I was quite impressed to see WIN News actually covering a local breaking news item that happened around 5:30 this afternoon, rather than waiting until tomorrow like they normally do.
It lead the news as the first story, but due to it being so late, WIN News covered it by doing a “cross” to the newsroom, featuring one of the journos in the Townsville newsroom talking about it. It was obvious it wasn’t live as they had a TV in the background with Hot Seat on it.
Have done ever since the change to an hour for Nine News, same with Southern Cross. Both have run the full hour long mixed bulletins and prior to that both have run a half hour mixed bulletin since the beginning of time. For a few years however WIN did have a special local bulletin which ran called 6 O’Clock with the 6:30 being a national and international bulletin which was still produced locally. The 6 O’Clock bulletin in the beginning also had two editions, one for Launceston and Northern Tasmania and one for Hobart.
TDT have always just shown the Melbourne 5pm news.
Produce 3 statewide’ bulletins for each QLD, SNSW/ACT and VIC from the Wollongong & Maroochydore studios that air live 6-7pm. (Victoria would have to be done “live to tape” 5pm-6pm or so)
These statewide bulletins basically function like a TCN Sydney or GTV Melbourne newshour - live at 6 into all markets - EXCEPT - the B Block (segment 2) is a local window for local news. And the E Block (segment 6) is a local weather window. The headline and opener would be localised from 6pm-6.01pm.
The flow would go something like
6.00 Local open & headline (Pre-Record)
6.01 A Block - Top Stories (Live)
6.15 B Block - Local Window (Pre-Record)
6.35 C Block - More Stories (Live)
6.45 D Block - Sport (Live)
6.55 E Block - Local Weather (Pre-Record)
Local sport can go in the Local Window (20 minutes long) and if local story is really big enough to be state wide (say a Child murder in Newcastle) it can go in the statewide A Block
The scenario you’ve described involves two undesirable problems:
The regional network’s ability to do the National news is compromised by lack of resources, and relies on “annoying” their Network partner to get all stories to them in a timely matter. Believe me, there are many times on GTV and HSV, for instance, when the lead story is still being cut one minute before air time. (And I imagine it’s a constant source of frustration at NBN to get that state political story in advance, say, without having to record it as it goes to air and turn it around and mess with timing etc.)
Many late breaking stories, remote crosses, etc would have to be ditched by the regional ‘pretender’ to the national news - they end up with an inferior product. In fact KICKIT’s premise to pre-record Victoria’s National news an hour in advance would mean many important state stories just wouldn’t get to air.
It seems a little odd to the viewer that what appears to be the same program can’t place more precedence on a local but important story, but hold it over until the second segment.
What I would like to see, and I hope would happen if the regional/metro mergers go ahead, is a variation of what you describe, and what happens every night in Korea:
The regionals take the first 20-25 minutes of National news from their Metro. It can vary a little night to night depending on the news content. The regional bales out at the end of a story and goes to their locally branded news opener, and broadcasts their fixed duration news, about 20 minutes including two commercial breaks. The duration of the local news hole is specified by the Metro for that night. It doesn’t have to be the same every night, but fall within 'specs’
At 40-45 mins in, the regionals rejoin for sport, which is kind of packaged as a program in its own right, like Sports Tonight used to be on TEN.
The regionals just take the weather from the Metro.
The reasoning: The important news both National & State political is usually over by 20-25 minutes, the viewers still get up to date coverage, the remote crosses, big name newsreader etc, etc, and the regionals don’t have to worry about trying to adequately do a “National news”.The regional hole is only covering what appears to be fill anyway, The slightly reduced local news duration is probably a good thing in eliminating their “fill”. The regionals lose their weather report, or incorporate a short one at the end of their block.
Now the problems: It relies on cooperation of the metro station, and this has sorely been missing in the past, but if the mergers happen is a much better prospect.
The Metro has to give fair early warning of the intended opt-out time and duration, later confirm, and stick to it.
Despite what many people seem to think here, Victoria’s 5 bulletins aren’t pre-recorded in half hour blocks but in a series of hostings and separate stories. I “think” NSW has gone to this system too since Victoria’s production moved to Wollongong. If not, they should. This allows for some flexibility in adjusting all bulletins should there be a timing issue, but the aim would be for the Metro to get it right. Allowing the metro to do the weather for the state gives them some flexibility in adjusting the timing on the sports segment/weather.
The problem with the Korea format you suggest, is WIN viewers in say Townsville and Cairns would have to take the first 25 minutes of 9 News Brisbane. That often means the first 25 minutes would be filled with local Brisbane centric stories of little relevance to viewers 1700km (as is this way now)
Everything we are talking about is hypotheticals and not likely to happen anyway. Just yet that is, until new affiliate deals are done or mergers happen - then we would likely see different news systems set up in the years ahead.
But I think the way Prime7 and WIN do news now - is less than ideal, and not really the way people consume news these days.
For WIN viewers, yes they are getting the big national state and international stories of the day - but they are also getting local news from say Sydney or Brisbane about traffic, fires in a house and local Sydney weather. For Prime7 viewers they have to sit through 30 minutes of often "filler’ type local news - before they get to the major stories of the day, and even then it’s in a botched together broadcast.
Nine and Win already stated when they signed their new affiliate deal that they plan to look to effencencies in areas like news where they could work together.
Yes, there would need to be better co-ordination between the capital city station and the affiliate station. But with WIN paying 40% of it’s revenue to Nine to the tune of $80m a year - I think they have a good argument to go to Nine and say - listen - we would like to be able to work with you on News, so we can do our own live news at 6 with national and state stories too.
Basically, WIN would have to work with TCN Sydney the same way QTQ does. I know stories are often being edited last minute. But what I am suggesting would basically be for WIN and Prime to operate the way QTQ or 7 Perth does. Produce their own bulletin - wth the local resources and using network stories from Sydney.
And the NBN model is far from perfect either, but you could argue the problems are fixable to a degree
No live crosses (only for a Newcastle item at best).
Not enough local news
Is too Newcastle centric to viewers up north
Openers and set are too generic looking.
The airing of a local story across the network (when important enough) means the delivery is compromised - can the local impact be maintained for that market without appearing to be too locally concerned to other viewers.
Tries to look like an integrated bulletin when it is clearly isn’t - would be better off having clearly identified local segments.
Order of stories gets disjointed - related items often appear 10 mins apart.
I’m also guessing that very little will change, content and format wise, with WIN News until its next affiliation agreement or possible merger (legislation permitting) is nutted out.
They might want to change things if they end up signing another deal with Nine, just because the 7pm timeslot is sub-optimal. But if they go with Ten, the current format will be okay as they can move the local news back to 6pm and have Family Feud on One and 11.
WIN News back airing in Mildura in the form of news updates it would seem. Noticed this convo with Bruce Roberts on Twitter from last night. A positive sign of things to come, perhaps…
Mildura is listed in Appendix F as a “Licence areas with no regulatory local content obligation - These tables list licence areas where local content is being provided, with no obligation to do so.”
But perhaps in future, maybe the Mildura bulletin could be included in the Ballarat and Western Victorian news bulletin in exactly the same manner as Griffith is included in the Wagga Riverina news bulletin.
And for Mackay, it could be reintroduced but included in either the North Queensland Townsville bulletin or the central Queensland Rockhampton news bulletin.
I think the Ballarat zone is big enough, Swan Hill has always been in with Bendigo it would only make sense that if Mildura was going to be included it would go into Bendigo rather than Ballarat
@Willwalk Both the coverage areas of those bulletins are large enough already, and there is far too much distance between the major centres for it to work properly. If a Mackay bulletin were to be reinstated, it should focus solely on the Mackay, Whitsunday and Coalfields regions.
Also, Corinne May is pregant with her first child, due in October. It’ll be interesting to see if Hannah McEwan is back by that stage, or if weather will go to being read from the desk. There isn’t any other fill-in presenters (news/sport/weather) in QLD currently.
Townsville, Mackay and Rockhampton are all completely different cities, and i’m pretty sure neither Townsville or Rockhampton residents would be pleased with stories from over 400km airing on their bulletins.
The Mackay broadcast area also covers the entire Whitsundays and nearly the entire area of the central west inland mining region.
So, it’d be ridiculously impractical for WIN to send journalists into that area every day.
It’s already bad enough when the Townsville crew have to come to Mackay every so often to interview the federal Member for the region.
Win could have actually averted much negative publicity if they just ‘downsized’ the Mildura bureau and broadcast the Bendigo / Swan Hill region bulletin into Mildura instead.
