Seven & Ten News (SCA)

I think the sticking point is that the presenter of the SA bulletin is also the Chief-of-Staff for that bulletin, so they’re doing a lot more than just reading some stories to camera - they’re also managing 5 reporters (Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Whyalla, Port Lincoln and Broken Hill) and producing the bulletin - I don’t actually know if anyone else is actually involved in the bulletin in Canberra - they’re pretty light on the ground so possibly not. Someone would still have to do all that if Jo were to present the bulletin, so I imagine nothing would change in that respect.

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I don’t know why it would be a problem to have a news presenter read news ‘across the border’. NBN does news for Qld from NSW and SC9 does ACT news in NSW - and of course GTS/BKN news has been done half-way across the country for years - and incidentally newsreaders (such as Tim Hatfield) did step in from time-to-time to read noodles for all sorts of places. Very strange argument here.

Prime7 pre-records half a dozen ‘half hour’ bulletins every single day before 6pm. I’m sure SC Tas and Jo could cope adding one.

Incidentally, it only takes around 12 minutes to record these bulletins.

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This isn’t the law nor set in stone. SC can appoint anyone to CoS for any bulletin at any time. They could indeed appoint one of their reporters as CoS or create a new role - and that person could sit in any office. CoS is more of a logistics role.

If I were producing the news, I’d want the best presenter on air - and manage the logistics accordingly. No one has presented an argument as to why the Tas team can’t present GTS/BKN - just arguments that is hasn’t been done before. Believe me, if someone had suggested 20 years ago that Ten would be on WIN, Neighours would be on 11 or that Seven was discussing buying Prime - this forum would be awash with odd arguments about how it would be “impossible”.

  1. We know news can be presented from a separate market, even state
  2. We know news readers can “cope” with reading for 90 mins (Ten did 90 minute news in 2011)
  3. We know roles and responsibilities can be changed very easily (sometimes presenters have dual roles, sometimes they don’t)
  4. We know it’s possible to pre-record a decent “half hour” bulletin and still be live at 6pm (Prime7 does this)
  5. We know the time-zone difference makes it possible to read live from Tas into Spencer Gulf

SC Tas is a high quality bulletin and if they can ‘cut & paste’ presenters into GTS/BKN, why wouldn’t they? As I’ve said, Prime7 does this very well. Believe me, in TV the only real investments are ones that you can see on screen or in the bank.

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Back in July SCA advertised for a senior camera operator in Canberra. The job included:

  • Shooting commercials and content both on location & in studio
  • News Technical Director – directing/recording daily news update content.
  • Editing and compositing using after effects for commercials and content.
  • Assisting in production co-ordinating and captioning

So the production staff who do the news updates do other work.

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As you said, someone will still have to do the CoS role. My point was that while they have to pay someone to do the CoS role, there’s little to gain by getting the Tasmanian team to work harder to do a job someone else on staff could do. It’s not like they’d be saving money - and let’s face it, SCA’s approach to regional news is far more focused on cost than quality.

I’m actually in strong support of SCA consolidating their TV news operations to Tasmania. I’m also not saying that the Tasmanian team CAN’T present GTS/BKN, I’m just saying that I don’t think it’s going to happen, based on how SCA run their business.

I think that they way they run the GTS/BKN bulletin works very well at the moment. While the quality of presenting isn’t at the professional level of a metro bulletin, putting a more experienced presenter in would gain little as the journos will still be the same. As was seen with Tim Hatfield, having a staff member dedicated to putting that bulletin together (apart from the odd occasion he had to fill in else where) allows that person to develop a passion for the area, work on the pronunciation of place names etc, which actually leads to better end product. This is exactly what people are crying out for with Nine’s Regional News, and would actually be lacking if they got Jo in to read an auto-cue for 30 mins.

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Yep - I agree, someone who currently works on GTS/BKN News should remain CoS - it’s generally done by a journalist in the team (in regional news). Alternatively SC could create a hybrid role which also includes running the Darwin and TDT “Newsroom”. No suggestion the SC Tas team should do it. My thoughts are based on the premise that all SC7 staff will be moved from the Berra to Lonny.

I guess we’ll see, it’s just thoughts and opinions at this stage. Don’t see why SC wouldn’t use this investment to improve both of their news bulletins.

This is why networks spend no money at all promoting their news anchors I take it? You don’t think viewers (more importantly advertisers) would respond to an improved set and presentation? They may even end up with a weather and sports presenter.

Tim’s from SA, so he had an advantage on place names - however I think you’re selling the skills of any trained journalist short. Why couldn’t Jo be the one to learn how to pronounce tricky things like “Broken Hill” and “Port Pirie”?

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My point was that having a slick anchor will mean little if the reporters still look/sound like they’ve just left high school and can barely form sentences (sure not all their journos are like that, but there are some).

Our experiences from SCA and Nine Regional show that’s not always the case.
Jo could be - but remember she does have an existing workload with the Tasmanian bulletin. Any time she’d spend making the SA bulletin better is time that she’s not spending making the Tasmanian bulletin better.

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It would be a nice start though, no?

The operative word I chose (intentionally) was ‘experienced’.

I’m not sure how long it takes you to learn how to say a place name, but I would have thought about a second per word would be enough. “Porrrrt Link-on” - OK, got it.

Place names have been an issue with centralised news operations for as long as I can remember. It’s a fair argument.

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I think if anybody in Australia knows about mispronounced place names it’s Launceston! Or is that Lawnceston or the British Lanceton.

I don’t think place name pronunciation is an argument for saying a newsreader can’t read two bulletins, which broadcast to different places.

Yes, pronunciation should be accurate and mispronunciation is especially irritating when a bulletin is purported to be ‘local’.

However, in news it is the job of the reporter to ensure pronunciation is clear for the presenter. This is the exact same principle if a journalist is reporting back to Sydney from a town in Afghanistan, or indeed if a reporter is covering a mining story in Kingoonya.

It really doesn’t matter who the presenter is and I don’t see how someone who reads the Tasmania news each day couldn’t also read the SA news and manage to pronounce place names correctly.

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Kamberrrruh gets a fair trot.

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Someone different doing the TDT9 noodle news tonight, can’t remember his name all I know is it wasn’t Chester.

Quite a large error though with them reporting that the Tassie Redbacks have made it to the finals for the JLT One Day Series in cricket. It looks like that was meant to be the South Australian Redbacks who have secured a spot because the Tassie Tigers haven’t secured a spot yet and are likely to miss out.

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Nice to see a weather presenter on GTS/BKN news - adds a little more personality having Nicole step in, with no added cost.

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Happened to notice that current Southern Cross SA presenter Fraser Goldsworthy has been reading a few of the updates today. I assume this is who you saw yesterday ando?

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Yep, that would be him. Was back to normal last night but I did notice the weather flipper was wrong for just about every place.

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And tonight the weather flipper was definitely wrong, they’re doing the details for the day we’ve just had. They also had Nicole presenting but had the name and twitter handle for Fraser.

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Just watched tonight’s SC Tas news as I was out tonight and to see if they covered the breaking news from Hobart of the helicopter crash. It looks like the news was coming from the Hobart newsroom tonight with sport and weather(?) from Launceston as Jo had the different backdrop and no OTS.

As for the breaking news, Southern Cross appears to have had their first mention about the third story after the first break at around 6:15 with a breaking news thing from Jo as she was reading papers and a breaking news strap but no vision. They said they’ll have more details later in the bulletin. About 6:35 they had a reporter at the Airport to do a live cross but the audio failed so they went back to the bulletin. Weather ran early so that a story could be presented “filed a short time ago” after the weather and into the end of the bulletin with a smaller “BREAKING NEWS” strap in the top right hand corner. Jo then ended the bulletin.

WIN covered the story at the very top of the bulletin at 6pm with no vision but had some vision but no report at the end of the bulletin at 6:30.

I’ll try and get some caps.

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As posted on Facebook.

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Construction of the new set?

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