★★★★★ 0/5

ABC News 24 tops digital channels

ABC News 24 won its first night in digital channel shares as shocked viewers watched a tsunami hitting northern Japan live on TV.

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ABC News 24 won its first night in digital channel shares on Friday night.

Shocked viewers watched a tsunami hitting northern Japan live on their television screens as ABC News 24 switched to rolling coverage from NHK World.

The tsunami was taking place as primetime News was being broadcast in Sydney and Melbourne. But while many 6pm bulletins were reporting the earthquake and tsunami warnings, it was all unfolding on ABC News 24, SKY News and international news channels including CNN and BBC World News.

The NHK footage from news choppers was compelling. It was the first time a news crew had broadcast live pictures of a tsunami beamed around the world as it was happening.

Conventional Aussie news bulletins struggled to keep up with the disaster, resorting to their usual stories while ABC News 24 upstaged them. Both Today Tonight and A Current Affair included some live crosses before Nine News rushed a special bulletin to air at 7pm with Georgie Gardner and Peter Harvey hosting the NHK content. 6PM with George Negus, fronted by Hamish McDonald, showed the wave live before switching to regular stories. 7:30, which was due to host its first local editions, included a national segment on the disaster from Chris Uhlmann. TEN had a special late bulletin at 10:30pm. SBS also showed some of the NHK footage.

The top show on ABC News 24 was ABC News at 162,000 viewers but other shows including The World and The Drum (the latter being on air while the tsunami was happening) rated well for the channel.

It pulled a share of 4.2% over GO!’s 4.1% and 7TWO’s 4.0%.

Week 11

26 Responses

  3. I have tro agree with Reg… it’s been apparent from the start that ABC News 24 is crap on weekends… they essentially run it as a Monday to Friday business and on weekends they obviously don’t want to pay anyone to work. Well, guess what? The world doesn’t stop turning because it’s the weekend. Give us the same quality every day and stop padding out the weekends with endless repeats. In this case they could have switched to NHK’s feed so it wouldn’t have been a major impost.

  5. Big deal… 162,000 viewers… How about praising Driver Dan’s Story Train on ABC2 – It pulled in 192,000 viewers ..

    And what about Dibo The Gift Dragon on ABC2 with 228,000 viewiers….!!

    So back in the real world….

    If you Really want real international news watch SBS.. But you don’t that why you all watch FTA commercial channels….

    Check the ratrings if you don’t believe me…

  7. News 24’s coverage was great last night. Today, it has been dismal. Again, when real events are happening in the real world that affect real people, the ABC decides to just continue showing old repeats of Australian Story or Big Ideas. By contrast, when there is controversy over nothing in Canberra (think “the opposition accuses the PM of ….” or “the PM has attacked the opposition’s plan to ….”) they’ll have hours of rolling coverage with the same political hacks offering their worthless opinions.

    This is a huge news event. A 8.9 earthquake is a substantial news story. So is a huge tsunami. So is a radiation leak at a nuclear power plant. So are massive fires burning substantial parts of a city. Any of these things individually would warrant rolling coverage – what has the ABC been thinking? They’ve just had by far their largest ever audience for News 24, giving them a great opportunity to show the value and quality of this service. Instead, they have shown the channel at its worst. I thought things had improved since their abysmal coverage of the September earthquake in Christchurch. Clearly they haven’t.

  8. 7 in Perth had a special news programme in the afternoon hosted by Susannah Carr. I actually watched the ABC but I did note that 7 were at least doing it live.

    Nine was confused though. WIN Perth clearly switched to that 7pm bulletin with Gardner and Harvey, that seemed live, but then played the east coast ACA with warnings of a tsunami hitting Australia and urging viewers to call friends and family up north, even though hours ago it was reported there was no threat from the tsunami. To be honest that’s one of the reasons I never watch 9 in an emergency, because I can never tell what’s live and what’s 2 or 3 hours delayed.

  9. No doubt this will prove to Seven and Nine that they need to drop their regular programming for breaking news. Seven moved their horse racing to 7two at 4:30 aedt to have a buliten on Seven this afternoon.

  10. The only FTA commercial station in QLD airing live coverage of what happened in Japan initally was Ten. (10’s Brisbane 5pm news went to CNN along with live coverage during 6pm with Hamish McDonald, while 7/9’s 4:30 news was delayed)

    If I were a news director, especially one working for 7/9 I’d be embarrassed with the effort they showed yesterday with hour old news in QLD: Ten was first with the story in QLD, and most importantly, Ten was live into QLD.

  12. I was watching the BBCs coverage overnight on ABC news 24 which had some amazing footage I hadn’t seen before, plus live reports from the Pacific islands. Then they cut to an unscheduled replay of 730 Victoria (I am in NSW). Sure it was late, but I’m sure people in WA may have wanted live coverage. And today whenever I have switched on ABC 24, they have had pre-recorded programming, I had to resort to watching Sunrise’s extended edition to get an update.

  13. I’ll admit I didn’t even watch the commercial news at 6pm as I was watching ABC News 24 although I did see it on Channel 9 first because someone else was watching the channel and told me to turn it on. I did flick to SBS just past 6.30pm and flicked between the two from then on in. I liked that they offered different coverage. Including the BBC, CNN, NHK as well as their own. Well done. I’ll admit I do wish there was a 24 hour international news service on an SD Digital channel on SBS. Preferably BBC World News. Properly funded by the government. This is why it is needed. My well wishes go to everyone in Japan as well as anyone else affected.

  14. @Craig … I agree with you. The dedicated news channel proved its worth last night and I too was not displeased that other channels for the most part continued with scheduled programming.

  15. Im still in shock after watching the live pictures as the tsunami swamped the coast and went right inland via NHK’s coverage on BBC World News, sweeping up cars and presumably thousands of people.
    Some of the most incredible images ever captured in human history, and it was all live to millions. Could not believe what I was seeing.

  16. I missed the news on TV as I was on my way from work to a function at a pub. Every TV in the place was tuned to Nine’s footy coverage, and they didn’t even do an update. No wonder the ABC is trumping them.

  17. Do you think you should have a this post updates topic?
    As numerous bulletins are being added and extended on schedules across networks today…
    Heres what we know so far for today:

    Sunrise on 7 from 7am until Midday AEDT (Live across country though)
    Seven News special with Jennifer Keyte 4:30pm
    Seven News Special hour long edition 6pm

    Today on 9 extended until 10am (Delayed across country)
    9News hour long Special 5pm with Wendy Kingston

    1. This post isn’t updating because it’s on yesterday’s digital channel shares, not today’s programming. As it’s the weekend no network has advised of any changes but that’s for letting us know, Ben.

  20. See this is the benefit of a 24 hours news service, I hope the knocker will stop complaining about ABC using it’s HD channel for new. They had the best coverage with updates on the hour. And then this morning while SkyNews was showing footage from yesterday ABC 24 was taking live coverage from Japan with a crew on the ground showing some of the first footage of the extent of the disaster.

    Good on ABC and good on viewers for watching.

    I kinda like it that the other FTA channels stuck with their programing for the most part. Seven could have postponed the movie and BH&G and TEN could have done like wise with UB USA and BB. Nine was kinda stuck with the round one of the NRL but were probably dying to go to the quake coverage.

  22. I watched that Tsunami wreck several towns on Sky News Live.. (which had the NHK World Feed) I’ve never seen anything like that before it was very surreal.

  23. It was rather embarrassing to see Ch 9 Melbourne go with the Brendan Fevola story while on News 24 and CNN we were seeing live video from helicopters of the rolling waves and rivers of debris inundating Japan. Shows just how inflexible (and irrelevant) the 6pm bulletins often are.

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