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What’s wrong with this picture #2?

Remember when Nine got angry about its watermark being erased by Seven? Now it's happened again, but this time by Nine. Here's why.

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A few weeks ago Nine got very shirty about the way Seven’s TT covered up their watermarks on ACA footage of Brian McFadden at Sydney Airport. You can check out the photo comparisons here.

Nine was so incensed it put together a cheeky YouTube video to reprimand Seven.

“Even a big watermark like this isn’t enough to stop Channel Seven from stealing our footage. They even have the audacity to call it an Exclusive,” it said.

Last night ACA‘s special Sunday edition quickly moved from interviewing Karl Stefanovic on the street in Sendai to another bite in the Hey Dad scandal. That’s the scandal that gave them a rare win over Today Tonight last Monday.

It aired details of a statement “made for A Current Affair by Melinda O’Donnell” who is related to the man at the centre of allegations of sexual abuse.

ACA showed a still photo of O’Donnell with a female voice-over reading out some of her more startling abuse claims from a Statutory Declaration. The way the photo was morphed you would think O’Donnell was a perpetrator rather than a victim.

Reporter Ben McCormack said ACA had been aware of O’Donnell’s allegations “since March last year” but that O’Donnell had now gone public. TV Tonight can confirm that ACA had been sitting on the information which was now ending up as a TT scoop. And it wasn’t happy.

But A Current Affair used a still image of O’Donnell from a promo of Today Tonight which has an interview with her tonight. Surprise, surprise the Seven watermark was mysteriously absent, or as Nine previously termed it, “stealing our footage”.

No more network high ground on fair use of watermarks -all bets are off.

‘Ownership’ of the Hey Dad story continues to be high stakes for both 6:30 shows. Nine led with revelations in 2010 via its Sarah Monahan interviews. It doesn’t hurt that the Seven Network is a key part of the story. Last week Today Tonight said the NSW investigation was going nowhere, but is happy to revisit it tonight and has paid O’Donnell for her interview.

However, as several readers have asked, was Nine’s apparent concern in covering the Japanese earthquake / tsunami on a Sunday little more than a desire to undermine Today Tonight‘s Hey Dad interview?

Meanwhile an international disaster continues unabated…

28 Responses

  1. Gees did we see the Watermark on Sunrise this morning with the Christmas Island Riot Story… I swear the watermark outshone the actual news footage. This is getting beyond a joke with these networks.

  2. While these 2 low life shows drag out old reports all the time the better george at 6 becomes
    People get so sick of the muck racking and tit for tat stuff from both networks
    Their is more important stuff going on in the world than this S—.

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