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Nine rolls out Olympic schedule

Nine's Winter Olympics schedule has evening highlights from 9:30pm, making room for other programming. But there is ice cold news for viewers in Perth.

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Channel Nine has scheduled much of its primetime Winter Olympics to begin at 9:30pm weeknights.

Vancouver Gold, the three hour highlights package hosted by Eddie McGuire and Leila McKinnon, will wrap up the top events from each day.

From Mondays to Thursdays it will air from 9:30pm local time across the country. Friday, Saturdays and Sundays the start times vary from as early as 7:30pm to as late as 10pm.

Freeing up the earlier schedule will allow Nine to program other shows, although it is yet to reveal which ones.

The move could give Nine the upper hand in the ratings game, given daily shares are tallied on the 6pm-midnight block.

Live daytime broadcasts hosted by Ken Sutcliffe will air from 9am weekdays in Sydney and Melbourne, 8:30am in Adelaide, and 8:00am in Brisbane.

But Perth viewers get the raw end of the deal with delayed daytime broadcasts at 9am. With the exception of the Opening Ceremony, Perth viewers will have almost no live coverage of the games across the entire 17 days (Saturday February 20 is Live). After Seven’s delayed evening sessions with tennis, it is a bitter sting for Perth sports fans.

Weekday daytime sessions vary in length, anywhere from 3 hours to 6.5 hours. Weekends are up to 8 hours.

The Opening Ceremony is live in all cities at 12:30pm AEDT Saturday February 13, and replayed later that evening at 7:30pm in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and 9:30pm in Sydney and Brisbane.

The Closing Ceremony is live in all cities except Perth and replayed at 9:30pm on Monday March 1st everywhere.

Nine still has cricket and NRL commitments to juggle.

Nine will also give the games coverage via Today and Nine News.

https://tvtonight.com.au/Vancouver Gold

70 Responses

  1. Perth gets delayed again…just another reason I hate Australian TV.
    If Nine is going to delay it, then Don’t bother! I’ll get better coverage from the net anyway!

    That said, I believe there should be a law that forces the TV Stations that if 1 state gets these events live, so should the other states.

  2. You really aren’t going to have it much better with Foxtel, most of their commentary team is shared with Channel 9. i.e you will be hearing James Brayshaw on Foxtel!

  4. i will watch both fox and 9. more fox because they have the all rpound package and that’s why these 2 covering it will be a 1000 times better than what could produce.

  5. Thanks for your explanation, David. I didn’t think of general hosting, I thought they must have been commentators. I have just gotten off the phone from purchasing the Foxtel Winter Olympics package, so I won’t be watching Nine’s coverage at all.

  7. Read on The Daily Telegraph website the article about Matty Johns signing with 7. Howevere found the interesting part to be the line at the end which says “…while Nine is holding it’s big gun Underbelly: The Golden Mile for next week”. This Winter Olympic programming announcement could indeed mean we get to see Underbelly 3 from the outset of ratings rather than March or even post-Easter as had been suggested. The plot thickens…

  8. 9am in Melbourne is about 1pm in Vancouver…

    Does anyone know if channel 9 are going to be showing any morning events live in the early hours? Or does Today take first preference?

  10. Man that sucks that Perth gets this delayed. Who cares about Today being on, I would rather the Winter Olympics live from 6am, it would work out much better for Perth Viewers. Channel Nine you suck.

  12. Seven had barely any live coverage at all so this is an upgrade, doesn’t sound too bad actually, guess it’ll depend on what Nine shows and if they are prepared to go beyond the schudlued times if an event goes overtime etc.

  15. I love the Olympics, Winter Olympics, meh, but with Eddie McGuire. Giaan Rooney, Grant Hackett, Ken Sutcliffe, Leila Mackinnon…..yeah i won’t be watching.

  16. @ Liam: You’d hope Nine’s learnt their lesson re: Survivor. The fact that they’re planning on showing Heroes vs Villains hopefully is a good sign that they plan on showing it pretty soon.

  17. Could this mean Channel 9 *may* still fast track ‘Survivor: Heroes & Villians’ and use it as a lead-in to their Tuesday night 9:30pm coverage, seeing as there is now definitely room for regular programming?

    Its starts in the US Feb 11, but will not be anywhere near our screens until March if they wait until after the Winter Olympics have finished. The early summer advertising of the new season makes me wonder… are they thinking of airing it during the Olympics?

  18. Why couldnt they just broadcast the events just like they would for the summer olympics? most people i would think would find the winter olympics quite interesting, seeing that it is very different to what we are used to here.

    But then again, if you really wanted to watch it, youll watch it on Foxtel.

    1. Allie, Nine will have hosts, commentators and presenters. It’s not all sport commentary just as it wasn’t for Seven’s Beijing Games. There will be ‘colour’ pieces as well giving us a sense of Vancouver atmosphere.

      And to the question on is there anything live: read it again?

  20. Other than the opening ceremony I don’t plan to watch Nine for one second during the games. Foxtel is giving us the type of coverage we’ve always wanted.

  21. Perth viewers: The delay’s justified. If it were to air live, it would start in Perth at 6am, and Today wouldn’t air for the period of the Games.

    Brisbane viewers: Today will likely be live into QLD for the duration of the Games, skewing breakfast, possibly exposing a new audience to Today in Queensland.

    So, breakfast ratings are likely to be skewed, with only three markets having Today head to head with Sunrise.

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