Sunrise upstages Today in breaking news of WA siege
Live local news bulletins during delayed Today broadcasts lead to a hot mess of news.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News, Top Stories
Today viewers in Perth yesterday could be forgiven for thinking they were going back to the future when a Breaking News story of a hostage crisis in Bunbury flipped between Live and delayed news updates -including contradicting footage of night and day.
The problem emerged as a result of Today‘s two Live WA bulletins which have been part of the show for over a year, in an effort to make inroads into Sunrise‘s dominance.
The siege ended just before 7am local time (9am AEST).
Both Sunrise and Today had Live coverage at 7am WST (pics above / below)
7:00AM
7:30AM
At 7:30am Today told viewers the next local update would be at 8:30am before reverting to East Coast news (originally broadcast in Sydney at 5:30am including with an overnight backdrop). That meant the siege which had actually ended, reverted back to being still underway.
Sunrise, which normally has one Live bulletin at 7am, opted to keep going.
8:00AM
By 8am Today was still reporting from the East Coast, including with a misleading ‘Live” stamp that was Live only when it was reported at 6am.
8:30AM
By 8:30am when Today switched to the second of its daily local bulletins, it was back on track.
9:00AM
But by 9am (as both shows ran overtime), Today switched back to its East Coast coverage.
A Nine spokesperson told TV Tonight, the two local Live bulletins of Today Perth News at 7:00am and 8:30am were up to the minute and Live.
“The Today show has a national bulletin that airs at 7:30am as well as 9:00am which may account for slightly different information as these bulletins will be two hours old due to the time difference,” they said.
But Today would benefit from more flexibility to remain Live for major news and avoid a hot mess of conflicting information.
10 Responses
Or viewers could have watched News Breakfast on ABC News 24 and get it live all the time (and Sky News for Foxtel viewers)
Perhaps in time the networks could do timeshift multi channels, where the east coast gets 7 Perth (+ 2 or 3hrs) while the West gets 7 Sydney (-2 or 3 hrs thus live)?
This is really interesting as for years Seven Perth and Sunrise could not have cared less for WA viewers and never went live to update their delayed telecast of Sunrise. A complete disregard for their viewers .
It was only when Nine Perth produced two local and live breakfast news bulletins that Seven Perth followed as Today was making in roads. Seven Perth are losing their nerve against a far more agressive Nine in that market.
Seven still dominate however their news is losing viewers quite rapidly hence their reaction.
tvtalk: Agree nine produces better news service.
Obviously Nine should of done better.
When i can always watch Tim with the news and Lisa
I’m surprised, Today’s Perth news is generally better IMO than 7’s. Clearly there wasn’t a contingency plan for a news event on Today’s part, or they didn’t deem it necessary
Today show is a mess. I dont have time to watch 30 mins of local news at 7am when i’m getting ready for work. Why not have 5-10 mins of local news every hour and half hour.
Why bother with a tokenistic live windows? Delayed news programs do not work. News should be live no matter what. Today and Sunrise should stay on-air all the time from their East Coast based studios and extend for WA viewers only. Or both Seven and Nine should be fully local with their own versions and never take the East Coast version. At least ABC24 is always live into WA for up to the minute news.
You are under the illusion these are “news programs”. I think they probably fall more into light entertainment with a smattering of news around the edges. Things such as celeb interviews and the recorded packages which make up a fair chunk of the show (post 730 especially) can be delayed no matter what. I think live windows (if done properly like Sunrise seem to have done yesterday) are a solid way around it. Of course if we have studios that were not shared (both Nine and Seven do this) it would be easier to be more flexible in certain markets without affecting other markets. However, in an age of cost cutting and being cost effective I don’t think this will happen.
What is to stop a local version of Sunrise/Today produced in Perth to run the same pre-recorded packages as aired on the East Coast? As both Seven and Nine are running and crewing a local Perth studio for their live bulletin inserts anyway, may as well utilize them for the full 3/4 hours these programs are on air and stay full local? This would get around the use of the same shared studios as used by Seven/Nine in Sydney for their respective breakfast and morning advertorial programs that would stop them extending for WA only from Sydney.
Cost.