Live audiences canned and productions paused: COVID-19 wreaks havoc on the TV industry
Exposure to the cornavirus has shut down the production on Seven’s Big Brother. Ten’s second season of Australian Survivor can’t film under current travel restrictions and Rita Wilson’s appearance on Nine’s Today Extra resulted in staff self-isolating. Here’s how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting Australian TV production.
This weekend the ABC denied it would be cancelling Foreign Correspondent after reports the show would cease during the coronavirus pandemic. In a statement, the broadcaster said the outbreak was making international newsgathering “difficult” but that the ABC News teams were “meeting the challenges”.
“Many program episodes for the current season have already been shot, and we are also able to revisit and update previous stories,” read the statement.
https://twitter.com/janeenorman/status/1241639201151389697
I know this is pretty trivial all things considered but I can’t help but view Nine’s decision to suspend its local bulletins in Darwin, Canberra and other regional cities as contemptuous and a sad indication of their attitude that metropolitian viewers come first, as if lives in capital cities matter more than those in regional areas.
I can only assume this is a decision based purely on budget constraints and predictions of a weak advertising market courtesy of the pandemic, but it’s still disheartening to see Nine’s lacklustre effort in producing essential and incredibly important locally-relevant news during such concerning times despite their ability to do so.
Covid-19 doesn’t just affect Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, although you could forgive Darwin viewers for thinking so considering the amount of contempt they’ve been shown, not only in the last couple of weeks but ever since Nine completely axed their weekend news and their weeknight news was sadly reduced to a brief 7-minute “window” opt-out during the regional Queensland news.
People in cities like Darwin, Townsville, Rockhampton, Canberra, Ballarat etc don’t just want to hear how the capital cities are coping – they desperately want information about how their own cities, towns and regions are faring.
Despite Nine’s own spin and empty promises about maintaining some content pertaining to regional areas within their metro bulletins, it’s not apparent that this has happened.
A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it update in a commercial break at the bizarre time of 7:10pm is a downright pathetic subsitute for a detailed news bulletin which thoroughly examines the local aspects and ramifications of the pandemic.
If Nine want to do a national bulletin at 6pm during the crisis, that’s fine. But how about keeping some reporters and camera operators in the regions (where they were arguably a little safer before they were ‘redeployed’) to produce some special local bulletins at 5:30pm prior to the main 6pm news bulletin, akin to what they do on the Gold Coast?
Where I live, WIN News and Seven (Local) News are doing an outstanding job in keeping their local viewers informed on what’s happening locally. I just hope these bulletins survive to continue providing what is now a vital service to local viewers.