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.
- Published by David Knox
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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
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- Tagged with ABC News, ABC News Breakfast, Four Corners, Insiders, Lateline, Lateline Business, Offsiders, The 7.30 Report
40 Responses
A daily version of Media Watch would be good. Even if it’s bite-sized.
If you need inspiration, just look to David’s attack on The Age. Great stuff.
It would be daft to broadcast a news channel in HD and if they are prevented by regulation from dumping the HD channel, they should lobby the government to change this. I see little benefit in having an HD news channel and being in HD only would limit the number of people who are able to watch it. Whereas if it were in SD all with digital TV could tune in and extra bandwidth could be given to the other ABC channels. It seems far smarter to have four channels in good quality SD, rather than one in mediocre HD, one in decent SD, and two in poor SD.
@ Lee
It is widely acknowledged that MSNBC leans as far left as Fox leans right.
CNN is straight up unbiased news (hence it’s tiny ratings and #4 ranking)
Fox News is mostly right wing opinion with only news in the daytime
MSNBC is mostly left wing opinion with only news in the daytime
Keith & Rachel are as left as BEck and O’Riley are right. Even MSNBC Ackknowdges that. Opinion and a point of view gets ratings in the US. Not straight news.
It’s unlikely that ABC would air anything from MSNBC. Possibly BBC News, but not MSNBC.
Personally I hope the channel is 100% Australian.
Yeah! The US brings an economic crash to the world and in most other countries a housing crash!
American news is well catered for with Fox News/CNN and CBS evening news yet SKY NEWS UK can’t even be available as a full screen channel.
It’s likely the ABC won’t be showing MSNBC, although MSNBC should replace CNBC, does anyone watch that channel.
Nine News is native HD in Sydney. Even the field cameras are now HD 1080i, and edited in HD 1080i back at the station.
I would love to get some MSNBC shows from America.
Like it or not America is the biggest influence in the world on what eventually happens to us.
They’re news is our news. CNN is boring and stupid, FOX is ridiculous…and they are on cable already.
There are so many great MSNBC shows to keep us informed about American politics.
ie Keith Olberman. and Rachel Maddow
abc : balanced and fair ? never . all the free kicks it has given rudd , wake up people
Definitely a good thing here. Sky News will finally update and fix their network, and hopefully some people will tune in. Four Corners and Q and A are awesome shows and maybe this will get people interested. Put on all the international news shows as well, and add an indepth state news and I’d definitely watch.
@ Dave. You’ve obviously never watched news in HD. I can’t watch news that is not HD anymore. The difference is incredible.
I really hope this channel is in HD.
If they are building a brand new set, studio and control rooms to put he channel to air, as well as new graphics from the ground up, it is a fantastic opportunity to do all that in HD from the very start.
The expense in HD lies on converting existing studios and controls rooms from SD to HD. But setting up in HD from the outset, the cost is a only a fraction more than SD.
Considering this channel will have an HD signal, as well, it will be mighty slack of ABC News 24 if at least the studio cameras and graphics are not HD from the get go.
Field reports come come online as HD down the track.
@ Pietro,
Why would you need to watch news in HD??
@ Jason D…by neutral do you mean “Fair and Balanced” like Fox News 😉
Hopefully Jeremy Fernandez gets a large role.
But as the previous comments indicate there are still so many unanswered questions for the ABC.
@pete, 90 is already taken – it’s Nine’s HD channel. Yes, they could have used 92 for GO! as it’s their second SD channel, but that was a marketing decision.
It’s hard to see how the ABC can avoid making News 24 a HD channel, they don’t have the bandwidth for another SD channel and have already announced that they will be using ABC HDTV’s spectrum allocation for News 24, so unless News 24 is HD they’ll have no HD channels at all (which is not allowed by the government rules). I suppose they could make ABC2 HD, but that seems like a waste given it’s limited programming. And they can’t have ABC1 as HD without also broadcasting it in SD (until 2014 anyway), so they really have to make News 24 HD whether it makes sense or not.
Yes, will it at least contain native HD material? (ie not upconverted SD), Seeing as it’s eaten away the normal HD channel? Hopefully the studio programmes will use HD cameras and equipment.
ABC provides the closest thing we have to unbiased news on TV.
It gives me great pleasure to know how upset Sky is with this. Their sloppy right-wing news just makes me cringe. I hope they lose a lot of business over this.
I wonder if this will really be a HD channel.
ABC1 really had too many news shows so it’s good that a lot of it will be going to ABC4.
It’s good to have a competitor against Sky News, but I hope they will provide a balanced news service and get both sides of the story, unlike much of the news content that comes from the ABC. ABC Radio National is incredibly biased towards the left-wing when it really should be neutral. If ABC News 24 isn’t neutral, I certainly won’t be watching.
Can’t wait for this channel 🙂
Any news if it will be live nationwide?
I hope the ABC are smart enough to put ‘ABC News 24’ on channel 24. Unlike GO! which is on 99 instead of 90.
Presumably no mention of it being an HD service.
That would be right. The ABC has virtually pretended HD doesn’t exist while the US and the UK have more and more programming in this format.
Since the federal government won’t be giving a blank 50 mill cheque to set this channel up, it’d be interesting to know if it’ll be able to take both ads and corporate sponsorship (for which federal legislation would need to be passed),
to pay for its considerable running costs, just like BBC’s 24 hour news channel has.
Although I’m not an abc news watcher, I can guarentee I will be watchng at least something abc news related once this channel is launched. I’m glad that, rather than another ‘general entertainment’ being launched, that we get something that fits more in a niche category.