Peter Leonard back on WIN News

OMGZ those evil female newsreaders!! Heaven forbid there should not one male on the local news…Peter Leonard is hands down the most annoying news reader on tv, male or female. I hate the way he drags out the last word of every sentence, and he mumbles too, so annoying!

i reckon peter leonard woudl be good subject for a riotact interview…

OzHair, I’m not saying your wrong, but two weeks ago I saw a Win News crew and they had one of the old BetaCams on the tripod in Civic. And if they did upgrade some/all cameras to the new XDcam, then it was very stupid to do so when their studios don’t support the newer formats. What a waste. Especially when my cheap laptop and camcorder can edit and render 1080i widescreen footage.

It is very dissapointing. A few years back, NBN invested millions in getting ready for digital television, including fitting out an outside broadcast vehicle that could stream via microwave and satellite, multiple high definition feeds at once. the Win Network (not just in Canberra) is much bigger, and yet the quality is the worst of any network. Have you seen footage from the south coast Win station, the cameras and lenses are so dodge that the blue sky is martian green and the water is murky grey.

NtP: It wouldn’t be a bad idea to do some basic spelling fixups on posts, since (rightly or wrongly) the posts reflect on the site as well as the poster.

“You know… widescreen.”

WIN Canberra are shooting using the latest XDCam cameras. Native widescreen. The problem isn’t with the footage aquisition, it’s with where it gets pumped out to the public. Upgrading the studio facilities to incorporate 16×9 is a lot more expensive than buying a $2000 consumer camera. Regional television is always slow to spend money unless it absolutely has to.

Example; when I was with WIN about ten years ago, the cameras were literally falling apart, and we were constantly appealing to management for new gear. The comment from senior management (not the local guys) was that they basically didn’t give a rat’s about quality, just as long as we were covering the black bits 😛 It was another five or six years after I left that the cameras were replaced.

Regional Television = cheap-ass slave labour 😛

I hate WIN News. Why should we support a news service that refuses to invest in providing a news service for the modern era. You know… widescreen. A $2000 HDV Camcorder from Domayne or Dick Smith has comparable quality to a broadcast camera and would make Win News footage look like it was taken last week, not last century. And take a look on You Tube, people are doing mock up Win News graphics which kick ass compared to the real graphics.

ABC News Rules… well not really. Its just the lesser of two evils.

Um, would you comment if the news was all men?

Last I checked we were in Australia too.

I do.

Poll: How many people eat at 6pm?

In Italy eating dinner would not occur until 8:30 or 9pm. Normal.

Personally, I watch channel 10 news. Not because it’s better (it’s not) but because the 5 pm time slot suits me better. By 6 pm, dinner’s on the table and the TV goes off.

Another annoying ‘local’ news is on the Morning Show. They read the national news, and then they say ‘now to your local area’ and then they read out some Sydney news. Great.

JD114, well I try to keep quality up but I also have no journalistic training, can’t spell and am an awful typist. I do proof read and use a spell checker on my posts (not comments – who does that?) but I still stuff up occasionally in a rush to get stuff up.

With regard to user posted stories, well we do check the links and for relevance but we don’t edit. The post reflects on the poster and we are not going to put words in their mouths, even if it’s only to make a small alteration to what we all think they mean.

Remember the glory days when Prime, Ten and WIN all had local bulletins and the journos thought they were hot shit, camped outside the Assembly looking for the big scoop from Paul Osborne or evil Carnell..

‘Let’s hope we see this surface sooner rather than later because the last thing we need is to know what an antique pie warmer was worth in 2001.’ We surveyed a hundred people and they all agreed that Bert’s familly feud is swill served up to livestock. I’ll take the pie warmer any day.

> And when I say all the local news updates…I mean all of them, right around the nation. They even publish the whole lot of them online, and it is quite amusing in a sad way to see the same newsreader presenting just about every update.

Ahhh, thanks. I stand corrected. My assumption it was done elswhere was actually based on this same thing you’ve just pointed out…same newsreaders presenting just about every update around the nation.

Actually Southern Cross Ten produce all the local news updates here in Canberra…trouble is half the newsreaders they hire aren’t from anywhere near here, hence the reason they can’t pronounce any of our suburbs.

And when I say all the local news updates…I mean all of them, right around the nation. They even publish the whole lot of them online, and it is quite amusing in a sad way to see the same newsreader presenting just about every update.

The QA on stories is probably just a preview of what all written communications will be like in ten years… when the kiddies are all super-schooled and have an hour’s drive home afterwards.

Back on the topic, I would much rather Antiques Roadshow than Bert Newton or Eddie McGuire. Or even better, switch the damn box off and go have a life.

Another thing off topic, I have noticed an alarming drop off in QA of stories posted here at the RiotACT, with spelling errors and typos in abundance. Don’t you guys read your copy before you publish?

I love (read: despise!) the little local updates Ten do lately (all recorded in Sydney) that give helpful local weather hints at the end, such as “Sunny in Nicholls today!”, picking suburbs at random. It’s an attempt to make them seem “local”, but actually reinforces that the opposite is true.

I don’t like Peter’s reading style. it’s like listening to a funeral director, with every sentence dropping off in tone and the last word extended as though the end of the world is imminent. A lot of people I talk to feel the same way. Peter has been around for a long time, and good on him for that. But the longer he sits in the chair, the more painful his reading style becomes.

Over at the ABC, Virginia is a bit better, but she tends to be a bit high pitched and also a bit faster than ideal.

Personally I found Paula Wilcox who briefly appeared on ABC in the early days of Virginia to be the best local news reader since Christine Kininmonth was brightening up the Channel Ten offering all those years ago.

At least we don’t have to put up with the standard formula of one alpha male and one pretty female each being paid good money to present half a bulletin!

I like WIN news.

I think ABC have got it wrong in trying to cover local, national and international in their 25 minute show. If I wanted to know what was happening in Baghdad etc I would watch a national news bulletin.

Although at least they always have enough ‘news’ to fill the show.

You can’t trust Jessica Goode: her eyes are too close together!

I thought the young lady did a good job reading the news. No better or worse than Pete.

Wondered what had happened to old Pete. Thought they might have taken him out the back and had him quietly knackered. Bint who was doing the reading wasn’t too bad at it though.

When Peter’s back on TV you know that no matter what happens, everything will be okay. 🙂

Heh, when I worked at WIN we called the weekend wrapup on Mondays the “swill wrap” 😛

I’d definitely prefer the Antique show to any game show. It’s times like this that the ‘we’ used in articles drives me nuts.

Bert’s Family Feud (which is very popular in Canberra)
Really? Are we that stupid??

“new half-hour version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Let’s hope we see this surface sooner rather than later..”

REALLY? Are we THAT stupid??
I’d far prefer to watch something about what an antique pie warmer was worth in 2001 than that mind numbing tripe.

Anyway, I can’t say I noticed Peter’s return or his absence.