeknights and a 6pm 30 minute bulletin on weekends. They even had a late night 30 minute news bulletin weeknights at 10.30pm. Despite the money poured into it and poaching many staff and some reporters and presenters including the late Geoff Hiscock across from Capital, it did not rate. The relay of Seven News from Sydney before it rated higher. And when Prime finally axed Prime Canberra News in 2001 and recommenced the live relay of Seven News Sydney, the ratings for Prime increased again. To the point now where it is the regular top rating program in the time slot with the absence of the Capital Ten News bulletin after Southern Cross axed it also in 2001. So why would Prime or even Seven dump what works now. There will be no return of a fully fledged standalone Canberra news bulletin on Prime Canberra. Even less so if Seven were to finally get to takeover Prime. As no doubt Seven’s plans most likely would have seen the Prime Canberra building closed down so as to makegood on the savings of the cost by Seven to buy Prime.
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If Seven took control of
Prime and the Canberra the Canberra tv market - there is a small
Chance they would
Do something Gold Coast size if the
Return on investment made
Sense.
Also for political sway it could
Benefit them
Small
Chance tho
Well they’ll still need a local Sales office but don’t need to be in their spacious Watson digs. Land could be sold for houses.
Presumedly every other function could be done out of Seven Sydney or Melbourne (or in the case of Traffic - the Philippines). Technical and Promo/Commercial Production could be outsourced to Canberra firms.
Although Seven would be crazy to drop Prime7’s regional local bulletins as Wagga Wagga, Central West and Albury/Wodonga rate high and they’re the only show in town.
Citation needed with that last sentence.
Sure, I don’t doubt that Prime rated behind WIN and Capital during the Early 1990s but was there really a pronounced preference for Sydney news over a local product amongst Canberrans?
I’d probably say any ratings increase that Seven News Sydney had in Canberra during the early part of this century was less “Canberrans prefer Sydney news to what’s happening where they live” and more to do with viewers looking for a new 6pm bulletin to watch after Ten Capital axed their local news service in 2001. Former TCN stalwart Ian Ross joining Seven News in the mid-2000s likely also helped the ratings of Prime in Canberra (and other markets which receive/d that bulletin), just as it did in Sydney.
Sure, I don’t disagree that Prime7 is unlikely to relaunch a local news service for Canberra (or other markets) anytime soon. But that has more to do with the current economic environment + ratings with a relay of Seven News Sydney being adequate as they are now.
What about the North West & North Coast, where Prime7 Local News is competing with NBN News?
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I was specifically talking about where Wagga Wagga, Central West and Albury/Wodonga where there’s no competition. If they withdraw these sub-markets then viewers will have no local news options on any of the three commercial broadcasters. Seven would be crazy to axe the one point of difference, even if it meant saving cash.
But yes, Tamworth and North Coast rate fine, with their competition. Also stupid to get rid of those.
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Of course I’m not suggesting that they should.
Personally I wonder (but will probably never know for sure) if Prime7 and WIN recently agreed to not run competing full local news services. At the very least, it’s certainly interesting how a few regional markets have full bulletins from Prime7, a few more have full bulletins from WIN but as of about a year ago, no markets have full bulletins from both regional broadcasters anymore!
Not sure if Prime was complicit in last years changes, however WIN could have simply used the competition as a reason to remove those bulletins (as opposed to others) when they were evaluating which ones from their suite to cut.
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And yet in Newcastle, both have decided not to start one at all.
WIN was always running a battle in Albury/Wodonga, Wagga Wagga and Central West. Even when both were running full bulletins and WIN was associated with Nine, it never reached the same heights as Prime7. Incumbency helps a lot. Also for most of their history, it was always a live Prime7 bulletin up against a pre-recorded WIN bulletin. Also WIN turning into a Ten affiliate did it no favours.
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You say “both have decided to not start one at all” as if Prime didn’t run a local news service in Newcastle for about 9 years. And of course you have to go back more than 25 years and several ownership eras earlier to find a time that NRN last aired a local news service for Newcastle (or Northern NSW in general).
Yes, but is it time at least one of them bit the bullet again? NBN should be covering Newcastle news a lot better (there’s been hundreds of posts about this over the years on here) but doesn’t really bother because they don’t need to.
If expansion is on the cards, I’m guessing Seven would invest in a full local news for Newcastle first before Canberra or Wollongong to take as much as NBN’s advertising share as possible. Out of the three it’s also has the weakest ratings for 6pm Sydney news.
If the money was there, you could bet on WIN doing full bulletins. You only have to look back a little over ten years when WIN introduced their WA, Wide Bay and Mackay bulletins.
But they are struggling to stay on top of costs as they are let alone adding to them.
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Unlikely. Federal politicians don’t care about local Canberra. For them Canberra is just a FIFO work location where they get to spend a few weeks away from the family - they couldn’t give a stuff about anything local.
That’s also the reason why all local bulletins are less successful. With a large chunk of the population employed by the federal government, the demographics are very different to other regional areas - the population is far more concerned about national issues, which like it or not tend to be more aligned to Sydney issues.
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