Was just up in Cairns for a little while and are scratching my head about WIN News so I’ve made some points.
*Compared with 7 Cairns: Seven felt like an actual bulletin with 4-5 reporters on the ground gathering all sorts of stories with several tagged “Exclusive”. I felt like I had a good understanding of what happened in FNQ that day. WIN only has 1 reporter who was doing more media release/video news release content and brief highlights of news and from what I gather don’t have anyone filling in for them on the ground when they’re away.
*Stories which aren’t even remotely relevant to FNQ including a police story from Charleville (ripped from a QLD Police release/vnr) which didn’t even contain correct highway information.
*Lots and lots of traveller stories. Saw reports from Canberra and Wollongong journalists including a full package about Illawarra Hawks preparations for a basketball game (who I imagine would have zero interest in Cairns).
*No uniformity with Presenters. One day it was Lincoln Humphries on news and Christian Jantzen on sports (who I presume flew down from Sunshine Coast) with the next Jarred Constable reading everything.
This is not a crack on the actual News journalists, cammos or producers who put together these bulletins. They obviously have a tough job working with very very limited resources.
I just feel like why bother with individual bulletins for each region when they’re poorly funded and resourced? Seven can make money from these regions with a premium local news so it’s ashame WIN won’t pass the baton onto Nine to give it another go with local news.
It’s a shame that this is what the mess is now.
At least with Nine News Local they weren’t hiding the fact that it was a statewide bulletin - and at least it felt pacey with live reports.
Yes but does Cairns need a package on Illawarra’s preparations (voiced by a Wollongong reporter)? I would think a VSV would suffice. I would think viewers would want a PKG on Taipans preparations?
I think part of WIN’s problems is that they appear to be forced into a 5.30pm timeslot by Nine, which means less revenue $$$ than they could get at 6pm, and thus less money that they can spend on content… And I think they are still feeling the effects from being a 10 affiliate for 5 years and are recovering from that.
And 5.30 draws fewer viewers since many people are coming home from work etc and are not ready to watch TV news by then.
Yes but also WIN wants to have these “local” bulletins which have very limited local content. Perhaps it’s time to hand the job over to Nine who would do a more professional and superior job.
Nine was a better product. For starters the bulletin (regional market wide or semi statewide in NSW) was live, had dedicated presenters, reporters did live crosses and the reporters were a better standard (on a whole).
WIN don’t want professional standard reporters. They pay industry rates from 20 years ago.
Well for that to happen, WIN would need to give up maybe 55-60% of it’s revenue (up from 50%) to pay for that and I don’t think that’s going to happen either.
Possibly but the next few months should be interesting. Perhaps Nine could be producing bulletins for Anchorage stations. Unlikely but stranger things have happened.
I very much doubt WIN will agree. There was no agreement with WIN and 9 on the Tasmania news bulletin otherwise it would be a reality by now So I don’t think WIN will agree to 9 taking over the WIN local news
I concede that the WIN news brand is decaying because WIN don’t even try to upgrade the news graphics. in fact WIN has the most stale news graphic package in Australia right now. I very much question the future of WIN local news now
