If you wanted to keep your job, you’d do what the board says by spending nothing more than is required to achieve compliance. You have eight hours per day to compile and broadcast these updates for the various sub-markets.
The question to be asked is whether the existing resources have extra time for the initiatives some are suggesting. If you say that they do, then the board may be able to further streamline the division.
Also, what are the benefits of perfecting these updates? Increased ratings? Will viewers flock to watch their 1.42pm local news updates and will advertisers fight to sponsor them? They’re not even on the schedule, they occupy a commercial slot of another more popular program.
If they had proper pronunciations and were excellent quality you could attract local or national advertisers to sponsor them. Kinda like how Prime7 manages to do it.
I’d say Grant Wilson’s priorities lay with 7 Tasmania and not these 10 updates so these Presenters and Writers are really left to their own devices.
Very different to when Ali Drower was the News Director - at least she made sure the updates and the presenters (based in Canberra at the time) were managed well
It’s not just SCA that is mispronouncing town names, Prime7 does the same, look at their local football scores on a Saturday night, there is a mispronounciation of “Colbinabbin”
Woorinen also got buttered never would of happened on SC10
It’s a matter of PR. When you have a TV station putting out local news that is out of date and mispronounced it makes that station look amateurish. It just annoys viewers and advertisers. As a programmer, you have the option to do the best you can with your resources and enhance the viewer experience. Or just do nothing.
The direct commercial damage these updates can do is have a switch-off factor, which would certainly impact any advertiser who ends up in the same ad-break.
If I were a local advertiser, I would REQUEST that my spots do not appear within an hour of these updates. Considering SCA has built a business on cheap ROS advertising, this should be a consideration.
When I first started in radio, the newsroom was run by one journalist who wrote and read 6x3 minute news bulletins per day, plus two recoded bulletins for the afternoon. A lot more can be done with just a bit more effort.
100%. SCA would still have camera operators making TV ads no? It would obviously be much better if the news gathering was done locally. I’m guessing though that the x2 staff per market means you’re covering all of Southern NSW for example? (Not just Riverina)
While I can’t imagine the CEO of SCA in North Sydney really cares about the product, the news director who overseas this output in Launceston should indeed care VERY much.
‘Belka-nen’ is an interesting way to pronounce Belconnen (Bell - con - en). ‘Gool-bin’ for Goulburn is unforgivable though - it’s a well known city. Has this poor journalist done any geography?
Name mispronunciations is not just an SCA thing - Launceston vs Lawwnceston has been going on since the beginning of time, Dynnyrne in Hobart has had some interesting goes at it over time (Din-urn not, dinnerinnie as has been on TV in the past) and Strahan (Strawn, not stra-han). My big hate though - Davenport which are makers of boxer shorts, not the city I live and Devon not Deven. All extremely common mistakes from people not around the region - even Tasmanian presenters get some of the places wrong.
That’s just the Tasmanian ones - there’s Albany where they hate when you get it wrong and so many others around the place that happen all the time. Yes, they should get it correct and yes, it’s obvious and grating when it happens but I think some are being quite hard on the presenters for it. Hopefully they improve with them but making it sound like these are the only people in Australia who can’t say the names correctly isn’t right.
SCA survived pre-2016 change, don’t see what’s different now.
Netflix.
What does that have to do with their noodle updates?
My point was much broader than that. TV needs to sell air to advertisers with a product that is appealing. Streaming services have decimated broadcast TV audiences, so terrestrial providers need to work harder to appeal in different ways. The huge increase in live and event TV over the past decade is one way. Another is the increase in airtime main channels devote to live news.
Crap noodle updates give your platform a bad reputation, which in turn makes it that much harder to sell.
When I worked at 2GN, complaints about the local news bulletins was the number one thing the sales reps brought up each month.
It’s an ecosystem. You can’t divorce the noodles from the station offer - because audiences don’t.
They had a few photos on their Facebook page farewelling Michelle too. Looks like this was from the Hobart studio as it was the Hobart reporters there including Alex Sykes who I don’t think has done the 7 news but has done both the 9 and 10 ones.
Ah yes, forgot about those ones. She’s one who can say she’s worked for all the networks!
Hobart studio = grey carpet
Launceston = black carpet
