Gallery: Day of Drama
The Sydney siege turned a quiet Monday into the biggest news day of the year.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News, Top Stories
An ordinary Monday morning, barely a week out from Christmas, turned into the biggest news day of the year as a gunman held cafe patrons hostage in Martin Place in Sydney.
Australian networks interrupted broadcasting schedule for rolling coverage all day and into the evening, stretching news crews to the limit as Australians turned to their television screens.
The Lindt cafe opposite Seven’s Martin Place base saw The Morning Show with Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies covering the unfolding event Live for 40 minutes before police evacuated Seven’s building.
The proximity to Seven’s studio, as well as bank and government buildings, was frequently mentioned as a likely factor in the choice of site.
But as the home of Seven News, the crisis threw into disarray their normal ability to cover major breaking news. But while Seven’s crews hit the street as the city began to grasp what was taking place, a makeshift news centre was set up in the board room at Seven’s Jones Bay headquarters.
Seven juggled their coverage by leaning upon its Melbourne newsroom with Nick Etchells anchoring much of the day’s coverage. Across the day reporters included Ann Sanders, Melissa Doyle, Chris Reason and Mark Riley. As the drama wore on deep into the night Seven’s Perth crew took charge of presentation, anchored by Susannah Carr.
Seven was matched in their coverage by Nine, TEN, ABC and SKY News -all of which stayed on air across the day with rolling coverage.
Studio 10 remained on air for a marathon 8.5 hours led by Sarah Harris, Joe Hildebrand, Ita Buttrose, with Hugh Riminton, Sandra Sully and former NSW premier Kristina Keneally. Following an extended TEN News was a Project special and more rolling coverage with Riminton and Sully thereafter.
Nine’s coverage stretched across the day and into the night including an extended edition of A Current Affair, with Tracy Grimshaw breaking into her holidays, and Nine abandoning its evening schedule with Wendy Kingston as anchor.
Many journos and crews put in marathon hours yesterday under challenging conditions where teamwork was the key.
International coverage came via Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN.
But providing wall to wall coverage with no clear finish line in sight also meant having to fill hours of broadcast time with speculation, recapping, press conferences, opinion and interviews with experts in hostage situations, psychology and the Muslim community.
Sometimes the language was quick to imply conclusions other than those still being avoided by Police.
As some hostages even contacted media, some chose to report the details while others observed police requests to keep the details undisclosed.
After 2am the crisis reached a fatal crescendo, ending a marathon day of Live broadcasting. This morning Sunrise was reporting on location, outside the exclusion zone.
Networks will now need to amend upcoming schedules as a result of rolling coverage. Today’s ratings results will not resemble any of the programming that went out yesterday. Coincidentally, some of the programmes scheduled included Nabbed, Person of Interest and Homeland.
Sadly there was nothing fictional about what unfolded in the real world.
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- Tagged with A Current Affair, ABC News, Homeland, Nabbed, Nine News, Person of Interest, Seven News, Sky News, Studio 10, Sunrise, TEN News, The Morning Show, The Project
53 Responses
@Tex
I think this is the perfect place to be discussing how the tv channels covered this tragic event….it’s a TV related website. There are many other websites and avenues to share and discuss our sadness and feelings over this event.
@Tex well said on spot on the money with your comments
I find it rather odd (and more than a little distasteful) that so many people are discussing which channels ‘struggled’ or ‘had the best coverage’, which breakfast TV presenters did an ‘outstanding job’, who could rustle up the best talking head guest commentators, and which network is going to come out ‘on top’.
And I have to wonder if they’d have done the same if Billy Bogan-Westie had locked himself in a coffee shop on Paramatta Rd while wearing his aussie flag thongs…
Nice to see an older woman presenting Seven’s coverage very late around 2am in the morning which really caught my eye as its not something we see too much of here. I have never seen her before but whoever she is I think she did a great job and gave the coverage a sense of respect and trust. Would be good to see more diversity in regards to age, especially older women (and I’m not talking young looking types like Sandra Sully or Ann Sanders) on Australian television please.
Tragic event, and yes it needs to be reported, but the TV stations saturation coverage is exactly what the perpetrator wanted.
This sort of coverage just encourages other dingbats and losers to do something similar and becomes a template on how to get attention for you and/or your extreme cause.
Agree with previous comments, seven’s coverage improved immensely once Mel Doyle was on air. She is an outstanding though under utilized asset to the network. Agreed also that the constant 7 watermark on the footage was unnecessary.
@Trev I watched TEN’s coverage for most of the night.
They did not say whatsoever that there were 40 to 50 hostages like you said, instead reported that there were under 30 as confirmed by NSW Police. They also reported on the hostages escaping as it happened live.
Their coverage was as accurate as ABC’s; which I followed online. It makes me question whether or not you actually tuned in for a decent amount of time or if you are simply mistaken.
I would also like to mention sky news as they did a very good job as well. Could only watch on foxtel go so was impressed by sky news. Also CNN did a good job considering it was not local. I prefer these news channels anyway compared to FTA as that is there one job.
9’s advantage was that they were the first to have a proper anchor on the ground (Michael Usher) and he definitely shone through around lunchtime while 7 were still scrambling. Michael Usher did a very good job – calm and professional under pressure.
I was impressed 10 have the resources to stay with the story all day and Riminton deserves a medal for the most committed journalist of the day – I think he was on air for about 8 hours straight?! I thought 10 had pretty much abandoned news but Studio 10 did very well under the circumstances.
ABC24 was a mess. Michael O’Brien was hopeless on the fly – it was painfully obvious he had no script or questions to ask anyone and was reaching for anything to say resulting in lots of ‘umms’, pauses and stunned mullet looks on camera. ABC also resorted to using 7’s own watermarked footage.
Yesterday was such an interesting day of news. 7 should have been in a position to provide by far the best coverage but their advantage ultimately became a disadvantage because they were evacuated from their building without taking any equipment with them. They really struggled after that – it was obvious that it was being done remotely and it was many hours before they had set up properly outside their offices. Was there not an OB truck parked somewhere they could have powered up? Don’t they have them for sporting events?! They hit their stride once Mel Doyle took over – if there is someone who does live breaking news and crosses better than her in Australia I’m yet to see it – she was born for it. So calm, measured and professional under pressure. I think she is far better as a live breaking news anchor than she was an a breakfast host but Sunrise always did disasters well.
9’s…
Seven did have they coverage used by other tv channels, so that’s why they used their logo prominently !
First let me say it was a tragedy for the Lindt cafe manager and the female lawyer who lost their lives needlessly and my condolences to their families and loved ones.
7, 9 and the ABC’s coverage was full of the same images repeated over and over and over again ad nauseum, with various talking heads even more repetitious asking different people the same questions throughout the whole evening.
10 was doing likewise, the only difference being they were getting all the facts entirely wrong, such as there being 40 to 50 hostages and how 5 hostages were released etc. This was nearly 2 hours after the other networks had announced there were only 15 held captive and had revealed the lucky 5 had in fact escaped.
Anyone who truly believes 10’s coverage was the better is at best, deluded.
All that was needed was news bulletins when something significant occurred, but what we got was a non…
I will post rescheduled programming soon.
I’m assuming some of the normal programming aired in some markets?
In Hobart we had:
Sth Cross: Nabbed, Bones, Dr. Oz (midnight-1am)
Ten: Homeland
SBS: All normal programming.
ABC/Win: Nil.
Any word from Networks as to when the usual programming will (or if it will) air?
The hideous 7 News all over everything was ridiculous.
@Nicholas – Forget 17th July?
@MM – ” more of channel 7 will be screened across the world because of this so they are going to advertise their channel” = advertise as the bogan Australian network that can’t restrain itself from self-promotion, even at the worst of times.
I have enjoyed the Seven’s coverage of the Sydney Siege thanks to Mel Doyle. A very sad day for Australia but hope that everything will be fine for today with Normal programming. Not good news when family feud did not air today.
Hugh Riminton did an outstanding job on Channel 10. And I completely agree with the anger over the Ch 7 watermark – not the time or place – I immediately changed the channel when I saw that.
Agree that the 7 logo across the screen was too much but thought that they did a very good coverage and of course because of the position they were in to film the siege they will have more original footings to show eventually that the other stations wont have, and I think that more of channel 7 will be screened across the world because of this so they are going to advertise their channel.
I found TEN’s rolling coverage to be far superior than the competition, ABC included. They had a great range of guests and commentators that gave great insight on the situation, as well as the live coverage you would expect. Well done to them considering the news division had major cuts not that long ago.
Channel 7 running footage of the police storming the cafe with their watermark all over it. Flick to 9, showing the exact same footage, no watermark.
Not hard to see why 7 news bombing on the east coast.
All I wanted to know is that is seven going to replay agents of shield mid season finale? because it was on for about 5 mins then it cut to the situation in Sydney & here in Perth I waited till about 2am & didn’t know if it return & it’s not on Plus7 catch up
Homeland screened in Sydney, one minute earlier than the original EPG time.
I have many hours of the media complaining that police would not release any information to them for operational reasons in place of POI, Bones, Castle and AOS.
At point they were reporting the body language of the relatives of the hostages and how other media were covering the story in place of any facts. The attention was of course exactly what the hostage taker wanted. Of course the police are still not releasing any information, but now that is just because they can and want to control the media reporting to suit their own ends.
TEN did a great job but I would note here in QLD we missed The Project, they must have been going between live as delayed coverage or something.
The Project was on in it’s usual repeat mode just before Letterman. Up until then I assumed it have just been preempted for the night.
That all said it did drag on and they would have been better to have there regular programs earlier and broke into them if anything actually did happen. I switch it off and started to catch up on some of my other shows.
Excellent coverage on Sunrise this morning. Chris Reason such a great journalist, Kochie and Nat doing great job, a lot of it ad lib and words from Koch like ‘mongrel’ echoing Australia’s sentiment. But let the TV analysis stop after today, sometimes we overdo the coverage.
It was the biggest news day of the 2010’s in my opinion in Australia! Great coverage from Seven Network, Network Ten, and ABC. It was a sad day for Australia, but i think the ratings for all networks will break the million mark.
David, will shows that did not air on networks last night be re-scheduled?
For such an important news story I don’t think it was the time for seven to use massive watermarks covering their entire screen. This wasn’t a marketing exercise. More should have been done in the initial stages in some online and tv reporting to blur faces of hostages.