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Is it time for more Media Watch?

No time to cover affiliates going off the air or court rulings from Beirut ....so is it time for more on News 24?

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again….. isn’t it time for an extended Media Watch?

Last night’s edition was an election night wrap-up, as Paul Barry brought us an overview of how Saturday night played out on ABC, Nine, Seven and SKY (and even a nod to TEN’s Mission Impossible movie).

That’s all well and good.

But last week saw one of the biggest changes for viewers across the country, as regional networks changed affiliates.

In Western Australia, Nine programming even went off the air. That’s a huge story. I know this because I had radio calling me asking for someone to explain what was going on. Viewers had lost their shows and, according to one radio producer, weren’t getting any rational explanations from Nine, WIN, Prime or ACMA.

While it was resolved by Saturday night, it would have been a good yarn for Media Watch to cover and bring us more insight. There was also the court ruling of the 60 Minutes saga in Lebanon, which as a story has had plenty of coverage by Paul Barry, save for the latest instalment.

Sometimes a week will go by where the show has no time to tell viewers about a network found by ACMA to have breached the Code of Practice (ie. Studio 10 breach is the latest example). And whilst these sound like criticisms, it’s more a regret that the length of the show does not afford time to cover the gamut of issues surrounding television, radio, print and online.

Ratings also suggest there is plenty of viewer interest in hearing more about media news -regularly in the high 600,000s.

Whilst there are scheduling challenges on Mondays, sandwiched between Four Corners and Q&A, I believe there is room for a second extended edition on News 24. After all, it’s a News channel without any dedicated Media news.

A longer-form edition could allow for more topics that have taken place across the week and a feature interview with a guest, which MediaWeek does on SKY.

In 2012 I asked then-host Jonathan Holmes if it was time to bring more to the table.

“I think the format packs a huge amount into that 13 minutes and that’s partly because it’s a very unusual format, basically one person talking to camera with a few graphics,” he said.

“It would lose its personal flavour and I doubt you’d actually cover all that much more ground.

“I’m not saying that a bit longer wouldn’t be nice, but I think 20 minutes is about as far as you could go with that format. And obviously 20 minutes is not particularly useful time for the schedule. Even at 20 there would be weeks where you would be scratching the barrel.

“I don’t believe the appetite would be there for a half hour show on ABC1 every week in primetime.

“You could put it on ABC2 or News 24 for sure, but then you’re using a lot of resources with a lot less people to reach a lot fewer people.

“It’s well-resourced in terms of people. We don’t have any budget to do anything other than make phone calls, but in terms of the people it’s well resourced.”

12 Responses

  1. I’ve always thought Media Watch – with a stronger format – should be a half-hour show. Possibly more than once a week. There’s plenty of scope for serious media analysis – of newspapers, radio, tv, online and social media. The BBC has done a media show on radio for years. And shows like Gruen prove that there’s plenty of material and ways of presenting it entertainingly. Media Watch in it’s present form is a lame, half-arsed attempt at monitoring media issues.

  2. While I would love more MW I don’t think extending the show to 25 mins would work, at least not in its current format (which I like). However, I do think that a second ep, perhaps on Thursday, would allow MW to cover issues that they didn’t have time for on Monday when a lot has recently happened.

    At quieter times they could use the Thu show to go a little deeper into a big or complex issue and, perhaps, do the occasional special on some broad topic; eg cross-media ownership.

    1. +1 on this. And when I thought I had the comfort of Jenny Woodward (Qld’s usual weekday weather presenter) presenting the weather at the end of the bulletin, she goes and gives me the weather for Western Australia. Was a very bizarre edition from a Qld perspective.

      The only thing I could think of was either a technical breakdown in the Queensland studio, or there was some reason the schedules news reader was not able to present that night.

  3. I speak from first hand experience of having worked on it. It is the most heavily legalled show on the ABC more than 4 Corners and Chaser. It is (or was) a pretty well resourced program, but each segment however short or long, requires exhaustive research to unearth and verify examples; proof, and detailed responses from those being approached, To do in depth explorations which the program does where it breaks format and looks at changes in the landscape requires substantially more than pointing a camera and a few graphics. It is a very tight 15 minutes; everything is checked, double checked and triple checked, and considered. It also has a tight turnaround on the Monday. In my view, a regular extended version would have to resort to more talking heads, rather than the forensic detail inherent to its usual format.

  4. I agree that a full 30 min version on News 24 makes sense. That channel relies on a lot of repeats as is, so this would have the double benefit of cost effective fresh content too.

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