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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.

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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

  1. Are we going to now have live coverage of all future cyclones for Northern Australia?

    I was more annoyed that my TV was interrupted for the coverage. Its not like that they can tell you anymore than what the SES or weather people could tell you. That its wet and windy, and stay indoors!

    Why the heck does ABC have to show it on both stations when they have a designated news channel for so called live around the clock stories. At least I got to see the new House over on Ten. On West TV, later that night more happened with the live feed from Cario on the protest riots than wtahing trees moving violently with a webcam from ABC for their coverage.

  2. I found 7s coverage disturbing with the amount of “whats the worse case scenario”? “how bad will it be?” and showing a few palm trees swaying in the wind. they seemed to be salivating at imminent catastrophe where as 24 had practical reporting on what to do, how to help.

    both stations repeated screen scrolls, images of swaying palm trees and satellite and radar imaging. there was no new news. there was no need to saturate every station with it.

    next thing you know everyone will be throttling abc3 for having playschool, magic roundabout or noddy on instead of imminent armageddon. sheesh

  3. Well done to Chris Bath and the Seven Network. As I reported yesterday morning, Nine and the WIN networks showed blatant disregard to Regional Queensland viewers by broadcasting the Today show in one hour delay despite the critical lead-up to this event. Nine’s switchboard operator was outright rude fielding my complaint shoving me off to WIN who had no idea. So much for ensuring affected people are kept up-to-date. Seven’s Sunrise was live throughout the state but WIN and Nine dropped the ball misleading viewers with Live overlays on the screen. Nine’s decision to position Peter Overton in Airlie Beach was dumb, nowhere near the real action, and his statement that the cyclone was heading this way was frankly stupid prompting me to turn off to Seven’s excellent rolling coverage.

  4. the most important question on tonight’s news…. why does Mark Ferguson get an umbrella for the live cross but all other reporters don’t ? It’s raining in all locations ? Someones playing favourites…

  5. I lived in NQ and FNQ back in the days of local tv station coverage and the coverage seemed better then. At least you had locals who know first hand about cyclonic activity and their local communities. Network coverage last night was basically talking over the same weather loop, with live stand-ups from hundreds of kilometres away from the predicted path of the cyclone.

    It was embarrassing to watch SKY’s live webcam from Bowen, some 400 kilometres away from Mission Beach. Surely they could have gotten a reporter closer to the action days before the predicted landfall. That’s a bit like having a reporter ‘live’ on location in Canberra for a news story happening in Newcastle. I know the predicted path had some degree of estimation in it but that’s crazy. Likewise, Seven’s coverage from Cairns, was a good 200 kilometres from the eye. It’s pretty pointless to have 3 reporters ‘live’ at the location all from the safety of their hotel rooms within a couple of blocks of each other, or in one case, from the other side of the same building.

  6. Lucy: I believe this article is about a lot more than 2am. It’s about a day of coverage. It’s about Nine dropping the ball after doing such a good job with the floods. Was everyone in FNQ without power during the afternoon when Nine was playing cricket? It’s also not just about bringing the story to those in the cyclone path. I believe Australia donated to the floods so well because they were awestruck by television coverage. Bring the story to us all and at the same time reiterate your News brand as they are doing today. But then, based on your previous defences of Nine across this site (which you are entitled to hold) I doubt you’ll change your mind. There will always be division between “saturation” and “updates” (did they have any during the cricket last night?). A fair number of comments here seem to agree Nine missed an opportunity yesterday.

  9. Seven really raised the bar last night dumping prime time programming for the event. The ticker on TT was the only downfall for Seven last night but being a regional viewer i didn’t see it.

    I didn’t even bother with Nine last night because they were pretty poor imo. The cricket should have been dumped to GEM or GO! and they should have carried the coverage. It was a pathetic effort considering what they did with the floods. Seven really picked up their game. Well done to them. Also well done to TEN. They also had great coverage. Picture in Picture helped for me so i could watch both. Nine was dreadful. Sorry but it was. Nine lost all credibility again.

  11. What I found Disgusting was Today Tonight on Channel 7,they had a bloody countdown clock in the top right hand corner of the screen counting down the impact time of Cyclone Yasi.
    Absolutely Disgusting.
    Channel 7 should bow there heads in shame & make an on air apology.
    A really low act from a sleazy network & a sleazy show.

  13. @TJ – I agree that saturation coverage is prob unnecessary, particularly if the same footage is just recycled with no new information. However, Nine clearly dropped the ball with regard to not covering Anna Bligh’s press conferences. To be broadcasting an hour-old interview instead of the live press conference that other networks managed to cover is pretty slack or incompetent. In situations such as this, people require up-to-date information. Nine failed badly here.

  16. I have watched ABC24 which gives the facts and the live press conferences from those at the heart of the situation. Real detail not hysteria.
    I have not watched any of the commercial networks coverage because of the over kill from the flood disaster.
    7 & 9 have gone mad, their coverage is really perverse !

  18. 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—- yep and i was in bed like iam sure alot of other people in the country were…. iam sorry for the QLD’s heartache…but i enjoyed Australia’s win in the cricket

  19. iam so sick of the whinges on this site…its fast becoming a place just to offload an uneducated gripe about alot of people on here have no direct involvement…ooops i have started to do it as well…well done 7…but continous coverage doesnt always mean better coverage though…just look at ABC24 for an example…boring…then Chris Bath sitting infront of a picture of lightening and cloud really didnt do it for me…at least 9’s coverage as short as it was was better packaged with better pictures…. you can understand why you wouldnt want to cover black sky and wind… and for those in the effected area…i wouldve only listen to radio anyway…

  20. Was disappointing that Nine couldn’t cover the cyclone much yesterday but if they didn’t have cricket things would have been different. At least they did show ACA and a special bulletin after the cricket. As it is a school/work night most people would have gone to bed after the cricket finished and there were other networks covering it. The aftermath is what more newsworthy as the audience can see the damage caused all over Queensland.

    Seven did manage to get ahead with the coverage and they had the advantage due to Nine’s cricket coverage however at 12pm aest they have reverted back to normal programming while Nine still have live coverage even here in SA and both ABC 1 and ABC News 24 are still the same. Ten have improved their coverage over the past 24+ hours and good on them but right now normal programming. Today Tonight’s countdown was a disgrace and the viewers should switch to Neighbours or Ten news instead. Looks like Nine’s backlash will turn positive as they are likely to cover the cyclone all day today and the only commercial network to do so. Nine also have the annoying news ticker too.

    My heart goes out to the people of Queensland having to deal with floods and now a cyclone. Luckily people can prepare for a cyclone 24 hours beforehand and I do hope that there are no deaths. It is an awful event but Queensland will get through it and rebuild their state.

  21. The reason why Seven’s coverage has been better than Nine’s is because 7 owns and operators local stations out of Cairns & Townsville and they have cooperation with each other, where as Nine do not own WIN Television. WIN do have local crews in these areas but like a reader of this site has said she rang Nine to ask why The Today Show was on delay on Wednesday and she was told to ring WIN, then she rang WIN and they told her to ring Nine.
    Seven also know how many viewers they have in regional Queensland and want to ensure they can have as much up to date information possible and 
    you may have noticed David Koch thanking 7 Townsville for all their help over the two days. 

  23. im sure after this, C9 will be praying for another natural disaster, so they can trump C7 next time around and get better ratings.

    I’m surprised they didn’t replace the Premiers news conference with a 2.5 men repeat

  24. Channel 9 Perth was a joke. We got KAK, Ellen, (we got no The View on 9 or on GEM) ET, 3 hour delayed cricket and that’s it. 9 Perth tweeted out at about 10ish that they’d cross for an update and then return back to the delayed cricked match that everyone knows who won.

    Seven was ok, but it still broke for Deal or Deal, News, TT, Home and Away, MKR. While at about 7:30pm I noticed they had their news on 7two.

    ABCNews24 was also good and they crossed to Egpyt as well.

  25. I kept flicking channels waiting for Nine to come up with the something other than a tracking map on the screen, nudda,nothing !

    I’m currently watching the supermodel (so called journo) on Nine, reading twitter messages and playing You Tube vids – lazy journalism all round when they keep constantly using it as the main source of information.

    David, you are correct, Seven has won this coverage battle, no doubt about it!

    P,

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