In this week’s column, intrigue at the newsreaders’ desk at Seven, PR winners, and some hard data on what the ABC cuts will mean for South Australians.
Intrigue at Seven
Channel Seven’s Adelaide news team is on the verge of a ridiculous ratings achievement.
If they win tonight and tomorrow, Seven will register a clean sweep of the news ratings for the year – that’s a win on every single night.
As far as anyone can remember, that’s never happened before in South Australia’s TV news battle.
The question then becomes – why get rid of veteran weekend newsreader Graeme Goodings?
Goodings was upset on Monday when told he would be offered a reduced role with Seven in 2015.
He took to Twitter to express his disappointment at not being given the chance to say goodbye to his many fans.
Not true, says Seven. They wanted him on air next year, but sharing the duties with a new, yet to be announced, weekend newsreader.
So why upset a winning formula? Seven is being coy, but it seems they don’t want to rest on their laurels: they see a chance to streak even further ahead of the competition on weekends. We await news on Goodings’ permanent replacement. He or she must be a gun, because Graeme is a pro.
Goodings was due to go on leave next week, so political journalist Mike Smithson will step into the breach a week early (he usually reads weekend news over summer for Seven).
Speaking of Smithson, the evergreen reporter yesterday celebrated 35 years in television news.
Nice work Smitho.
PR awards
It was a reasonably quiet night on Monday for South Australia’s spinners at the national PR Industry Association Awards in Brisbane.
Leighton Contractors’ Cait Tynan was highly commended in the issues management/crisis communication category for her work preparing the ground for the closure of the company’s outage and maintenance operations unit in Whyalla.
Adam Thomson from Leverage PR was commended in the Government Sponsored Campaigns category for his work with the Sammy D Foundation on their “Great Night Out” campaign.
You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone
The media story of the week across the nation was the axe falling on the ABC.
Managing director Mark Scott announced the targets for cuts on Monday and, as expected, the television production studios in Adelaide will be closed, the local edition of the 7.30 report will be cut and, somewhat unexpectedly, the Port Augusta bureau will be shut down.
The pain will be played out slowly over the next month, with many staff remaining uncertain about their future employment.
7.30 SA has two episodes to go. And they’re going to rage against the dying of the light.
Tonight, they have two cracking stories – both important.
Presenter Simon Royal has spoken to the survivors of the “grim reaper” – three South Australians who have lived with HIV for 30 years.
“What happens when you have lived 30 years after you were expecting to die,” is the question he posed.
He’s also tracked the relationship between one survivor and an Adelaide school. The students are stunned by the early Australian attitudes to HIV/AIDS and how the sufferers were once blamed for their condition.
Journalist Mike Sexton has gone back to the South Australian who was instrumental in the establishment of the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce. More people have come forward this week to talk about their abuse in the Australian Defence Force. A royal commission looks like the best response.
Tune in while you can.
Punching above its weight
While we’re on the topic of 7.30 SA, University of Canberra media academics have shown just how much bang we get for our buck in South Australia.
As reported by our colleagues at Crikey!, Glenn Fuller and Andrew Nardi from the uni analysed all content from each of the separate local editions of 7.30 from January to June 2014.
“Across the eight separate local editions of 7.30 there were 709 separate pieces of content produced, including features, hard news and studio-based interviews and discussions,” the pair report.
“The local editions are broadcast every Friday evening, but each local edition team has the capacity to produce extra or ‘extended’ content that can be published through the ABC’s website. An appreciation of the journalistic output of each of the local editions should take into account the online material as this, too, will be lost when the local editions are cut.”
And this is where it gets interesting.
The South Australian edition produced 128 segments and stories of broadcast and online content – many more than the average. The next most prolific edition was in Victoria, with 97 pieces of content produced.
While part of the reason for SA’s output was the state election in March, the SA team “consistently produced more content in each full month of production than any other local edition”.
The pair’s complete data on the local 7.30 editions used above is available here.
Top of the class
The sport of cricket is blessed with many things, not least of which is the quality of the journalists who record and reflect on the great game.
The terrible death of Phil Hughes has inspired some heartbreaking writing. Today’s front page piece in The Australian by Gideon Haigh is a great example.
“There will be analyses, repercussions, maybe even recriminations. When our modern bubble of safety is pricked, we ache for objects of ire, and some have already been lined up as potentially blameworthy: the bouncer, the helmet, the medics, an anonymous ABC tweeter. But please, not yet. Why sour tragedy with anger? That the world has turned topsy-turvy is enough to cope with for the present.”
Closer to home ABC 891 breakfast team Matthew Abraham and David Bevan showed why the ABC editorial culture is so valuable, subjecting their boss Mark Scott to a comprehensive grilling. Listen here.
Naughty corner
Mark Scott is the clear winner this week, with his decision to disproportionately cut from the ABC’s South Australian operations.
In the aforementioned interview with Abraham and Bevan, he also indicated that he’s a fan of cost-shifting. With the shutting of the in-house ABC television studios, he’s hoping the taxpayer will fork out for independent ABC productions from other buckets of money.
“The other thing is that in a number of these genres where we operate you can get money from other people to help you fund those productions from Screen Australia, from South Australian Film Corporation, whereas if you are doing that in-house it is often harder for you to get hold of that,” he said.
That’s a lose-lose for the taxpayer right there.
Media Week appears in InDaily each Friday.
