I think you’re right about that. Pretty shocking for what is the largest regional city in New South Wales, and the 2nd biggest in the state overall.
While I hope to be proven wrong (Newcastle & the Hunter does deserve proper competition in local news on TV, just like other major regional markets on the East Coast), I somehow doubt that WIN will go into Northern NSW and establish full local bulletins in the immediate future. Taking over the production of those short 2 Minute “Chicken Noodle” News Updates from SCA? Yes, but those would probably be relatively inexpensive for WIN to produce in either Wollongong or Maroochydore.
Keep in mind that we’re talking about the same regional network who has in recent years, axed local news services in Regional WA, Regional SA (Mount Gambier/Riverland), Mackay and Mildura. So yeah, I fully expect WIN to axe more of their existing local bulletins before launching new ones in Northern NSW.
We all saw how Nine raided other regional newsrooms for staff in Southern NSW/ACT and Victoria, so I’d expect to see something similar to happen in Queensland.
You’d think that if/when WIN News goes into the Northern NSW market, they’d try and get staff currently at NBN or Prime7 to defect.
I’ve noticed recently that Grant Broadcasters Star 106.3 FM here in Townsville have been “interviewing” (via phone) WIN News Townsville anchor Lincoln Humphries about what’s coming up at 6pm that night each afternoon.
Obviously I’m expecting to here 9 News Townsville updates on SCAs radio stations once 9 News launches, so this seems like WIN getting in on the radio news updates early.
You don’t think that perhaps WIN would look at axing say WIN News Gippsland (market population 230,000) and reallocate those funds into a local news in Newcastle (market population 810,000)
Much larger opportunity to recover the costs of producing a local news service in a market with 3 times the population - and much higher ad spend - and limited competition.
Now that SC Nine has a local bulletin up and running in the Gippsland region, that would make it easier for WIN to exit that market, but with the lower revenue they now get from a TEN affiliation, they would be less likely to invest in setting up a Newcastle office, staffing and other infrastructure to do local news (even though ongoing running costs would be similar to the Gippsland bulletin).
Is it possible that the Gold Coast local news updates be read out from the Sunshine Coast and the remaining northern NSW news updates be read out from Wollongong?
It’s possible, but I’d think it would be more likely that they’d do all noodle updates from the same studio so that they just need one staff member doing them.
I wasn’t recording… I was watching on my lounge room TV.
They have 2 studios available at the QLD office… and as far as I knew, it was widespread knowledge that 2 bulletins are presented live. But, we didn’t know which bulletin was the live one (apart from Sunshine Coast).
It is clearly the Townsville bulletin that is presented live.
As Lincoln introduces the bulletin as “Live across Townsville and North QLD”.
When the northern bulletins came out of Rocky, Townsville was always done Live as it was the biggest market. Not surprised it’s still done Live as I’m assuming when the bulletins moved to Maroochydore that each Newsroom kept the same Production Deadlines/Timetable.
The WIN Network & @UOW have awarded the inaugural Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism award to Hannah Laxton-Koonce. Details #WINNews6pmpic.twitter.com/WR13DskF3r
Do they use that front on camera angle as well when they are changing form news to sport, because my win news uses a camera angle on and angle from the left
Reliable rumours circulating that all Queensland news bulletins will no longer be produced out of the Sunshine Coast studio as of July. All production and recording will be moved to the Wollongong office. I assume this means a large amount of staff from the Sunshine Coast office will be soon unemployed.
Interesting development! SCA Nine will be happy as they might have a good shot of beating WIN News into 3rd place if they move the bulletins to Wollongong as I can’t imagine Qlders wanting to watch local news presented from Wollongong…
