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Cyclone tests TV networks

This morning as Channels Seven, TEN, ABC and SKY News had live coverage of Cyclone Yasi's fury, Nine had a Danoz advertorial about back pain remedies.

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At 1:45 this morning as Cyclone Yasi bore down on Far North Queensland, Seven, TEN, ABC and SKY News all had live coverage for viewers.

Nine had a Danoz advertorial about back pain remedies, following a 2003 Bruce Willis movie.

Cyclone Yasi had certainly kept networks on their toes as they sought to cover its fury and frantic preparations.

After Nine’s excellent coverage of the recent floods, this time the Seven Network stepped up to take the lead.

Seven, ABC and SKY News had extensive coverage across the day.

Seven began with Sunrise which stayed on air until 11am, while Today wrapped at 10am as Kerri-Anne began. Both networks had extended news bulletins from 11am.

Thereafter Seven stayed with the coverage across the day while Nine switched to cricketing commitments.

Seven also abandoned much of its primetime schedule to the looming crisis with Chris Bath anchoring on a long day. She continued until 12:30am when Chris Reason took over. Seven stayed on air into the early hours including with Sunrise presenters giving reports via telephone well after midnight, ahead of a 5am broadcast today.

Nine did rush A Current Affair into the schedule (it was initially out for cricket) with Leila McKinnon, including a live local edition in Queensland. It then returned to the cricket, even missing two crucial news conferences from Premier Anna Bligh (both were carried by Seven, ABC News 24 and SKY).

Around 10:30pm Nine’s cricket finally ended as Peter Overton on location interviewed Anna Bligh -but Bligh was simultaneously live on Seven, ABC News 24 and SKY giving a Press Conference. As Overton asked her about the latest damage Bligh’s answer was less dramatic than the live advice she was giving to other media at the same time.

TEN also aired a late night bulletin as well as covering the drama in earlier News, 6PM with George Negus and The 7PM Project.

Seven concluded its marathon coverage at 2am with TEN following a few minutes later. ABC and SKY stayed with the story into the morning.

But in the rush to keep viewers informed, Seven backfired when it added a ticking “Countdown” clock to Today Tonight. The Twitterverse slammed the idea of turning the story into an New Year’s Eve style ‘event.’

– Today Tonight you are a disgrace. Having a countdown to when the cyclone will hit. Absolutely shameful

– Caught the end of Today Tonight as I left work- whose sick idea was it to do a “countdown to impact”???

– Today Tonight is running a cyclone countdown. I’m happy power is cut in the area so they can’t watch in disgust as I am #tcyasi

The clock was not present when Today Tonight aired in Queensland on delay.

But this aside, Seven’s coverage of the event has so far completely upstaged what Nine offered.

81 Responses

  1. We watched the 7 coverage until the wind blow our antenna off, and we had to shift to analog TV – when we switched to ABC1 until the power went out.

    7’s coverage was very good, and a great distraction from the scary wind!

  2. Grant “take me seriously- Im a weatherman” is an absolute disgrace. Sunrise was absolutely cringeworthy. Want examples?

    (1) Grant Denyer acting all hero standing outside when the premier clearly asked everyone to stay indoors. Why did he feel the need to barge into peoples homes without even asking?

    (2) David Koch telling us that there were 18 metre waves? The premier had dismissed this misinformation many many hours earlier

    (3) Melissa Doyle describing a waving palm tree as if it was armageddon.

    The clowns at 9 werent much better- Karl Stefanovic was acting like the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD was about to implode- I mean seriously- sensationalist sH** from both sides.

  3. Like snapper jack’s and steveany’s comments, it also felt to me like the commercial networks were somewhat disappointed the morning after that the super cyclone didn’t live up to their “atomic”, “monster killer” scenarios. A feeing frenzy to be sure.

    At least the ABC24 provided mostly decent fact-based info and coverage.

  4. Thank you David for your reply. I completely agree Nine missed a big opportunity yesterday and in reading back I do concede that you did mention the quality of Nine’s broadcast in regards to the flood coverage. I do however consider your critique of Nine’s coverage was harsh considering the comments you made about Seven’s failing to commence continuous coverage of the Queensland floods until 1.00pm after Nine had been doing continuous coverage since 4.30am. I also feel you should mention the reason why Nine’s Today went off air yesterday (Queensland I am talking about). Karl and the team were forced to move, resulting in the network being forced to revert back to normal coverage. No excuses for the post Cricket chaos that was the 9.30 Nine News bulletin however. Not even the most diehard of Nine fans (which I am ) could dispute the quality of that bulletin was a disgrace.

    David please don’t get me wrong. Nine’s coverage was terrible and I do not dispute that. However, Seven’s coverage was almost just as bad when it came to the floods and it did not receive comments anywhere near that of this post.

    I do however, respect your opinion on the matter. Thank you for your work.

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