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Well the midnight relaunch of 9 I was counting on didn’t happen, but the year is still young. The night wasn’t a complete failure, I did manage to capture this short example of Nine branding in between Richard Wilkins painful presentation of the Sydney harbour fireworks.
The video comes from the end of a highlights package and was cleverly choreographed to the Foo Fighters tune ‘Best of You’, albeit 3 seconds long.
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> RealPlayer Stream (260kb)
> Quicktime Download in H.264 (1.2mb)
So Kerry Packer is dead, it looks like the whole network could be going up for sale (although apparently not), and the word on the street is that Channel 9 will be completely relaunching on New Years day.. what better time to have a look back on the 9 brand (except because I live in Canberra the part of 9 will be played by Win) and ask, why do so many people watch you?
Continue for more videos..
Channel Nine has never been part of the idents.tv’s previous banners, so with the possibility of the network relaunching I thought it was about time.
All networks in Australia, except the ABC broadcast Electronic Program Guides on Digital TV. For some reason SBS is the only network that broadcasts their EPG in Canberra, on my trip to Sydney however I managed to grab samples from the other three EPG’s.
SBS is my favourite of the bunch (check out their old EPG here). I don’t mind the Seven and Nine EPG’s and the Ten one looks good too but it so horribly out of date its embarrasing. They have icons promoting shows that aren’t on anymore, they have photos of Neighbours cast that have left the show, and I thought Australian Idol was over? Its as if Network Ten don’t realise their even broadcasting it.
> SBS EPG RealPlayer Stream (3.3mb)
> Seven EPG RealPlayer Stream (1.8mb)
> Nine EPG RealPlayer Stream (2.2mb)
> Ten EPG RealPlayer Stream (2.1mb)
The networks all have their own take on how to present weather, SBS do the whole world in a minute while Nine barely get past the suburbs of Sydney on their ‘National’ broadcast. ABC seem to take the longest, with a weather report that can at times top three minutes. Ten and Seven insist on sending out weather people to locations around town, Tim Bailey on Ten is far more annoying then Seven’s Nuala Hafner though.
From a design perspective ABC and SBS are at the top of my list. Ten is by far the worst with its depressing little sunshine icons. Nine waste too much time with scroll bars at the bottom of the screen and moving the map around from left to right, and Seven’s map looks OK, but is a bit cartoony.
> RealPlayer Stream (2mb)
> RealPlayer Stream (3.8mb)
> RealPlayer Stream (2.7mb)
> RealPlayer Stream (2.7mb)
> RealPlayer Stream (1.8mb)
> RealPlayer Stream (345kb)
Just the yellow/amber variation of the purple ident you’ve already seen. I’m not a fan of these and this post is really just a segway for me to direct you to an article from Crikey about a possible rebrand at Channel Nine.
There’s a couple of suggestions from the Willoughby bunker that Nine may be losing the famous dotty Nine logo of the Network
Read the article here.
> RealPlayer Stream (394kb)
This is the local variation of Channel Nine’s ident. Because I live in Canberra, I get the regional affiliate, Win, and not Nine, but they look the same. I’ve never really liked these that much, but others seem to.
Opening sequences for news broadcasts of the three commercial networks in Australia.
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Anchor: Mark Ferguson
Time: 6pm Weeknights (or 6.30pm in some parts)
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Anchor: Ian Ross (ex Channel Nine anchor)
Time: 6pm Weeknights
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> Quicktime MPEG4 Download (5.1mb)
Anchors: Jessica Rowe and Ron Wilson
Time: “First at Five”