Samuel's Blog

Nine’s latest relaunch

September 27th, 2009 at 11:12pm

Nine have relaunched themselves again tonight with new graphics, the peculiar tagline “welcome home”, a subtle re-use of the old “still the one” music, and sadly an overuse of the already overused Black Eyed Peas song “I Gotta Feeling”.

I’m pleased that the whole “Smile” music and graphics package is gone, as it really seemed like a summer thing to me…it just seemed awkward through autumn and winter. I like the relaunch despite what I said about the Black Eyed Peas song (which sounds rather badly edited in the longer promos, although getting the “60 Minutes” ticking noise in there is clever, and the video fits well) and Nine needed to do something with Seven launching FlashForward tomorrow night. Nine have a few big premieres of their own and the old promos didn’t do them justice…the new ones do. That said, they really should have done this back when they changed the news sets.

On the whole I’m happy with it, and it all feels much more like Channel Nine, but I do have one major gripe, and it’s the same gripe that I have heard a lot of other people mention tonight…the horrible pure white lower-third that they are using, which is made even more strange by the fact that they have equivalent graphics which fit the new look. To illustrate my point, here’s a promo from NBN, Nine’s Newcastle affiliate.

The first “Tonight 9:30” graphic looks fine, so I’m at a loss to explain the big white one at the end which just doesn’t seem to fit. The big white one stays on-screen for less time than the old “time/date” graphics did too…I don’t understand why they couldn’t just use the one that fits.

The main station ID is more-or-less the same across the country, however I think the Melbourne one is better than the Sydney one, mainly because Melbourne newsreader Peter Hitchener has a much better on-camera presence than Sydney newsreader Peter Overton.

Here’s the Sydney one

And the Melbourne one

Actually, that just makes me reaffirm my idea that a network, and I don’t care who, but a commercial network needs to launch a national 6pm bulletin to replace the state bulletins. The national 4:30 bulletins on Seven and Nine are just so much better than the state bulletins…and whilst I would love to see a national 6pm bulletin presented by Peter Hitchener, I’d just like to see a strong national bulletin compete with the state bulletins. I think the national bulletin would win.

Wrapping up, YouTube user CanberraTelevision has put together a compilation of WIN’s version of the new Nine look. I particularly like the sponsor billboard at the 40 second mark.

Now if only Nine would put this much effort in to their programming, perhaps they could regain first place in the ratings.

Samuel

Entry Filed under: TV/Radio/Media

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