Update 17 June: I have been informed that, contrary to the information below, 2CC and 2CA are in fact not dumping local news on weekends, and instead only closed the local newsroom last weekend due to a shortage of staff. Needless to say, I am pleased to hear this.
I apologise to the people at Capital Radio. I think it might be worthwhile if I just stop commenting on things relating to Capital Radio for a while. End Update
I’ll sum it up in one word: “disappointed”.
2CC and 2CA seem to have dumped local news on weekends, opting instead to take 2UE news all day. Previously, locally produced news bulletins were broadcast every half hour from 6am until 9am, and then every hour until midday. Now, zilch, zero, zip.
This drops the local news service back to producing less news than they did before the local newsroom started producing the entire news service instead of just local news. I have vivid memories of a time when 2CC took 2UE news and followed it with a local news bulletin, even on the weekend…to not even do that is, as I said earlier, disappointing.
It’s possible that I have just been spoiled by a good local news service in recent years and that this dropping of local news on weekends just brings the station in line with what many other stations do, however this doesn’t change the fact that it is disappointing that a standard can be set, and then the service can drop away in such a manner, to lower levels than the old standard.
Whilst I have a very busy day lined up tomorrow, I will be sure to listen with interest in the morning to see if there are any changes to the weekday news service. I, for one, hope that there aren’t.
Update: Weekdays are not affected by this change, thankfully. End Update
Samuel