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TEN set to overhaul weekend bulletins

TEN will dump state-based bulletins in favour of a single, national bulletin.

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TEN will finally revamp its weekend news next month by dumping state-based bulletins in favour of a single, national bulletin.

The moves to switch up the weekend bulletins has been expected ever since TEN abandoned its local 6:30 bulletins and offered redundancies across the network.

But in a surprise move, the new weekend bulletin will run for 90 minutes from 5pm, mirroring its weekday bulletins.

A network spokesperson tells The Australian, “A national weekend bulletin gives us the opportunity to consolidate the studio resources from five local bulletins into a comprehensive, single national broadcast of exceptional quality.

“The excellent journalistic resources that TEN has in each state will play a key role in our weekend news coverage.”

The new bulletin is expected to feature a male and female reader, a male sports presenter and a female weather presenter. Perth viewers will have a “refresher between 8pm and 9.30pm” because of the time difference. None of the TEN presenters will lose their jobs because of the single bulletin.

But the 90 minutes could be a viewer overload, given most weekend bulletins struggle to fill a half hour on the slowest news days of the week. The final 30 minutes will also be up against Seven and Nine’s main bulletins, often some of the week’s highest ratings shows.

News Director Dermot O’Brien said, “We’ve got the ability to own five o’clock, we do five o’clock better than anybody. We have very strong five o’clock local news in all markets.”

38 Responses

  2. 1 word – Seriously? There are 2 other commercial stations showing 30 minute local content at 6pm (when and how most people want to see it) so 90 minutes of national news will be a massive fail.

  4. Too much news these days.I kind of remember what we had to suffer before the likes of the Simpsons and other things took over at 6pm came along in the nineties and it was not pleasant.90 Minutes is overkill SBS can do two bulletins of 30 minutes a day except on weekends why not 10.

  6. Someone within the ranks of Ten News dept has to be deliberately trying to sabotage there news brand. How stupid is this move. 90 minutes of News on the weekend. Half an hour or even the hour is stretching it for the weekend. Move the news back to 60 minutes and run that across the 7 days schedule if need be….

  7. @Dodge

    Don’t people in Adelaide already see what’s happening in Sydney over the weekends? That was my point. When I was in SA a few months back almost 1/3 stories were Sydney based, well at least that’s what Nine News in SA was offering up

  8. Looks like the new format starts this Sunday here inPerth according to the EPG. Still not keen on being stuck with Eastern states news. I don’t mind watching ABCNews24 as that’s live, but there’s no need why TEN can’t support local state news.

  9. Dermot O’Brien said, “We’ve got the ability to own five o’clock, we do five o’clock better than anybody. We have very strong five o’clock local news in all markets.”
    That would be correct if a) you didnt abandon the First at Five slogan which served Ten for almost 2 decades and b) if the rating s actually reflected it. but sadly they dont. I dont know how much better it will be. Network Ten have stuffed up its news brand and its very hard to fix it before the year ends.

  11. We usually watch the 5pm news on the weekend, mainly (for me) to catch the early sports report) then back up and watch Ch7 News at 6pm. I have to say that Ch10’s coverage of news has been pretty woeful of late, especially when you see what Ch7 considers news at 6pm. Maybe this move will come with more resources to produce a more credible and comprehensive news service and please, enough of the emotive words like tragedy, shocking, unbelievable etc.

  12. “We’ve got the ability to own five o’clock…”. TEN, you had a niche at 5 and you f***ed it up. If you want to be taken seriously, spend the money and do it properly otherwise provide alternative viewing. These stupid bean counter driven decisions just make you a laughing stock.

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