Cyclone tests TV networks
This morning as Channels Seven, TEN, ABC and SKY News had live coverage of Cyclone Yasi's fury, Nine had a Danoz advertorial about back pain remedies.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
At 1:45 this morning as Cyclone Yasi bore down on Far North Queensland, Seven, TEN, ABC and SKY News all had live coverage for viewers.
Nine had a Danoz advertorial about back pain remedies, following a 2003 Bruce Willis movie.
Cyclone Yasi had certainly kept networks on their toes as they sought to cover its fury and frantic preparations.
After Nine’s excellent coverage of the recent floods, this time the Seven Network stepped up to take the lead.
Seven, ABC and SKY News had extensive coverage across the day.
Seven began with Sunrise which stayed on air until 11am, while Today wrapped at 10am as Kerri-Anne began. Both networks had extended news bulletins from 11am.
Thereafter Seven stayed with the coverage across the day while Nine switched to cricketing commitments.
Seven also abandoned much of its primetime schedule to the looming crisis with Chris Bath anchoring on a long day. She continued until 12:30am when Chris Reason took over. Seven stayed on air into the early hours including with Sunrise presenters giving reports via telephone well after midnight, ahead of a 5am broadcast today.
Nine did rush A Current Affair into the schedule (it was initially out for cricket) with Leila McKinnon, including a live local edition in Queensland. It then returned to the cricket, even missing two crucial news conferences from Premier Anna Bligh (both were carried by Seven, ABC News 24 and SKY).
Around 10:30pm Nine’s cricket finally ended as Peter Overton on location interviewed Anna Bligh -but Bligh was simultaneously live on Seven, ABC News 24 and SKY giving a Press Conference. As Overton asked her about the latest damage Bligh’s answer was less dramatic than the live advice she was giving to other media at the same time.
TEN also aired a late night bulletin as well as covering the drama in earlier News, 6PM with George Negus and The 7PM Project.
Seven concluded its marathon coverage at 2am with TEN following a few minutes later. ABC and SKY stayed with the story into the morning.
But in the rush to keep viewers informed, Seven backfired when it added a ticking “Countdown” clock to Today Tonight. The Twitterverse slammed the idea of turning the story into an New Year’s Eve style ‘event.’
– Today Tonight you are a disgrace. Having a countdown to when the cyclone will hit. Absolutely shameful
– Caught the end of Today Tonight as I left work- whose sick idea was it to do a “countdown to impact”???
– Today Tonight is running a cyclone countdown. I’m happy power is cut in the area so they can’t watch in disgust as I am #tcyasi
The clock was not present when Today Tonight aired in Queensland on delay.
But this aside, Seven’s coverage of the event has so far completely upstaged what Nine offered.
81 Responses
To Channel 7’s defense on the Today Tonight Countdown Clock. TT does not air in regional Queensland aka Cairns, Townsville etc at 6:30pm weeknights, nor did TT air last night even with the cyclone special and 7 didn’t show the clock in Brisbane (cause it was on delay & nsw/Vic viewers thought it was in bad taste).
But at the end of the day 7 shouldn’t have shown the clock anyway in Australia.
7 certainly over did it with the coverage of Qld, all day, all night. Other things happening around the word but if you watch 7 yesterday you wouldn’t know about it. A count down clock, please!!!!!!!! What were they thinking..
David, I have considered very carefully how I would respond to this post of yours. I am a die-hard Channel Nine fan and always will be, but even I have to concede Seven have had superb coverage of this latest disaster. However lets be fair here. When the floods crisis eventuated you did not make any similar posts downgrading the seven networks coverage. In fact when the majority of your readers were commenting on Nine’s sensational coverage you said and I quote that rating a Network was unnecessary considering the circumstances at hand. What has changed in 3 weeks?
As I stated, I do not disagree with the fact Nine’s coverage has been disappointing, Seven’s also was during the floods but it never received the downgrading that you just served Nine.
Completely unfair.
Michael fair question. The difference was both Seven and Nine covered the floods. This time one had KAK, cricket, a movie and Danoz during a time of looming crisis. If you look back on the floods I also commended Nine’s coverage.
I found it to be quite a joke Nine played a promo saying they’re the ‘home of news and current affairs’ once their coverage last night wrapped up – even Channel 10 stayed with the coverage. If they’re going to make those claims, they have to back them up.
Perhaps they spent their entire news budget covering the Qld floods?
I have to say kudos to the ABC for their coverage. I was able to watch their news with a friend in the UK. I had ABC1 on tv and my friend in the UK was able to watch the coverage on the ABC news 24 website (which was exactly the same as what was being shown on abc1) as the ABC had removed geoblocking. It was really good that people outside australia had acccess to the service as a lot of news stations elsewhere were focused on other news for most of the night.
While the best of the big three, I still thought Seven’s coverage was a bit tacky in places. I cringed at the end of the Storm Chasers (throughout, actually) segment when they showed a sat graphic of a cyclone combined with a sound-byte of a woman screaming.
Its all too much- they are covering this as though armagedon has happened…and then . really …..not much did…get back to sydney all you buffons….i had to watch MaGyever on 12 this morning beacasue everyone was dribbling on in qld hoping for a story
Apart from the mistake of the countdown clock on Today Tonight, Seven’s coverage of Cyclone Yasi has been brilliant, they have it all over Nine on this one.
Not sure if I’m a fan of blanket coverage. Watching 7 during lunch yesterday was painful. There was still 10 hours or so before the cyclone arrived so it seemed to me that the were struggling to fill content. There’s only so many shop owners/residents/experts that you can ask the same questions. Maybe a update every hour on the hour would be better in these situations.
The coverage on 7 this morning with Grant Denyer live from Innisfail was excellent. A cameraman and an iPhone broadcasting via Skype as Grant basically wandered the streets talking to residents and seeing the damage first hand. Amazing.
Watching the morning coverage (getting over missing Letterman/Perry) and Sunrise has really stepped it up a notch, crossed to Today/Nine and they keep showing the satellite image on a 3 second loop, phone interviews from the studio. While Sunrise has Grant out sending in live Skype updates via an iPhone. Okay the picture is crap but it’s live from ‘ground zero’.
Nice to see they escaped major damage to the major populated areas.
Great work David, thanks for staying up and monitoring all the major channels. Hope you get some decent sleep in the next few days. Yasi has certainly thrown Seven’s schedule into chaos. I think My Kitchen Rules and Deal or No Deal will be shown this Saturday to make up for yesterday. As for Criminal Minds and City Homicide, I think they will be simply be pushed back by one week, meaning Seven will utilise the first of two non-ratings weeks in Easter to put its schedule back in sync.
Channel Nine News is a joke.
Mark Calvert should be given a smack, and sent back to the UK.
Yep, I saw the countdown and I was of the exact same opinion. It’s not the freaking New Year fireworks – it’s not like at the end of the countdown someone is flicking a switch.
Grant’s doing a great job reporting on skype
Completely disagree. Channel 9 continually had news updates through the cricket, whereas Channel 7 seemed to just repeat the same footage all day of previous cyclones and boarded up houses. Channel 7 came across as very tacky whereas I think Ch9 realised that saturation coverage is perhaps not totally necessary.
1) the countdown clock on today tonight, whose brillant idea was that? How stupid was that, channel 7?
2) Channel 9, reallty dropped the ball, after the cricket, they had a small segment with peter overton, before then showing a film instead of continous coverage of the cyclone – why??? I would of thought the cyclone would of taken precedence over a repeat screening of some film, yet again, another brillant idea by a network… Not!!!
I too saw the countdown and thought it was in poor taste. THere is a clear difference between coverage etc. for people not in the region but was it necessary to have it “counting down” like a nYE clock. Perhaps if they had the bottom right corner saying “Impact @ XPM” it would have been more appropriate.
I think all this coverage is great, but in situations like these they should focus on integrity and respect – rather than ratings
This post adds creedence to my statement to you “When do you ever sleep?”. Media Watch will have so much footage to sift through if they are going to look at the networks handling of the disasters.
Oh man I did not think that was going to be the emoticon that came up.
But don’t you know Cricket is more important than people’s lives? 😛
What happened to Letterman?
I recorded SC TEN in to the small hours, once finished with Yasi SC TEN switched to an infomercial and didn’t show Letterman at all and I was waiting for a Matthew Perry interview… lately Craig Ferguson over on ELEVEN has been far more reliable and at a better time (10:30pm) where as Letterman right now seems like an after thought for TEN showing it any time from 11pm trough to the early hours or not at all, very disappointed this morning!
Nine really dropped the ball last night. The cricket was a dead rubber. I think this was more important than a pointless One Day match. Interestingly you could see Anna Bligh doing her interview with Peter Overton in the background of one of the live Seven crosses about an hour before it actually went to air on Nine. Did the rolling coverage on Seven go right through primetime or was that just in Queensland?
Must say that seven did have some decent coverage I turned over to them after Cleveland show on eleven and shocked they had dumped primetime
The ticker on today tonight I caught whilst channel surfing and thought it was an absolute disgrace more reason why I don’t watch that trash
I’ll admit I didn’t know Channel Nine did anything as I watched the main channels around 11.30pm last night so I must of missed it. Saw the ABC, Seven and a bit of Ten.
Stay safe and my heart goes out to everyone in Queensland.