The impending launch of DMG’s new 40+ stations in Sydney and Melbourne has refocused interest on News services in several networks. On a day when listeners are scouring the radio dial for coverage of the London bomb blasts, radioinfo today explores in detail a range of viewpoints about News in the radio industry.

Most radio programmers are predicting an increased news bulletin presence on DMG’s new station and an expansion of the company’s newsroom to service the needs of that station.

As if to anticipate this move, rival ARN has just appointed a Sydney News Editor to take the load off its National News Director Glen Daniel, and is currently advertising for a Melbourne News Editor as well, to expand its local news gathering strength in the other city where DMG will soon launch its new brand.

The right balance of local and national news is crucial to the success of any station’s news service. Experienced news editors know that listeners are interested in news priorities that range from their local street to the world. On any normal news day, local stories will normally take precedence over state, national and international stories. When there are big national or world stories, like September 11 or today’s London bomb blasts, the news values will change. The role of the editor is to make the right judgements every day about the balance of stories in each bulletin.

On younger formatted music stations, news bulletins are usually brief and often focused on lifestyle stories because of the perception that younger music listeners are not interested in news, but a recent survey of listeners aged 12-21 by AFTRS students challenged that assumption.

“Although the survey sample size was small, it did give some interesting results. Of course young people listen for music and entertainment, but we were surprised to find that they cared about news more than we initially thought they would,” says AFTRS student research director Sarah Killey, who gathered the information in preparation for an upcoming broadcast.

Talk stations need big newsrooms to feed their programming content, and the biggest newsrooms, at the ABC and stations like 2UE, 2GB, 3AW report, analyse and then generate follow-up to the news of the day. Traditional 5 minute bulletins on these stations are well entrenched into the schedule. At 2UE and 2GB 7am is a big switch on point for breakfast listeners, while on ABC Local Radio the long bulletin at 7.45 am always increases the audience, especially in times of high news interest.

But News usually comes into the expense line in a station’s budget, rather than the revenue line, and as such, sometimes bulletins that make sense in programming terms cannot be justified in budget terms. 2UE recently cut its 5am half hour bulletin because the resources expended on it could not be justified at that time of the day. The ABC tries to insulate its news services from the vagaries of budgets through the creation of a Division which only makes news and current affairs and is not directly linked to any one network’s budget.

News gathering technology has changed, with an expanded range of sources more readily available on the internet and accessible via email. At the ABC, the rolling news formatted NewsRadio network has been the first in Australia to embrace this change in a big way, with studio panels connected to multiple internet audio outputs for quick switching to many sources.

In the bush, the thinking is the same, but the budgets are often a lot less than city stations and the amount of local news events to generate content is also much less.

Experienced regional news editors are adept at taking local events and announcements and turning them into copy that can fill a news bulletin. That sort of local news service, even if the content may not be as exciting as what is heard in the cities, is highly valued by local people, and especially local politicians, according to Federal National Party MP Paul Neville.

Neville has told radioinfo:

“Local news is an essential part of regional radio that has been allowed to deteriorate in recent years. To have to ring a newsroom far removed from where you are means that you could be talking to someone who has no idea about the issues in your region.”

Paul Neville, whose electorate of Hinkler in Queensland, covers 35,000 sq kms between Bundaberg and Gladstone, says politicians can cover regional electorates well if they are the right size, but does not think he would be successful if he had to cover a population area larger than he currently has. In the same way, he does not necessarily want a local radio newsroom in every town, but does think there is a limit to the size of area a regional newsroom should be expected to cover.

“To cover a geographic region of about 8 – 10 shires can be done. The ABC does that quite well in my electorate for instance. But to expand beyond that, to areas outside the regional community of interest is not good for the people in the area. To have to ring a newsroom on the Gold Coast to comment on a story in Rockhampton for instance seems too far.”

Neville says for news collection it is important to have journalists in the field who understand local personalities, who can cover council meetings and events of importance.

“It seems disingenuous to save money by skimping on local journalists when radio stations are being bought for millions of dollars,” says Paul Neville.

Networking of bulletins and supplementing them with local news has long been a part of the radio industry. Southern Cross Syndication’s Bill Barrington says most of his customers take one of the network’s state services from stations like 6PR, 4BC, 2UE etc, and supplement with local news.

“Some stations put their local bulletin before or after the news service we supply to them. Others access our audio and copy and integrate that content into a locally read bulletin. The way they do it is up to the program director.”

Do news bulletins bring in money for commercial radio stations?

Barrington, who supplies news feeds to 178 stations, believes they do. “When the news is sponsored there is direct correlation to income, so that is easy to assess. At other times you have to think of news in the same way as other program content, if you play good songs the ratings go up, if you play good news content the ratings also go up. It’s pretty logical.”

Local news directors say stories and advertising are often hard to get in some regional towns. They say local newspapers solve that problem by publishing weekly, or printing two pages of local news and wrapping that around a regional magazine covering a much wider area. Radio, being a live 24 hour medium, has to find other solutions. Networking, composite bulletins, centralised news reading and shared news gathering are some of the solutions which radio stations are using.

News Agency AAP, which was formed as a co-operative more than 65 years ago and is now Australia’s largest independent originator and aggregator of news and information, is also aware of the changing trends in radio news and is moving to improve its services to radio. The company has just hired radio news editor Tony Bartlett and is staffing a specialist news desk which will provide more radio-friendly copy.

Another small scale innovative solution being marketed to community radio stations is Air-News, which uses the internet to allow collaborative writing between newsreaders and editors across Australia to access common text and audio facilities.

AIR News operator Artie Stevens recently told radioinfo: “The Virtual Newsdesk means that we can utilise the skills of many talented Australians in the news field, who do not wish to relocate in order to develop their careers.”

While new media now provides the means of getting news from non-traditional media sources, radio, tv and newspapers are still major providers in regional centres at this time. The Air-News service also shows that, as well as consuming news via the internet, people anywhere will also be able to create it by becoming part of the news process through cooperative ventures such as Air-News.

Speaking at the regional radio enquiry in 2001, Austereo Chairman Peter Harvie described radio as a medium of immediacy and relevance. He said:

Regional and rural radio is the only major parochial information source. Television is aggregated. Press is infrequent in many cases… It is my belief that radio is the only medium that is the glue to communities. It is immediate and it is relevant. It is talking about local issues all the time, and that does not happen on television and that does not happen in the press because of the infrequency of the appearance. Therefore radio is an extremely powerful community tool.

Despite many pressures on radio newsrooms, the trend in cities may be turning towards stronger newsrooms. Whether this trend also flows to regional areas is yet to be seen.