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ABC News 24 to launch mid year

The ABC has revealed the names of the identities who will comprise its 24 hour News Channel, set to launch by mid year.

Chris Uhlmann (pictured), Scott Bevan, Ali Moore, Fran Kelly, Barrie Cassidy, Juanita Phillips, Virginia Trioli, Joe O’Brien, Jane Hutcheon, Jim Middleton, Annabel Crabb, Paul Kennedy, Jeremy Fernandez, Tony Eastley and Peter Cave will comprise ‘ABC News 24’, the News channel coming to the public broadcaster.

To launch mid-year, the channel draws upon news and current affairs presenters and editors in ABC TV and Radio. It will offer 24 hour Australian and international news.

Director of ABC News Kate Torney said, “A large number of experienced journalists from the ABC and other media organisations were interviewed for the new presenting positions, but the most qualified and experienced applicants were existing ABC journalists.”

New programs are being developed specifically for the channel, focusing on world news, national politics and business existing shows including The 7.30 Report, Lateline and Four Corners will also feature.

The line-up includes:
Chris Uhlmann, political editor The 7.30 Report
Scott Bevan Moscow correspondent
Ali Moore Lateline Business presenter
Jane Hutcheon former Europe correspondent
Juanita Phillips, ABC News
Virginia Trioli, ABC News Breakfast
Paul Kennedy, ABC News Breakfast
Joe O’Brien, ABC News Breakfast
Jim Middleton Australia Network
Annabel Crabb ABC Online chief political writer
Barrie Cassidy Insiders / Offsiders host
Tony Eastley AM presenter
Fran Kelly Radio National
Peter Cave Foreign Affairs editor
Jeremy Fernandez ABC News

Source: ABC

40 Responses

  1. Please, please please, remove that dreaded and annoying black band at the bottom of the screen on ch 24. It really interferes with watching the actual news items being presented. The “black band” references to other, unrelated news items
    just distract.

    Please reply to this, with hopefully good news in this regard. BDV, Adelaide

  2. darthfyer wrote: Ok, the ‘rules’ state there must be an HD channel, but the rules also state you can only have 2 SD channels and the ABC have 3 SD channels, because the government gave them an exemption. Should the ABC want to, i don’t see why the government would disallow them to remove the HD channel altogether in favour of additional SD channels.

    Darth, the ABC and SBS can have as many channels as they like, but one of them must be HD at least 1000 hours a year (upscaling is permitted, unfortunately). Seven/Nine/Ten must also have 1000 hours a year but this must be true, native HD.

    Finally, Seven/Nine/Ten are restricted in the number of their multichannels (1 SD and 1 HD) as a devil’s agreement made with the government and Foxtel. ABC and SBS have never had such a limitation, though they previously were told what kind of shows Not to show (eg, English language foreign news, which SBS2 still hasn’t put into their schedule, for no particular reason).

  3. Ellis, every network only gets the same allocation of radio spectrum no matter how many TV channels it decides or is allowed to have.

    With digital TV technology, unlike analogue, you can increase your channels from one to many, but at a cost to picture quality. The system we have was originally designed to show a single Full HD channel only.

  4. I don’t understand why everybody is talking about picture quality on other ABC channels. How does the launch of one channel affect the picture quality of another channel? It’s absurd.

  5. Is the ABC able to show ABC News 24 in proper HD (I assume it would be 720p ?) then also show the other channels, ABC1,2,3 in decent quality in SD ?

    So if that didn’t make sense what I meant is, going by what I said above, by having ABC News 24 in HD, will the other channels still be of a decent digital picture quality ?

    I vaguely remember on the ABC forums that the issue of ABC 2 being blurrier sometimes was going to be fixed around mid March. I haven’t seen ABC2 for a while , is it still blurry at the times it used to be blurry ? cos I think when I saw it once in the last few weeks it was clearer. Not sure if and how they fixed it.

  6. I’m not sure there would be much other content on this channel originating in HD apart from the Sydney operation. I would be surprised if the other states were upgraded to HD to service it, after all werent they all just “upgraded” to that new system that Media Watch reported on (the one with black holes etc.)?

    In fact there has been a lot of cost saving at the ABC lately in the lead up to this New channel, will other services suffer to make sell something few will really want?

    And I wonder how much material the ABC will be able to share between the commercial networks (after all Ch9/7 have much larger resources), when they are competing with those flagship 6pm bulletins? Not to mention those international providers.

  7. @Greg

    BBC’s 24 hour domestic news channel doesn’t take ads. The ads are on it’s 24 hour international news channel (though not every feed).

    The ABC would not need to shoot any more footage to fill a channel with stories. It would just need to compose a few more voice overs, do some more editing, and film a few more people sitting behind desks. Most news channels fill their evenings with opinion and subject focused programs. The ABC currently produces a fair few, but would need a few more to match the standard.

    I think the biggest unanswered question about the channel is where it’s going to get it’s international coverage from. It currently relies heavily on the BBC and ABC America. However the former has it’s own news channel in this market, and the latter is tied to Sky News Australia.

    All news channels with some Australian content take their overnight coverage (and parts of the day as well) straight from an overseas partner. The ABC would find it difficult to do the same.

  8. @David S. :Pete suggested ch90 for GO because the letters G or g (9) and O (0) look like 90. I know that 9HD has 90, but he’s suggesting the lack of creativity in terms of the channel it was put on. Also, as much as it makes sense for the ABC to make ABC News 24 an HD channel, should they go with making it an SD channel, they then have additional bandwidth for ABC5 (SD) and in the meantime more bandwidth to improve the other channels. Ok, the ‘rules’ state there must be an HD channel, but the rules also state you can only have 2 SD channels and the ABC have 3 SD channels, because the government gave them an exemption. Should the ABC want to, i don’t see why the government would disallow them to remove the HD channel altogether in favour of additional SD channels.

    @Lee: I’m not sure i want there to be a heap of international programming. The ABC finally have a platform that they can use for an almost entirely Australian produced channel. I would however like to see that the ABC introduce the scrolling marquee news reel along the bottom of the screen (like all other major news channels). Complete with a weather and time bit and perhaps even a separate (second) scrolling marquee for either finance and/or sport. Sometimes i don’t want to sit through what they are talking about and simply want to see the headlines (in the scrolling news reel), whether it be news or sport.

  9. I can see myself watching this channel more so on the weekends than on weekdays. The lack of news programs on FTA on the weekend is appalling. I’ll often find myself wanting to find out the daily news on a weekend and having to wait until 6 (or if you miss that, the next news is the following morning).

    Would be interesting to see what they do in terms of sports coverage on the weekend. Perhaps a 30minute look at sport on Sat/Sun afternoons/evenings and again at night.

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