WIN News Canberra bulletin to be broadcast from Wollongong
WIN News will broadcast its Canberra bulletin from Wollongong starting on Monday.
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Canberra-based staff at WIN News were told on Wednesday that their bulletin would be produced in Wollongong from 6.30pm Monday, with current Wollongong presenters Kerryn Johnston (pictured, right) and Amy Duggan (left).
The last bulletin broadcast from Canberra with Danielle Post will go to air tonight. She will join Nine News in Sydney as assistant chief-of-staff. She had secured the job before the announcements were made.
Canberra-based news crews will continue to gather news in the ACT.
‘‘If we can look through what’s happened, the bottom line is, there is still a team here who lives, breathes and loves Canberra and they’ll still be there at the press conferences, and they’ll still be there questioning and they’ll still be giving Canberrans a voice and they’ll still be walking the streets with every single Canberran,’’ Post told Fairfax.
‘‘And the best thing Canberra can do is support them, support the team, because they will still be giving local news the local aspect of it.’’
WIN Network chief executive officer Andrew Lancaster confirmed the change in presenters in a statement, saying Johnston had been with the network since 2001 and Duggan since 2005.
“Both Kerryn and Amy look forward to spending time in Canberra and working alongside the many business and community groups that are the heart and soul of the city and its surrounding areas,” he said.
“As the only commercial network producing a local news in Canberra, we are determined to continue providing a genuine half-hour live news bulletin covering the people, places and issues affecting Canberrans.
“However, in order to do so we must look for ways to innovate and improve efficiencies in order to remain viable in this ever challenging operating environment.”
“The presentation of the nightly news bulletin from WIN’s Wollongong headquarters will not affect the process of news gathering in Canberra at all. The number of reporters and camera operators, their contacts and relationships with local people and players and understanding of the city and its key issues is unchanged.”
Ironic this comes after a huge week of news in the capital…
14 Responses
It’s the national capital!!!!!
The bulletin is supposedly meant to be presented live out of Wollongong, if find that very hard to believe considering Wollongong is the home of the network and their bulletin goes to air at the same time as Canberras using the same presenters, minus Geoff Phillips. This is a stupid move by WIN and one which might cost them their number one spot in Canberra
Andrew, we’re talking 39% of total ad revenue that WIN need to pay Nine annually. That’s way more than Prime & SCA are required to pay Seven & TEN.
Going on Screen Australia’s calculations of total ad revenue in 2005/06, WIN’s annual ad revenue for regional Qld, southern NSW, Vic, Tas & Perth (excluding regional WA & SA) all add up to $799 million – 39% = $311 million. That’s more in just one year than Nine’s one-off payment of $120 million for Nine Adelaide.
WIN pay more.
@Stan: WIN has just scored a windfall selling Nine Adelaide (and potentially Perth) to Nine Entertainment Co, so I don’t think Bruce Gordon is crying to the bank just yet
I wouldn’t blame WIN too much for this move. Even considering they’ve axed their local bulletins in regional WA & SA in recent years, they’ve still got a long way to fall before they get to the base levels of Southern Cross Austereo & Prime Media. Maybe blame Nine for screwing even more money out of them in the last affiliation deal…
@Andrew – Yes, my bad. Albury is done from Ballarat.
If WIN is not careful, the recent parliamentary review into abolishing the current 75% Audience Reach Rule and subsequent call to have legally enforcebable local production conditions placed into a possible relaxation may include conditions that any nightly news programs are live produced in the regions they serve. Hope the politicians do put such a condition in. Then WIN and all other broadcasters will have to go back to having true local region based nightyly News production again and not this centralised out of date before it gets to air madness that occurs now, one hopes.
It was expecting considering they’ve just lost their 3 newsreaders with live experience.
WIN’s Canberra news was just that – Canberra news. The rest of the region it supposedly caters to may as well not exist for all the exposure it ever got.
Win TV is about minimising costs where ever they can see fit and keeping monthly budgets looking good. All over QLD it seems like news is recorded so early in the day that they do follow up stories the next night, just incase its old by the time it airs on the night. All regional markets in QLD re: Cairns, Townsville.Mackay, Rockhampton, Wide BAYand Toowoomba all start recording at 2pm. As they have to do 30 mins of news its shown at 630pm. But Wins commitment is just about getting something to air, you can see in the news broadcasts that its not quality journalism its just rushed and its a shame cause many reporters are seen on streets interviewing at 730am in morning to make the lunchtime recording, to what we see at 6pm each night.
soon all win bulletins will come from wollongong. most of them do now already but it is still good to see that win still produce local bulletins unlike prime and southern cross
@Jason: The Albury bulletin for WIN would possibly be produced from Ballarat as Albury is part of the Victorian aggregated market.
But you do wonder just how comprehensive a news service can be when bulletins are being taped in studios hundreds of kilometres away as early as 3pm, for broadcast at 6.30pm, or how many stories are being held over to the next night.
Given WIN has gained some cash from the sale of Channel 9 Adelaide (and potentially Channel 9 Perth if rules are changed) you’d think they could continue to support production in the national capital.
It’s ironic that Prime7/SC10 have Canberra studios but don’t do a local evening bulletin, while WIN has a local bulletin but it’s now based in Wollongong.
Makes sense. Not.
With WIN now producing bulletins for Wollongong, Orange, Wagga Wagga, Albury and now Canberra that makes 5 half-hours from one studio – meaning bulletins must start recording before 3pm. Gees, I remember when “Sunday Review”, the local WIN4 Sunday night half-hour of local/national news was produced by one journalist, one cameraman, a film editor/audio op., and the night’s program switcher (co-ordinator). How times have changed, not necessarily for the better.