Throng

Tonight at 6.00pm, Nine News will disclose the revealing results from the second Galaxy Poll conducted on Wednesday evening, July 28 exclusively for the Nine Network.

The findings, based on a sample of 800 voters throughout Australia, will provide a scorecard on the campaign performance of the Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott, three-weeks out from the federal election on August 21.

Kylie Minogue has landed in Australia as part of both a promotional tour and to see her family including sister Dannii Minogue and Dannii’s new son Ethan.

Kylie landed in Melbourne this morning, just before 5am, taking the regular exit at the airport with her fellow passengers. She stopped to sign a few autographs, before being greeted by Daryl Somers and Plucka Duck.

Kylie is set to appear on this Wednesday’s Hey Hey It’s Saturday, the last show before it is rested for an indefinite time frame. Minogue will perform live two songs from her new album. She has been a fan of Hey Hey from the 80’s, and made a live appearance on one of the Reunion shows last year.

Nine News of course wasted no time seizing a cross promotion opportunity featuring the story and making mention of her appearance on Hey Hey this week.

On election night 2010, as history is made, the Nine Network will give Australia the best results service on television, from the best team of journalists and commentators.

Laurie Oakes, Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic will lead Nine’s coverage LIVE from a new set in the tally room in the nation’s capital Canberra.

Tracy Grimshaw will be reporting LIVE with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

Peter Overton will be LIVE with the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott.

Liz Hayes will host a LIVE election evening event with Australia’s top political brains and opinion formers.

Ben Fordham - Campaign Confidential.  From Monday Ben will be on the Today Show each weekday, reporting all the behind-the-scenes news from Canberra and the campaign. Ben will also be reporting on how social networking is affecting the campaign, and keep our viewers up-to-date minute by minute via Twitter and NineMSN.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has found that TCN Channel Nine Pty Ltd (TCN) failed to provide captioning during episodes of Nine News and RPA broadcast in July 2009.

As a result of the investigation, TCN in consultation with the ACMA, has agreed to the implementation of several remedial measures. These include enhanced quality control and supervision, targeted ‘spot’ audits and reports to the ACMA on the outcome of these. TCN will also organise regular meetings with the caption provider and other stakeholders to review and resolve issues relating to transmission and quality.TCN has also undertaken to upgrade its captioning transmission monitoring to allow for quick identification and resolution of transmission problems.

Nine have abandoned regular day time programming today to continue coverage of the day’s events in Canberra. Karl Stefanovic continues to report, despite being on TV from 5am this morning.

Even this morning, Today started at 5am instead of the usual 5.30am to cover both the political upheaval and keep Today viewers up to date with the soccer result of Australia Vs Serbia. Nine's coverage is amde to be part of a very extended Today show.

Seven’s daytime schedule has also been thrown out, with continuing coverage using “The Morning Show” and its hosts. Maybe they shold call it "The Afternnon Show" now?

On ABC1, the midday news continues, with regular programming from 12.30pm abandoned for now.

Ten continues to show their usual day time line up. Not a bad idea, so at least there is an option for those who now may be “news’ed” out by the events now.

Channel Nine (Sydney) will tonight offer a one hour news bulletin at 6pm to provide complete coverage of Labor leadership battle which has resulted in Julia Gillard becoming Australia’s first female Prime Minister. No doubt the same will occur in other markets.

As a result, A Current Affair will air at 7pm, followed by Getaway at 7.30pm. Two and a Half Men will not be seen tonight.

UPDATE: Tracey Grimshaw A Current Affair LIVE from Canberra with a one-on-one interview with the new Prime Minister - Julia Gillard. 7pm Tonight.

Seven (Melbourne) have indicated they are doing the same, with a one hour new bulletin from 6pm, Today Tonight at 7pm and Home and Away at 7.30pm.

UPDATE: Julia Gillard is our new PM, and our first female PM.

A Labor leadership challenge could see deputy PM Julia Gillard PM in the morning when the party goes to a vote to decide who will lead them into the next election, due later this year.

The three commercial networks, ABC and SKY News provided live coverage of Kevin Rudds press conference announcing there was a leadership challenge occurring.

ABC - already showing Lateline at the time continued discussing the matter, while Ten went back to fininsh Law and Order before their late News could provide further coverage.

Nine and Seven continued the leadership battle coverage with both returning to their programmed shows by about 10.45pm.

With Nine covering Wimbledon, Ten is the only free to air channel with late night news on this historic night leading up to the possibility of Rudd being ousted in the morning.

Channel Nine is to re-open its news bureau in London after shutting it down back in 2008.

The new UK correspondent will be Peter Stefanovic, who will make the move from Los Angeles with Denham Hitchcock and Robert Penfold to be the two LA-based reporters.

Is it OK to call a police officer a pr**k? According to a judge, yes. And then the issues are raised as to where you draw the line. Surely the use of such words need to be taken in to context, and if we are now saying it OK to call a police officer a pr**k, what next? The story obviously dominated the news and current affairs coverage of the night.

While the word pr**k itself is the main part of the story, Channel Nine’s 11am News yesterday were in trouble for using the word in its bulletin. In newspapers, the p word was censored like rather than spelt out - showing some journalistic integrity.

Nine’s 11am Morning News is in trouble over the use of two words that many may view as offensive.

In the opening sequence of the news bulletin, where the headlines are revealed, one of the headline was questioning if it was OK to call a police person a “prick”. Ten minutes later, the word “crap” was used by a reported in discussing Tony Abbottt’s view on climate change.

While “prick” and “crap” are not exactly harsh words to many of us, and you are more likely to hear more colourful language out on the street, they should not be used in a news bulletin by the news staff. Hearing such words used in the video footage of a story by say a witness to a news event is one thing, but there is no need for such languish from the news readers and reported themselves. It merely serves to bring down the quality of the journalism and is unprofessional.

Nine can’t help themselves. So many of their promotions are based on self praise or thanking the viewers for making them number one.

They do it in ads for Today even though Sunrise continues to outrate Today in overall numbers. In Sydney, the promotions for Nine’s 6pm News quote “Thank you Sydney, for making us number one” while Hot Seat will use the line “Australia’s number one game show” even if it beats rival Deal or No Deal for just one day.

Nine News continues to use lines like “See it first” and “Leading the way” - a line borrowed from Seven’s news which also subtitles “Leading the way”. Back to Hot Seat again - and you regularly see ads for the show bragging about how much money they give away.

I rarely watch anything live on channel Nine, opting to record and watch later so I can skip the ads, because I cannot stand the way they promote themselves. Their look with those ugly 3D letters, the voice over guy, and the whole “Welcome Home” slogan is enough to drive me away, not to mention excessive promotion of up and coming shows and events making ad breaks repetitive.

Recently, Nine News won the ratings over Seven News in Sydney for a few nights. Nine were quick to put on ads thanking Sydney for making Nine News number one again, and it is because of 17 years of experience that makes sure you see it first on Nine.

Last night (Tue Jan 12) however, Nine News lost to Seven News (this is usually the case, but yes, Nine do beat them sometimes) with 273,000 watching Nine and 319,000 watching Seven. Perhaps Nine should wait a little longer before putting to air brags about being the number one news service in Sydney?

Nine News are running ads in the Sydney newspapers this weekend stating the following: “EXCLUSIVE is a NINE letter word”. The ads include a picture of Peter Overton and are single colour, and are specifically referring to Nine News at 6pm.

The ads are a further promotion of Nine’s on air news ads which claim 9's news are the first to break the most important stories as well as the stories you need to know. Some of their ads make reference to certain stories being on 9 news before they were on 7’s news. 9 news claims to have more exclusives than any other TV news.

Now I am sure Nine News does actually have an exclusive story now and then, as do Seven and Ten, but the majority of times I personally have seen an ad during the day for a story that is supposedly exclusive to Nine News, I have seen the exact same story on Ten News one hour earlier. And there was one case I recall seeing the so called Nine exclusive story on Seven’s 4.30 News.

Today, the news has come out that Mark Ferguson will be leaving ch 9 at the end of his contract in October and going over to ch 7, where he will most likely read the weekend news. Mark used to read the 6pm news on weeknights for 9 Sydney but was unexpectedly dumped for Peter Overton, who has failed to increase ratings for 9 News. Apparently Mark was once promised a more long term position on 9's 6pm new in Sydney.

Mark is currently the news reader on 9's new one hour 4.30 show THIS Afternoon, were he reads news in brief at 4.30 and 5pm, and exchanges comments with other hosts in between. THIS Afternoon so far is failing in the ratings, falling way behind 7's 4.30 News and 10's the Bold and the Beautiful.

Following is the press release from ch 9, word for word. Great to see Nine consider themsleves "flattered" that another network have gone to them for a news reader!

Mark Ferguson to Leave Channel Nine