For what it’s worth, I admire the whole team down there in TAS that works on the news.
When I worked at SCA in Canberra doing the schedules for Hobart/Launceston I’d speak to various people in the TAS news team (for reasons such as when there was AFL or cricket etc on 7 which would affect the timing of the news or the news updates that get produced) and you could tell that they really cared about their jobs and worked hard (and were respectful towards me as well).
I don’t know all the ins an outs of putting the news to air every night, I’m sure it’s more difficult than it seems. People should not be so critical.
And the time pressure is really the killer too. When things are under such strict time pressures the staff don’t have the luxury of tweaking things when something goes wrong - they need to do the best they can quickly and move on or nothing goes to air.
And let’s not forget that regional TV isn’t blessed with the same resources as their metro counterparts. They have less staff, doing more tasks, for probably less pay - and are therefore probably more skilled from having a wider range of tasks.
Absolutely agree with that. Although my job certainly was not the same, everything to do with TV involves being carefully aware that things have to be ready to go within enough time (before they have go to air etc.)
Certainly don’t feel that kind of pressure for a lot of other jobs
Makenna Baily presented sport for 7 Tasmania News last night, and Victoria Eastoe presented the weather. There’s also a new reporter for the team - Annie Greene
Canberra has more than 460,000 residents so it shouldn’t be too hard for SCA reporters to find local stories. Just look at The Canberra Times newspaper, Canberra Weekly or CityNews.
Yeah, shouldn’t be hard - there are plenty of press releases floating around to draw content from.
I do feel for the people putting these updates together though - probably don’t have the time to do much more than they do which indicates Southern Cross probably need to resource the updates better - which they won’t - unless the Government forces them to do so - which they probably won’t - even though I’d argue updates with so little local content don’t meet local content obligations. So nothing will change unfortunately.
That’s going to be some big shoes to fill but I think a well deserved retirement.
SCA is recruiting to find a suitable replacement news director for the Tasmanian market.
This will be interesting though, with the thing Seven said the other day that started the speculation about whether the SCA7 stations were up for grabs or changes to the 7Tas News, now would be a good time and with the Nine Tas bulletin coming next year there could be a bit of a shake up happening.
Grant must be proud to leave the Nightly News as the product it is with what’s happened during at ‘Southern Cross’ over his 23 years as news director and 42 years at TNT.
The mergers, acquisitions, divestment and centralisation of assets within SCA - and its disinterest in its television assets - along with his direct competitor doing much the same but with greater impact on the local market.
It’s often forgotten that TNT wasn’t the incumbent during aggregation, or dominant station and wasn’t for many years. It was built and earned.
It must be nice to be able to tie a bow around an hour long, composite nightly television news bulletin produced from a regional centre for a company focused in audio. Also a training ground for many young journalists who move to metro bulletins.
Not overselling one man, it’s always a team effort but I’m assuming he’s been in a lot of tough corporate meetings over all this time and has somehow successfully navigated the changes in the industry.
