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Prime to close Tamworth studio

Prime will close its Tamworth studio after 50 years of bulletins and relocate to Canberra.

2015-01-23_1857Prime Media will close its broadcast studio in Tamworth, that have been home to local news bulletins for 50 years.

ABC reports 21 editorial staff will continue to prepare local news but New England North West and North Coast bulletins will be presented from Canberra.

The date of the change has not yet been determined, but is linked to a planned relocation to a new premises in Tamworth.

Current presenter Fiona Ferguson will step down from her role behind the News desk, but will continue as News Editor for the North Coast bulletin.

9 Responses

  1. @pietro: According to White Pages, Prime is still at Union Road, Lavington. Must be only a matter of time before Prime relocates to another (smaller) premises for its remaining news/sales teams.

  2. Google earns $1m every 5 minutes! $65+ Billion in 2014! In 1998 money started to leave TV/Radio/Newspapers et al and head to Google. The “rivers of gold” were starting to dry up. “Old Media” had to tighten its belt and we’re seeing the result. Obviously, Google isn’t entirely to blame, the real culprit is the monetisation of the Internet. Would you give up the Internet to open a TV studio in the back-of-burke? We may hate progress but it can’t be stopped. My new Internet store is called “Cliche’s R Us”.
    BTW Fairfax share were $4.50 10 years ago, 85c today. Nine (NEC) shares have lost 25% in last 3 months.

  3. Albury does have local reporters; Helen Ballard is still going strong, though I have no idea where they are based. Surely there must be some sort of base still in Albury.

  4. and the government still gives a discounted licence fee to these companys. the spectrum could be used for so much more. if the govenment isnt willing to do that, then open up competition and stop the ridiculous protected market!

  5. Does Prime still have a studio in Bunbury and Albury still, or are they gone too? Nothing has come out of the Wollongong studio for many years, if it is still there? Orange was closed down, as was Wagga Wagga, Ballarat, Gold Coast and Newcastle in years gone by. Not to mention, Taree studios would have closed down back in the 1970s when NEN took over ECN.

  6. Ah yes, fond memories of producing/directing/switching those NEN9 world/national/local news half-hours from 1965, with Barry Pearce, Terry Moore and Arthur West. Yesterday’s news films from ATN7 arriving on the 1:30pm East-West Airlines service, major events taped (on the one VTR) or live off-air from the ABC. Those were the days of real TV. No automation, no autocue, very small number of people (all males) producing and presenting a credible half-hour, 10-mins late news, and a 5-mins around 9pm. Then, every program started exactly on the hour or half-hour. A clock ID proved it. End of an era. Shame.

  7. Owning a regional TV licence should require local news production at bare minimum. By which I mean actual news stories produced in the area they’re transmitted, not a lone person reading words they cut and pasted from the Internet to a webcam in Wollongong or Canberra.

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