PRIME7 News draws more than twice the audience of WIN News, but that has not deterred those with the lower-rating service talking big as the television bulletins face off at 6pm weeknights.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
As part of the switch in Nine and Ten network programming, WIN News has come forward an hour.
The last Border ratings had WIN News as the region's 78th most popular show with an average of 10,633 viewers compared to Prime7 News which drew 22,269 to make it the No.1 show.
Nevertheless WIN's acting Victorian news director Kelly Clappis, who has been in Albury for the past five weeks, says she “relishes” the opportunity to go head-to-head with Prime.
“Prime puts on a good show and so do we, with less than half the staff, so bring it on,” Ms Clappis said.
“I think they should watch us because we cover the issues better, we've got better attention to detail and we've got senior reporters who get down to the nuts and bolts of issues in the community.”
Prime7’s ascendancy in the Border’s television news stakes has resulted from its incumbency, with its predecessor AMV 4 the first Albury television station in 1964.
“It’s hard to change people’s viewing habits, that’s traditionally the case, but I think once people give us a chance I don't think they’ll go back,” Ms Clappis said.
Prime7's Canberra-based head of content Paul Patrick said they did not take the competition lightly.
“We relish competition and I think every day our reporters and producers are thinking about competition, whether it’s at 7 o’clock or 6 o’clock," Mr Patrick said.
“We're No.1 and we intend to stay there.
“I think we have a good number of senior people in our newsroom, there’s people like (reporter) Helen Ballard who have been part of the Albury landscape for a good while.
“The viewers are familiar with her and they become comfortable with her.”
Ballard was the Prime7 newsreader before the station shut its Union Road studio in Albury and shifted the hosting of the news to Canberra.
The bulletin is now anchored by former Warrnambool resident Freya Cole, who completed a journalism degree in Melbourne and has worked in Gippsland and Tamworth.
Her counterpart at WIN Bruce Roberts, who moved to Wollongong earlier this year after the network’s studio in Ballarat was closed, described the move to 6pm as exciting.
“It will be an interesting challenge and with staff development in Albury I hope to be pleasantly surprised when I open up the ratings for the shift,” Roberts said. “It will be refreshing to see how the market embraces us.”