History
As well as its flagship nightly bulletin, WIN Television has, in the past, produced a number of public affairs programmes at its original Wollongong station, WIN-4, such as community affairs program Roving Eye and Sunday Review, a weekly review of international, national and local stories. [1]
During the 1990s, WIN News was called WIN Nightly News, similar to that of Seven Nightly News. By the end of the decade, the networks combined covered most of Queensland, as well as New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania. Prior to aggregation in 1994, Victoria's WIN News was called VIC News, and the network itself was called VIC TV. Tasmania's WIN News was called TasTV Evening News, and the network was called TasTV. South Australia's WIN News was called SES-8 Regional News and RTS-5A Regional News, and the network was called Channel 8 and Channel 5A. All were rebranded as WIN after aggregation, renaming their respective bulletins as WIN News only, with the exception of Victoria, which branded itself as WIN Local News and adopted a similar format to that of GTV-9 in Melbourne.
On 30 January 2006, WIN's Tasmanian news bulletins were moved from separate local and national bulletins to a single, half-hour bulletin featuring local, national and international news. This was reported by The Hobart Mercury as being due to the previous arrangement's poor ratings. WIN's main competitor in the area, Southern Cross Nightly News , had at the time a 64.9% share of the 6.00pm news audience during the 2005 survey period. [2] In June 2011, WIN axed its Tasmanian weekend bulletins and replaced them with simulcasts of the Melbourne evening news, [3] but were reintroduced a year later. [4]
On 18 August 2006, WIN Television announced that Griffith's locally produced news bulletin would be axed due to high costs and revenue and would be merged with Wagga Wagga's half-hour bulletin, and the presenter, Jacalyn Cremasco's last bulletin was on the 18th. [5] [6] Before the network was branded as MTN, it was under the possession of Prime, the regional affiliate of Seven, but it was axed after a few years. It then became an affiliate of WIN, with its news adopting a similar format to that of WIN News. The decision was criticised by the local council and chamber of commerce, who, in a statement to the ABC's Media Watch, said that the isolation of the area increased the need for local content and information. [7] The now-discontinued amalgamated Wagga Wagga bulletin is presented and produced from Wollongong. However there is still a WIN newsroom in the city to cover news in the region, and Jacalyn Cremasco is a reporter in the newsroom.
In April 2009, two regional bulletins were introduced in Queensland serving Mackay and the Whitsunday Islands and the Wide Bay area.
In March 2012, WIN announced it would axe its weeknight Western Australia bulletin with regional news coverage incorporated into a localised edition of Nine Afternoon News at 4:30pm, produced and presented from Perth. [8] The last edition of WIN News Western Australia aired on 9 March 2012.
On 18 February 2013, WIN axed its pan-regional bulletin for the Mount Gambier and Riverland areas of South Australia. [9] The program had been broadcast since the merger of separate bulletins for the two areas in October 2010. [10] Ten staff at newsrooms in Mount Gambier and Loxton were made redundant. Both bulletins prior to a few years ago were produced separately from the two newsrooms, but they wereboth filmed at the Mount Gambier studios.
In June 2013, WIN announced it would discontinue local production of its Canberra bulletin and move it to Wollongong, however the company's studios in Kingston continued to operate as a newsgathering base, [11] until it was sold and closed down a few years later, thus resulting in all staff being moved to a new office in the city.
In May 2015, in what was considered shocking closures, WIN axed its bulletins in Mildura, Victoria and Mackay, Queensland, [12] with staff at both newsrooms being impacted. The decision was made in response to budget measures and a failure to catch up with Seven Local News in terms of ratings as well as poor advertising in the latter's case.
Following the transfer of broadcasting control of NRN to WIN in September 2017, following its purchase in May that year, WIN assumed production of existing weekday local news updates to northern New South Wales and the Gold Coast.
Consolidation to Wollongong
From 2015, WIN News cut costs to its regional news resources by consolidating presentation to its Wollongong headquarters. Its former regional studios were reduced in size from full-out production studios to small office-style newsgathering facilities upon each state's studio closure.
Following the closure of the broadcast centre in Griffith, Victorian bulletins were the next to centralise in October 2015, with the Ballarat studios being sold and demolished, [13] [14] followed by Queensland bulletins. Before, however, Queensland's services had two production studios, one in Rockhampton for the Central and Far North Queensland, Mackay District, and Sunshine Coast bulletins, and one in Toowoomba for production of the North Queensland, Wide Bay, and Southern Queensland bulletins. Both were closed and new studios, located in Maroochydore, were retained for production of All Australian News.
Tasmania had experienced reduction of its local presence after WIN's new affiliation with Network Ten. While all other WIN News bulletins moved to 6pm on 1 July 2016, their nightly bulletin moved to 5:30pm (30 minutes earlier than its leading rival Southern Cross News), making an attempt to replicate its composite newshour when they were a former Nine affiliate in the state.
However, in September 2016, it scaled back to a half-hour local bulletin amid poor ratings; it moved back to its traditional 6pm timeslot on weeknights but retaining the weekend composite news at 5:30pm. In August 2018, it was announced that local studio production of the Tasmanian bulletin would be consolidated to Wollongong, and all weekend bulletins would be axed the following month. [15] [16] The consolidation was completed on 17 August 2018.
On 20 June 2019, WIN announced in a letter to staff it would close four of its newsrooms in Orange, Dubbo, Wagga Wagga, Albury and Bundaberg. The closures were made based on the commercial viability of funding news in these areas and are expected to affect approximately 30 jobs, in addition to losing the Griffith bulletin as well with the closure of the Wagga newsroom.
Consequently, the final editions of the Central West (Orange), Riverina (Wagga Wagga), Border North East (Albury) and Wide Bay (Bundaberg) editions aired on Friday 28 June 2019. [17] [18]
Return to Nine affiliation
Following the announcement on 12 March 2021 that WIN would be returning to the Nine Network affiliation from 1 July 2021, the network announced that WIN News would be moving to the earlier timeslot of 5:30pm in the remaining 12 markets before leading in to metropolitan Nine News bulletins at 6:00pm, effectively replacing Nine News Local (produced for SCA).
It was also announced on 24 May 2021 that the local WIN News bulletins in Victoria and Queensland would be scrapped and replaced with a single statewide news bulletin. Many jobs were lost as a result, where the average number of staff per newsroom was cut from 8 to 2. [19] The Western NSW market was also confirmed to be getting a statewide news bulletin, with the Illawarra, Canberra and Tasmania bulletins as the only remaining local news bulletins on the network.
Along with the axing of the local news bulletins, the national All Australian News bulletin also ceased production at the end of June 2021.
