A month of news
Throng has surveyed the news bulletins for One News, Three News, Prime News and TVNZ 7 News at 8 over four weeks. Some interesting findings:
- ONE News: 57% News, 27% Sport, 16% Weather
- 3 News: 65% News, 25% Sport, 10% Weather
- PRIME: 59% News, 36% Sport, 4% Weather
- TVNZ 7: 74% News, 15% Sport, 11% Weather
So Prime has the second least news and most sport. One News has the most weather. TVNZ 7 the most sport and 3 News in the middle.
In terms of live crosses:
- ONE News: averaged 3.3/bulletin, maximum: 7 in a bulletin
- 3 News: averaged 2.6/bulletin, maximum: 6 in a bulletin
- PRIME News: only 1 in the survey period
- TVNZ 7: averaged 1.9/bulletin, maximum: 5 in a bulletin
This probably shows the greater resources of TVNZ. Too many live crosses do get annoying but TV does them to give you a sense of urgency and being totally up to date.
Then finally they look at how often the news is used to promote other programmes:
- ONE News: Agenda (5 times), Breakfast, Hannah Montana, Reluctant Hero documentary, Sex and the City and South Park
- 3 News: 60 Minutes, Campbell Live, Home and Away (twice), Rove (twice), Kath & Kim and Prison Break
- PRIME News: Flight of the Conchords, Oprah, Sky News, WWE Raw and Hannah Montana
- TVNZ 7: Agenda (5 times), Close Up, The View and The Bachelor
To be fair to TVNZ, Agenda is a legitimate source of news from their weekly interviews, so one does expect them to reference it.
I record both One News and Three News on My Sky and just watch the segments from each I am interested in. Normally can do both bulletins in 30 – 40 minutes.