★★★★★ 0/5

Seven News extends to one hour … temporarily?

More signs Seven is gearing up for a permanent one hour bulletin?

20
Leave a comment

2013-01-14_1916More signs that Seven News is planning a new hour long service?

Seven News (Melbourne) extend to a one hour bulletin last night.

Presenter Peter Mitchell confirmed on Twitter the hour was for the duration of the Australian Open “at this stage.”

A permanent move would presumably mean Today Tonight , under Helen Kapalos, shifts to 5:30pm and Deal or No Deal to 5pm, but execs will be keeping an eye on how the numbers fare over the next two weeks.

20 Responses

  1. Watched seven news sydney occasionally during the Bushfires and hate the TT stories chucked into it! No way I’ll be watching that if it remains similar to that.

    I just don’t think there’s enough local/state news most days to fill the whole hour properly. And I most definitely don’t want recaps in the news, we’re not stupid enough to forget what they said 15mins ago.

  4. A one hour show? They’ll have to hire even more catwalk models to do that silly “walk & talk-while-looking-seductive” stroll toward camera that they all seem to do.

    I don’t care how long the show is, just bring back proper reporters and real news.

  5. The hour experiment in Melbourne seems to be a dismal failure. ACA flogged the second half of Seven’s news hour – and it only took a recycled “supermarket pickpockets” to do it.
    Seven News (6-6:30) 265,000
    Nine News 394,000
    A Current Affair 336,000
    Today Tonight 186,000 (actually 7 News 6:30-7)
    A 129K gap 9:7 til 6:30 then gap widened to 150K.

  7. So how does Prime fit their local news in, in the (few) area where they do local news? Prime’s website guide doesn’t even mention “Prime”, only “7”.
    Seven’s Sydney hour just looks as if “we’ve run out of real news so we’ll fill with a few TT pieces”.

  9. I didn’t hear any mention of it, but I wasn’t concentrating that hard, but noted it was still going at 6.35 – Project time! So I switched over – I’m very much a Project Person.

  10. I think the move would be good for Seven…but to see how ratings are over the course of the Tennis seems odd…i mean you’d expect them to be big wouldnt you? If they werent…then i would be worried…its a wonder the other networks don’t show a white flag during the Aust Tennis

  11. Is it just us or does Peter Mitchell and Sandy Roberts look like they are tense and uncertain of their futures since they have been back, their banter is gone etc

  12. 7’s Sydney 6pm news has been running for an hour for the past week.

    Seemed to come into being as bushfires raged through NSW, but I noticed they throw in the occasional Today Tonight story during the bulletin.

    An unusual mix…

  14. Interesting, but the one-hour Melbourne bulletin felt a bit padded and, unsurprisingly given it’s a big Seven event, perhaps too much puff for the Australian Open. A lot of crossing back and forth betweeen stories, segments and unecessary recaps – including multiple mentions, clips, interviews with Sam Stosur. It just didn’t flow that well. I’m fairly sure that a couple of ‘TT’ segments had been re-edited and packaged to run as news stories?
    Frankly unless there’s a genuinely significant news story – like the serious bush fires of about a week ago – I’m just not convinced there’s enough content most days for a well-produced 30-minute bulletin to justify an expanded 60-minute run time.
    I appreciate ‘Ten News at Five’ is well established as such and commercially still one of the ailing network’s stronger brands, but perhaps that earlier time-slot just lends itself better to the longer-format based on what most of the available audience tends to be doing then?

  15. Sydney’s news was one hour too (with 2 Today Tonight stories), despite the EPG saying TT was still due to air at 6:30pm. Perhaps they could call it “Seven News featuring Today Tonight”

  20. whatever seven does to their news, i don’t think i’d be watching, the fodder and stuff they assume is news make me less likely to watch, i gave up on them mid last year.

Leave a Reply