Seven and Nine in new Sunday News contest
No more half hour bulletins on Sunday as networks go head to head with one hour of News.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Programming
The days of half hour news bulletins on commercial networks appear to be behind us, with the last of the half hour bulletins Sunday at 6pm, now out of schedule.
Last week Seven News ran a one hour bulletin on Sunday -the only night of the week that had 30 minute bulletins.
Mediaweek noted, “The move paid instant dividends for the channel with 1.27m tuning in. It was a big winner in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. In Sydney Seven News trailed Nine News until 6.30pm, but when The Block started, the Nine numbers dropped and Seven News spiked. A similar pattern was also evident in Melbourne.”
As a result Nine has now matched Seven, with a one hour bulletin airing this Sunday night and The Block back to 7 O’Block with 60 Minutes at 8:10pm. Even ABC has extended Sunday bulletins to 40 minutes.
Whether TEN picks up any new viewers as an entertainment alternative or gets further pummelled in the crossfire, remains to be seen.
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- Tagged with Nine News, Seven News, The Block
12 Responses
Nine: “We are going to introduce one-hour news bulletins across the weekends from now on, starting this Sunday.”
Seven: “Me too.”
[sarcasm]Don’t you just love TV networks[/sarcasm]
Nine News in Perth have been doing Hour News for a long time.
They have had live stories after 6.30 when things happen in Perth.
It is obviously a great deal cheaper to air news programming than comedy, drama, etc.
Just look at the afternoon schedules and most of it is news news news
One hour news is a joke.It’s to long.I watch the ABC news these days.It’s funny seeing the figures when it changed to 1 hour overall the news is down on what figures they used to get.Family Feud has made that dent
SBS World News is by far the best. ABC’s 7pm News is a lot better than the bloated drivel that 7 and 9 offer but they still have pointless crosses to some young journo standing near a place where something happened a while ago or which might be happening later, who tells us nothing new other than that there is nothing happening at the moment.
Half the time they don’t tell you where the story is … it could be anywhere in Australia. You have to squint at numberplates to try and find out. Most news bulletins seem to emanate out of Sydney.
I wouldn’t mind the hour long bulletin, if it wasn’t filled with such rubbish after the first 20 minutes.
Seven News in Adelaide is still during 30 minute bulletins on Weekdays.
Them and Perth are the only parts of this nation which show that Drivel known as Today Tonight.Either extend the news or put on a sitcom to fill 30 minutes for that part of Australia.
As Tomothyd notes, it’s filler and fluff. The best hour of news in this country is still the first thirty minutes of the SBS World News, followed by the ABC 7:00pm bulletin.
Just means drama gets pushed back another half hour.
I still PVR it and drop off after the first 20 mins, the rest is fluff filler and sport.