What benefits?
I agree with you⌠but all Iâm saying is there must be reasons why theyâre still pursing local news in 2024.
Suggest a few possible ones?
As Iâve pointed our above⌠sales / local advertising, and television licensing.
There is no local content laws.
And Iâm not convinced 10 can charge a premium for local news ad rate wise. Nor am I convinced that the news does at better because itâs local. It might have the word "Melbourne " etc in a gfx - but no one is watching this news because they feel it serves their city well. Remove the tiny minimal local content and the empty branding and I donât think ratings would drop any meaningful amount. Hasnât Brisbane actually gone up a little?
Iâm sure testing data with audiences doesnât support the case to go national. Every poll would show local news wins hands down in this country. Taking these results to a board meeting would be difficult to justify dropping local news.
I also think the Melbourne market is another factor keeping local news going. I wouldnât be surprised that a lot of advertising revenue is generated from this one market.
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I havenât seen a shot of the Brisbane newsroom backdrop in a while though I might have missed it. Instead these are some of the backdrops seen - the standing presentation an attempt to mimick the Sydney news room look perhaps.
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Not great. The skyline backdrop would be good if the plasma wasnât so old, same goes with the greenscreen - still making use of the aging equipment.
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That bulletin is a joke. The only people who probably find it beneficial are those over at Seven and Nine, as more people will be watching them because their programmes are live and local (2 per day on Weekdays on nine, and 3 on Seven in the metro area)
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Ok, Iâll have a crack at it from a different angle, letâs park the news part for a second and look at sport.
For the duration of most of the ratings period, Australia is in football mode, with neither of the two major codes successfully claiming to be meaningfully national.
If it was a national bulletin 7 days a week, the sport section would be hugely problematic, for example 10 Melbourneâs average weekday sport segment, is AFL, first second and third story, every day.
The northern states wouldnât tolerate this, and the southern states wouldnât tolerate this level of NRL, so a national bulletin would basically serve none.
If 10 were to eventually go down a national bulletin path, I think the sport section would need to be pre recorded for a large chunk of autumn/winter with two streams, basically NRL stares and AFL states, otherwise itâd be essentially serving no one.
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Also for example people in SA donât want to listen to a report about a Brisbane rail upgrade (for example), and likewise Queenslanders donât want to hear about similar stories about Adelaide. Plus if they had a national weather forecast, then they probably wonât go into detail about many regional centres.
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Only thing I think that is stopping them from going back to doing a QLD only bulletin is that the current set-up apparently rates better than the local set-up, and that there is no other news competition at 5pm.
Adelaide had a massive ratings drop, with Nine at five, which is why they went back to local. Perth had competition from Nine, which is why they moved back. They changed them as soon as money was available, or they found room in the budget/operations structure.
if it was a national bulletin they probably wouldnât even bother with very specific state-based stories and just focus on national or international stories. Or they could potentially do what the regionals do and just have windows to insert local stories at certain points.
Though regionals are not Tenâs main concern. They have affiliates to do local news/weather updates and forecasts. If you watch Tenâs national news on the weekend their forecast mostly just covers the capital cities.
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Yeah tbh wouldnât imagine many staff would be kept, particularly outside Melbourne and Sydney
That isnât the case. The ratings fell something like 10k in that first year. Then hovered around 60k for a few years.
EDIT:
That last quarter from Sydney pulled the average survey decline for the whole year from 6% to 12%.
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Must of gotten numbers mixed up sorry
Iâm surprised they donât already do this on Weekends.
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From memory they did do this at one stage. I think it was on Sundays when they had AFL rights. Rob Waters would do a Melbourne/Adelaide sport, inserted into the national bulletin from Sydney. They probably figure itâs not worth the effort these days with few resources and no major sporting rights.
Suspect ratings would further plummet at 5pm if they went national on weekdays - Melbourne had around 40k more viewers than Sydney earlier this week, I suspect boosted by the Vic floods. Sydney and Brisbane seem to both be suffering from their current format.
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10 also had local news for Melbourne and Adelaide on Saturdays from memory.
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I think that was only during the football season, and then only when a match was being played at the time the news would normally be on (sometimes theyâd even do an insert at half time).
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