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Nine’s “game-changer” newsroom

Nine's Sydney News boss Simon Hobbs explains how his newsroom brings all the teams together.

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Simon Hobbs is pretty chuffed with his new office digs.

Moving newsrooms from Nine’s historic Willoughby Studios to North Sydney, he is seeing the benefits of having all his team under the one roof.

“It’s been a total game changer for us,” he tells TV Tonight.

Hobbs is News Director for Nine News Sydney, but his role encompasses much more than the 6pm news. It includes the news bulletins in Today, all national news bulletins across the day, late news, foreign desks in LA & London plus Canberra.

“We’ve never had our whole news and current affairs division in one place. 60 Minutes has always been in the (Willoughby) cottages. A Current Affair was down in the old Scott Street building before they moved into a separate part of the building. And the Today show was separated from News.”

In the centre of the new newsroom is a news editor hub, similar to a BBC model. Raised above several ‘spines’ of journalists it allows for news to permeate from one place, quickly out to all teams. Having all news teams on the one floor at 1 Denison Street is also reaping benefits.

“This puts us all into one space where people can just come and go. The amount of people from other programs that I’ve stopped and had a chat with, who I haven’t spoken to in a year or two, is extraordinary. It’s breeding this one culture, ‘one team’ thing, which we’ve always had, but now it really feels like we’re in the one space.

“It means that we can just communicate much better.”

Hobbs has some 20 years with Nine, split across two separate terms. 2020 was the toughest so far, with staff required to go above and beyond to get stories to ai.

“Our staff have been running really hard since November (2019): bushfires, New Zealand volcano, COVID, US elections, Black Lives Matter protests. That means they’ve done more breaking news than ever, in one year,” he explains.

“We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of extra hours of television. They’ve worked long hours, long days. Just keeping them going has been the biggest challenge.

“It’s been an enormously long and stressful year for all our teams. Not being able to go home and see family. A lot of them have family in Perth, Melbourne or Brisbane, so being cut off and disconnected, working around the clock it’s been hard work for them. But they’ve done an unbelievable job. Our ratings are up significantly year on year.”

Nine News led by Peter Overton won the year again in Sydney, with the presenting team including Cameron Williams, Amber Sherlock, Georgie Gardner, Erin Molan and Belinda Russell. Nine also led in Melbourne and Brisbane, whilst Seven won Perth, Adelaide and nationally.

Hobbs takes none of the success in Sydney for granted.

“The stability that we’ve got right now is sort of a golden period. You relish having the quality people that we have, currently in the roles that we’ve got. This is what you hope for. You hate those periods -and they haven’t thankfully happened to us in a long time- when they’re chopping and changing newsreaders hoping that’s going to fix a problem.

“We see that happen on networks from time to time, but thankfully, we’ve got a beautiful, stable team right across the network.”

But behind the scenes Nine has also seen News boss Darren Wick admit to an alcohol problem, while CEO Hugh Marks made a surprise resignation. Hobbs, who is currently overseeing Wick’s national duties, says both announcements were reported in bulletins.

“We covered it on our digital channels, our social, our news programs. We covered it on all of them,” he insists.

“You’ve gotta be transparent, but also both those guys know that as well. I don’t have to call them and tell them, ‘Hey, we’re gonna run this.’ They just know that’s part of the business and they’re fine with that.

“We don’t shy away from our mistakes in any way, shape, or form.”

This week news turns its attention to the US Presidential Inauguration -Nine is covering live from 3am AEDT Thursday.

Yet after an unforgiving year Hobbs is hoping for a bit less of the major crises that was 2020.

“Please no more news! We’re exhausted. We’ve just run the biggest news year we’ve ever had. It would be nice to let our teams have a proper break.”

15 Responses

  1. Always like seeing the behind-the-scenes at TV studios; any chance of you being allowed to do a guided video tour of the new studios? (or would this be considered a security no-no?).

  2. Working TCN9 at Willoughby was an amazing time – especially in in the early 2000’s. The world and media changed after Sept 11… Quite often as stories were late for ACA – we would do live rolls on air from one of the edit suites in the cottages….

  3. In my opinion, Nine can throw all the bells and whistles they want to on to their news set. For my money, Seven and the ABC are where I turn to to get fair and balanced news, not Nine. Never have, never will.

    1. Agree, I turned over to Nine a couple of times and their news service lacks polish. Looks like a low budget news service now. Seven is a much more polished outfit. Better presented, better sets and clothing. Also agree that ABC is good too.

    2. Don’t Agree.Seven in Perth always has Nic Nat on.
      That’s why I watch Nine News or Maybe ABC24 if I miss the news.
      Aim happy with Nine News won’t be changing.

  5. What is so sad is that channel nine only cares about its Sydney newsroom and it’s Sydney audience yet channel nine’s audience has for well over 30 years been much larger in Melbourne than they get in Sydney.

      1. It was a brief mention but the story emphasises that channel 9 cares only about Sydney. Melbourne gives 9 much bigger audiences than Sydney and has for decades yet I bet you the Melbourne newsroom is no where near as spectacular.

  6. An interesting read.
    There was an awful lot of rapidly evolving stories. I can only imagine the distance and challenges staff faced.
    Not sure that this quote can always be true: “Our ratings are up significantly year on year.” From 2019-2020 or are they continually increasing in numbers as the population grows and thus is this true as a percentage?
    Once they stop “news Alerts’ as a news update I might tune it, but fine the alerts sensational and incorrect. Journalism requires maintenance of standards and using words in the English language correctly would be beneficial.

  7. I do note that news room sets do seem to be getting bigger and bigger even overseas, with elaborate ambient lighting, vast background LED screens.
    I used to like the old bathroom sized Sky News set which even had the echoey sound of city noise on occasion, that’s all a good news person really needs, plus a pen in hand of course.

  8. Comparing it to BBC news is a bit of a stretch. I feel they missed a massive opportunity to incorporate the news set within the newsroom the same as BBC news. I really hope they do it in the future.

  9. A manager who hasn’t talked to some staff in a year or two. Should be getting a pretty poor performance review, irrespective of the circumstances of the old location. Particularly in this day and age of video meetings.

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