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Airdate: ABC News: Early Edition

Another entrant into 2013's News battle as ABC sets the start-date for its new 5:30pm bulletin.

abc5302013 is fast turning into “the year of News.”

ABC1 will launch its a new 5:30pm bulletin ABC News: Early Edition on Monday, February 4th (AEDT), a week ahead of the ratings game.

The half-hour bulletin broadcasts from the Perth studios, due to the availability of afternoon studio space, but will air right across the country. Western Australia will also have a live updated local edition at 5.30pm.

Presented by James McHale, it becomes the first national news bulletin to be broadcast on a free-to-air channel out of WA.

ABC1 Controller Brendan Dahill said: “We recognise the importance of news to our viewers. This is a significant move, further updating the news after midday. Lifestyles are changing, and introducing a new early evening bulletin reflects that change.”

It will also be simulcast on ABC News 24. Capital Hill will air earlier at 5.15pm AEDT on ABC News 24.

17 Responses

  1. Sorry ‘muscledude’all our kids love abc2 & abc3. If you had watched either channel you’d know that abc2 shows programs for little ones and abc3 shows programs for older kids.If Mr abbot ever scrapped abc2 he’d be chased by a million mums waving their giggle & hoot toys!

  2. “… Lifestyles are changing, and introducing a new early evening bulletin reflects that change”. Wrong. Lifestyles are changing, and (if another news bulletin is required) introducing a new (and live) MID evening bulletin would reflect that change. PS. 5:30 is the afternoon, not “early evening”.

  3. All of ABC’s channels are hopeless. That ABC3 kid’s channel should be closed down, especially since ABC2 is nearly all kid’s shows anyway. ABC News 24 is just hopeless, squandering taxpayers’ money doing what Sky News does – and Sky manages to put out actual news without the left wing bias and the token Aboriginal story all the time.

    Hopefully when Tony Abbott wins the election serious thought will be given to privatising the ABC or else closing it down altogether.

  4. Graham, leave rage where it is thankyou! If you want news, then simply view ABCNews24, even for ‘breaking news’.

    When analogue finally gets switched off at the end of this year, there should never be a need for News to crash in onto the main netowrk interupting programming anymore! If ABC News wants to get breaking news to air, simply run it on their own channel, ie ABC24, and have a crawl only on bottom of screen on ABC1 alerting viewers if they want to view it on ABC24. News should no longer be able to dictate/trash the schedule on the main channel anymore as they see fit, being that they have their own fulltime channel to do with what they like!

    One would hope that when analogue is switched off from the end of this year, that ABC1 goes to being separatly programmed instead of doing great slabs of lazy simulcasting with ABC24 each day. To achieve this, ABC24 should switch to fulltime SD, and ABC1 should go fulltime HD. As to why HD bandwith is wasted ABC24 only on SD up-converted News all day is a joke! There are so many programs that we don not watch on ABC1 being that they see fit to not broadcast them in HD. No wonder we and so many others source our HD content from elsewhere instead! And as you can buy HD STB’s for less than $20 these days, there is no excuse once analogue gets switched off for good the end of this year!

  5. @Earthquake Networks can put their news content where they want. During the twilight AFL Prelim final between Hawks vs Adelaide, Seven News was shown on 7Two here in Melbourne.

  6. @ Jason, re: simulcasting of news on ABC1 and ABC News24 – I’m fairly sure this is a decision based on a combination of (lack of) finance for alternative programming at non-peak times coupled with a desire to maximise visibility for what is arguably ABC’s best/most important ‘asset’ – high quality, commercial-free journalism. In the UK the BBC have simulcast news shows during breakfast-time on BBC One and BBC News (its FTA digital channel) for a number of years. The main bulletins at 1pm, 6pm, 10pm are all simulcast on both, and normally runs through the night on both too.
    As an aside, what I find odd is that there’s currently No regular simulcasting of news on the main ABC1 channel on Saturday mornings (normally showing the long-running ‘rage’ music video strand instead) – which feels strange/wrong when a major story breaks like the recent school massacre in the US.

  7. I have no idea why the ABC runs “ABC News 24” as a channel. It has nothing but repeats and talking heads that cram a 2 minute live cross into 9 minutes of boredom. If news is going to take precedence on other ABC channels, then it’s time to give up the licence for Ch 26.

  8. Maybe Ten was ahead of the game having 2.5hrs of news. Now the other networks are following suit.

    Just wondering David, will the existing restrictions on having a news/current affair programme in the evening for FTA channels still be there when analogue is phased out? Can channels siphon off their news to another channel or do they need to be kept on the “main channel”?

    I guess given that news/current affairs programming dominates the ratings over any scripted drama/comedy, the networks wouldn’t want to move it to a different channel anyway.

  9. @Jennome – Agree totally. On weekends the same items can be there for days.
    Don’t quite understand the thinking behind the same news on ABC1 and ABC24 6am-10am (to 11:30am Sundays), kids’ progs on 2 & 3 from 6am. Not a very broad spectrum of programs across all 4 channels. Even Shaun the Sheep is on both 2 & 3.
    ABC News: Early Edition sounds good, but why on two channels?
    ABC1 Controller Brendan Dahill is talking as if ABC24 doesn’t exist.

  10. Ten should start to b getting worried, with 7 and nine extending their aternoon bulletin into their news at five space and ABC starting another bulletin in the same time slot things could get worse for one of tens most successful shows.

    Especially if viewers decide they dont like the one anchor policy

  11. I’ve got a beef with ABC News24, in that whoever controls their strip headlines seems to go home by 6.00pm. All night, the same headlines running across the bottom of the screen, never updated and rarely expanded on in the ‘proper’ news. F’rinstance, last night we were continually told that Federer and whoever had progressed to the next round of the tennis Open, but nothing about Bernard Tomic winning his match.

    It’s pathetic.

  12. This is really bad on ABC’s behalf. Why waste taxpayers money and create more news sets presenters for ABC1 news services when there is supposed to be an ABC “24 hour news channel” that currently struggles to fill 12 hours of news each day.

  13. So, less choice at 5:30 with two channels running the exact same news program from the same studio and the other two channels runing kids programs. Why have a separate news channel when it seems the main channel is creeping into a fulltime news channel itself? So less choice than what exists now, seems more like cost cutting to me, like how there are 2 channels running the same news program Why not have Capital Hill run 25 minutes from 5:30pm instead on News24, as it always seems rushed in its tight 15 min slot anyway?

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