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Rumour: News bulletins extending to 1 hour?

Here we go again....Is the Saturday extension part of a bigger plan?

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2013-10-23_0016At the risk of setting off the rumour mill on this one, could our networks again be looking at one hour news bulletins for 2014?

Given both Seven and Nine recently expanded their Saturday bulletins to 1 hour, are they testing the waters for a weeknight switch?

TV Tonight hears whispers Nine is considering moving A Current Affair to 7pm. A move like that would impact on Reality shows such as The Block, The Voice and Big Brother, but then Nine’s schedule from 8:30 has been a bit thin of late.

Meanwhile a report on the weekend tipped Helen Kapalos would be replaced on Today Tonight. Seven’s Upfronts didn’t go into that sort of detail and strategically focussed on the performance this year for Seven News and Today Tonight:

7 NEWS led the way expanding its coverage across the day with additional bulletins. TODAY TONIGHT continued to deliver at 6.30pm with a national average of 1.4 million while SUNDAY NIGHT proved a ratings powerhouse averaging 1.9 million a week.

1.9m? Those must be national figures rather than 5 city metro….

These sort of plans to revamp bulletins tend to ebb and flow quite a bit, motivated by various forces and arguments (just ask The Project about that), but change never comes easily when News is so habitual with audiences.

At any rate I suspect we’re in for a long game of cat and mouse again with confirmation on where everyone is headed unlikely before January or February.

28 Responses

  2. I think TEN could have 90mins every night. It wouldn’t really be news overload as they would be targeting different audiences every 30mins-1hr, e.g. the 5-6pm audience, then 6pm. Anything would be better than the simpsons! That or a game show at 6pm

  3. I wish 9 would stick with the 30min News, Regional Australia already has 1 hour of news a night with the ‘WIN News Hour’ 9 news at 6 and WIN news at 6:30, I’ve found watching an Hour and a half of news every night for the past week is actually too much to handle…..the ‘WIN News hour and a half’ doesn’t quite sound as good either?

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