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Seven News switch after pre-recorded Updates revealed

After TV Tonight exposes Seven's pre-recorded News Updates, it suddenly changes tack.

Seven News Melbourne has changed its News Update strategy following TV Tonight‘s Exclusive story in which the network conceded its Updates were pre-recorded earlier in the evening.

This week Rebecca Maddern has been presenting evening Updates, packaged shortly before they air. This contrasts with the Updates Peter Mitchell had been recording following his 6pm bulletin.

Last week a Seven spokesperson told TV Tonight, “All the networks are in the same boat. (The) Newsreader records an update after the bulletin, time varying pending the news, then there are in-program crawls and live updates from the scene if the story warrants it.”

But after critical feedback and Nine News confirming, “a dedicated producer/editor and newsreader stay back to record news breaks and update any developments on stories or to break news” Seven suddenly reversed its policy.

While Peter Mitchell had been pre-recording his updates, TV Tonight understands he hadn’t been rostered by Seven management to present late-night Updates unless there were major developing stories.

This is despite viewers now having two dedicated News channels, online news and the Melbourne bulletin trailing Nine’s by a country mile.

Yesterday Seven also announced new appointments to its Melbourne newsroom including Michael Scanlan  as a senior reporter from Seven News Brisbane, Sean Sowerby from TEN joining the sports team and Brendan Roberts, formerly of Nine, recently joined as Crime Reporter.

Seven has also made two new off-camera appointments, with Natalie Schenken joining as a producer from WIN, and Chris Anderson joining the graphics department from Channel Nine in Adelaide.

Seven’s Melbourne News Director Simon Pristel said: “These appointments will play a key role in helping to strengthen our experienced newsroom to produce Melbourne’s best bulletin.”

7 Responses

  1. This is not news to me! And I must say I had always assumed that the deception of pre-recording ‘news updates’ was common knowledge. It’s obvious when you realise that the ‘updates’ usually skim over items that have already appeared in the main bulletins and contain nothing new.

    In effect, they’re just news promos for news programmes that actually contain very little news!

  2. @Secret Squirrel – I think you’ll find that Seven has already lost Sydney to Nine! Nine News in Sydney is averaging 339,000 viewers each weeknight (in survey) in 2012 to Seven News’ 310,000. Same story with ACA v TT. ACA has averaged 303,000 viewers each night in 2012 (in survey) to 293,000 for TT. Today has beaten Sunrise as well.

  3. Well done, David! Another win for common sense and respect over pig-headedness and disregard for the audience.

    Meakin’s getting out before Seven lose Sydney to Nine as well.

  4. Nine News Sydney updated done by Peter Overton which air between 7pm and 8.30pm and most definitely pre-recorded. This can be determined by the ‘live shot’ background which is still clearly dusk.

  5. There are 2 good WIN people there. Natalie Schenken who used to read the late news here in Victoria and Sean Sowerby who was the Win News Sports Presenter!!!.Good Luck to them

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