Seven dumps Today Tonight in favour of one hour bulletin on east coast
Channel Seven has confirmed that it is dumping Today Tonight in favour a one hour bulletin in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
The announcement was made this morning to staff by Seven CEO Tim Worner.
The move has long been speculated and comes after the Nine Network gained a ratings bump earlier this year by moving to the one hour format. However, Today Tonight will continue to air in the Adelaide and Perth markets.
In his email announcing the changes Worner said that staff on the east coast would contribute to “news investigations and features” in the new hour long bulletin under the direction of former Today Tonight executive producer Max Uechtritz who will now report network director of news.
Worner said the move was exciting and paid tribute to the staff who had worked on the program. “We see this as an exciting opportunity to serve our news audience in a better way,” wrote Worner.
“I want to take this chance to pay tribute to Today Tonight and the TT team on the East Coast. Over many years, and as recently as last week, the program has broken big stories, kept consumers informed and held people to account,” he said.
The dumping of the often controversial Today Tonight had been expected after the show’s host Helen Kapalos moved to the Sunday Night program earlier this year. As Mumbrella reported last year, Seven has trailed its rival Nine in its east coast news for much of 2013 and the move to a one hour bulletin is seen by many as way of lifting the Network’s ratings in the news space.
Nic Christensen
Tim Worner’s email to staff:
Good morning,
Today we are announcing plans to transition to a one hour news bulletin at 6pm in our Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane markets, effective from tonight.
In Adelaide and Perth, we will continue with Today Tonight where the programs serve as really important local windows.
All staff previously working on the East Coast editions of TT will continue in their roles and will contribute to News Investigations and Features as well as TT ( Adelaide and Perth) under executive producer Max Uechtritz. Max will now report to Rob Raschke, the Network Director of News.
This move is about building and investing in Seven’s leading news coverage . In recent times we have increased our level of news across the day with great success. We plan to do even more in the future.
We see this as an exciting opportunity to serve our news audience in a better way.
I want to take this chance to pay tribute to Today Tonight and the TT team on the East Coast. Over many years, and as recently as last week, the program has broken big stories, kept consumers informed and held people to account.
Thank you for your continuing efforts and commitment.
Later this morning, we will be organising local briefings to provide more detail and answer any questions you may have.
Regards,
Tim Worner
Splitting the network and having two different news/current affairs formats? Can’t see that lasting…
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Deja vu all over again. Remember when 7 did the same thing in 1987? Resulted in 9’s dominance of news for years.
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Absolutely ridiculous. After being a regular watcher of Ch.9 for many years, I jumped ship to Ch. 7 because of the stupidity of Ch.9 going to a 1 hours news.
Now Iam going to have to jump again, this time to ABC for either their 5.30 or 7.30 news. Where you only get the current news and not all the fill in news that the other 2 channels use for justify the hour they use, just to try and outdo one another.
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It actually sounds sensible to me.
Today Tonight’s audience is hardly a big spending one, let’s be honest, and I think media buyers were realising their spend could be better utilised elsewhere.
Seven urgently needs to regain a better quality audience in that timeslot.
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When is Channel 7 going to extend the live stream to finish at the end of the bulletin at 7pm Monday-Saturday and finish after 6:30pm on Sundays because the yahoo7 live stream is still scheduled to finish at 6:30pm Monday-Saturday and as a result only the first half-hour is streamed live online and also stream Today Tonight Adelaide/Perth as well? Channel 9 does it very well as they live stream the entire Brisbane/Sydney/Melbourne 6pm Weekday Bulletins online whereas Channel 7 is too slack to change the finishing times to their 6pm live streams.
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