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The occasionally highest rating news service in Australia, the Nine News (formerly National Nine News) got a visual refresh this month.
Unfortunately the new look is huge step down from previous incarnations, with superfluous lines flying everywhere and ever classy solar flares, accompanied by a confusing combination of orange and blue, its less flagship-news-bulletin and more lifestyle-travel-show.
Looks a heap better than it did though. Better looking than Ten’s “refresh”.
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@mike: I know! Why cant they do weather???!!!!
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I can’t believe that a big channel like Channel Nine still dares to use a blue key with a backdrop of a city as their studio. It would have been okay if we were stuck in the nineties! Sheesh. :S
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I agree john, It’s very poxy. There’s something going on over there at Nine. They lack a creative direction in almost every area. Their branding has gone to poop since gyng has brought back the balls, and the million or so dollars spent on re-branding in 2006 has been put aside in order for that to happen. The result is a weak late nineties aquafied (apple) look. Not only does it not define leading news, it certainly doesn’t have leading network in mind either. They should spend some money over summer on redesigning their brand and get a clear direction on broadcast design, it looks cheap right now.
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It looks good but I agree with everyone – it lacks the clear distinction of previous looks. When they had the globe in the opener from the late 1980′s until 2005 it not only looked fantastic but looked credible, important and very newsy – plus it was instantly recognizable as nine – this is more just generic Sydney shots.
Apart from the opener the graphics are good such as the supers which actually animate unlike the static ones most other networks opt for.
The studio is still bad though – the 2003 set was fantastic and bold they should go back to that.
While Nine has improved in just about everything this year and is winning the younger demographics it seems that they have taken a step back in their news which is a shame.
Hopefully they’ll modify the opener and studio a bit in 2009.
And also – getting rid of ‘National’ – BIG MISTAKE!! Losing credibility and branding with that move. Plus it was a point of difference from others.
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Its nice, a hell of a lot nicer than the last 2 packages we have had from nine.
SBS is still the best looking news bulletin.
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For me, the strangest this about this package is that it has images of Sydney as i’m so used to images of Melbourne featuring. One day I’d love to compare (or see a comparison of) the openings of the news bulletins for one network in each of the states. Simply using images of one city rather than another can really change the whole feel, for example, this one from Sydney has a much glitzier feeling than its Melburnian sibling.
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