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Just not Queensland cricket

Brisbane sports fans vent their anger at QTQ9 for delaying the cricket and screening wrestling.

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cricketFirst it was Seven and the tennis, but now QTQ9 has upset Brissy viewers after delaying the telecast of Australia’s one-day series victory against New Zealand, showing wrestling instead.

But Nine defended the decision to show the match on a delayed telecast in Queensland, effectively an hour behind the action, to keep its news bulletin at 6pm, instead of shifting it to 5pm during the innings break in the cricket.

Both the Nine switchboard in Brisbane and the Courier-Mail website were flooded with complaints over the decision to delay the telecast of the vital Chappell-Hadlee series clash from the SCG.

Instead Nine treated Queensland viewers to replays of American wrestling.

Gold Coast viewers with access to the northern NSW broadcaster NBN were able to watch the cricket live.

Furious cricket fans took aim at Channel 9 on the Courier-Mail website. “It is unAustralian and Big Kerry would never have stood for it,” wrote Mark of Burpengary.

QTQ reasoned that by airing the delayed first innings coverage from 2pm to 6pm –- as opposed to live coverage between 1pm and 5pm – they were “striking a balance between cricket fans and people who expect to see the news bulletin at 6pm”.

Yesterday was the first day of the official 2009 ratings.

Source: Courier Mail

11 Responses

  1. they could have just shown a 1 hour edition of the new at 5. it wouldnt have botheres me if it had cut into the second innings. this kust ratings boost and nothing else. they could have easily put the news on at 5 and shown the cricket live

  2. Paulo – spot on! Perth and Regional WA had the game delayed by an hour.
    And I must say, I was rather furious. And the only reason Nine/WIN did it in WA is the exact same reason as Qld – News. Except, in WA the news went at 5pm! Pfft, how freaking stupid.

  3. Due to the additional coverage of the bushfires on Nine news in Melbourne, this extended the news into the cricket and it resumed around 7.15pm. After the cricket returned it was live, however the first 45 minutes were not shown. This is a reasonable compromise as we get relative coverage of important news, and live sport at the same time. I cannot see why this couldn’t be applied to Queensland.

    I can’t speak for Queensland viewers on the daylight saving issue as I am from Melbourne, but this way, one gets live breaking news and live sport at the same time.

  4. The news started early on NBN (about 4:57pm), so I assume it also started early (i.e. 5:57pm-ish) on QTQ. This would invalidate Nine’s claim about people expecting the news to be on at 6pm.

    Evan :->

  5. Just on the point about Daylight savings, there is significant report in the south east region for daylight savings, but there is still little support in country QLD. One idea that was floated was that of having two time zones in QLD but supposedly those in favour of daylight savings were not in favour of two QLD time zones. Tough cookies!

    Just on the delay, its really getting frustrating. I would rather miss 30 mins of the cricket and watch live then this appalling delayed crap. Come on Nine you did so well over the summer with live cricket, don’t crap out now!

  6. Cannot understand why they can’t show it live. If they must have news at 6, start using their extra digital channels. Even if 9 up there and every other state not on EDT have one channel live, and the other delayed, that would solve everyone’s problem – wouldn’t it?

    Regardless of whether QLD have daylight saving or not, there’s no reason for sport not being live.

  7. I’m pretty sure it was delayed here in Perth as well.

    We’re used to the weekday games being delayed (which I don’t actually mind as I can watch the 2nd half of the game when I get home from work) but this is the first time a weekend game has been delayed.

  8. Craig: The 1992 DST referendum showed support in the SE corner, but it was country Queensland (i.e farmers) that defeated it. But South East Queensland has grown by leaps and bounds since 1992, including large amounts of interstate migration. In fact a recent survey that Bligh wont use, actually records that 69% of SEQ residents and 72% of SEQ businesses support DST.

    Ianblair 23: My opinion, is that, Nine made a last minute change, that could not be even reported in the Sunday Mail. Seven’s coverage with Jennifer Keyte was delayed in Queensland too, by 1/2 hour so they could fit in their “advertorial”, as well as the Brisbane 7 station running the Sydney feed (including news updates with Ian Ross) during yesterday. But my theory is that QTQ made the change to weaken Sunday Night’s debut. It is amazing what you can do, when your playout is at home, not a feed from Sydney.

  9. im a queenslander, the fact is during the delayed cricket broadcast they showed us news bulletins which were clearly not a live update but an hour behind, yet they were worried about not getting the news in at the right time. All this was just for ratings they were never going to get. i may sound unsympathetic to people suffering from the fires but there were at least 2 other channels from which we could have got info from.
    This is going to be a year full of disappointment from channel 9.

  10. I have just read all 133 comments on the Courier Mail website. The Queensland viewers are absolutely livid and in my opinion justifiably so. Perhaps our resident Queensland commentator, Kuttyswood can shed more light on the matter, but as far as I am aware, when the cricket is being played in Sydney, Melbourne or Hobart during daylight savings, Queensland always has live coverage and just shows the news one hour earlier.

    So yesterday, as per normal, Nine had down in the printed guides that the cricket would be live and the news would be at 5 pm. But because of the bushfires in Victoria they decided to delay the cricket and show the news at 6 pm – effectively waiting one hour to inform Queenslanders on the state of affairs. So this meant that they didn’t cut to Victoria like Sydney did.

    But the worse move was when the news finished the continued to show the cricket on delay now some 90 minutes behind.

    Whilst this is absolutely no excuse for what Nine did, I just can’t help think that if Queensland observed daylight savings time none of this would of occurred.

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