Today Tonight
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Today Tonight is an Australian television current affairs and magazine style programme, broadcast on the Seven Network. Hosted by Leigh McClusky in South Australia, by Naomi Robson in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland and by Monika Kos in Western Australia, Today Tonight is broadcast every weeknight at 6:30 p.m. in direct competition with A Current Affair on the Nine Network. Like A Current Affair, Today Tonight is notorious for its sensationalist reporting, and is an example of tabloid television where stories rotate around sensationalised community issues i.e. diet fads, miracle cures, welfare cheats, shonky builders, negligent doctors etc.
History
Today Tonight evolved from Real Life, which was hosted nationwide by Stan Grant from 1991-1994. At the beginning of 1995 it was renamed to Today Tonight, and changed to the current format of different hosts in each of the five mainland states.At one stage there were three separate versions of Today Tonight for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with different hosts, but now there is the single edition fronted by Robson, broadcast to all three cities.
The formation of the East Coast Edition
The first East Coast Edition was broadcast over summer from Monday, December 4 2000, until January 26 2001. In previous years, Melbourne and Sydney had run the same summer edition, but in the summer of 2000/2001, Brisbane was included for the first time. For the first three weeks - until Friday, December 22 2000 - the programme came from Melbourne with Naomi Robson, then moved to Sydney with Elise Mooney and Melissa Doyle. The three state based editions returned after summer.Then in March 2001, Sydney's Today Tonight host, Melissa Doyle, went on maternity leave, and the Melbourne version with Robson was broadcast into Sydney for the first time during the ratings period, the first step towards the East Coast Edition. This was supposed to last only 12 weeks, but Melbourne's version rated just as well in Sydney as the local version (despite the fact that for the first few nights they left "Melbourne's Today Tonight" on the screen behind Robson for all Sydney viewers to see). Doyle returned at the end of 2001 to present the summer edition.
On December 9 2002, Brisbane's Today Tonight host, Michelle Reiken took her maternity leave, and the Melbourne/Sydney version was broadcast there also. In 2003, when the ratings period commenced, Brisbane continued with the Melbourne/Sydney edition instead of reverting to a local program, with the promise from Seven that a local edition would return when Reiken returned from maternity leave. This never happened, and in May 2003, the month Reiken was expected to return, Seven Brisbane officially axed its local version of Today Tonight, and the east-coast edition was born. This was because the Melbourne based version performed better in the ratings than the local version of the program. To replace the Brisbane version of Today Tonight, Seven did create another show for Brisbane, Local Edition, to compete against Nine's Extra, shown at 5:30 p.m.. The program was short-lived and axed after only several months.
Due to strong ratings, the local editions of the programme in South Australia and Western Australia have remained, year round.
Current status
To this day, Leigh McClusky in Adelaide remains the only presenter to host her program continually from its inception, only taking leave over summer, and to give birth to her son in 2002 (when John Riddell of Seven News filled-in) and to have a daughter in 2006 (Rosanna Mangerelli filled in).Today Tonight is in direct competition with the Nine Network's A Current Affair with Tracy Grimshaw. Despite being produced and made in Melbourne, the program used to have lower ratings in the city than its competitor which was made in Sydney. However, recently the ratings battle has been more dynamic, with the timeslot been won and lost by both shows. In Sydney, Today Tonight is the leader, thanks to a strong lead-in of fast-paced gameshow Deal or No Deal and Seven News with Ian Ross.
During the summer no-ratings period, news reporter Rosanna Mangerelli presentes the Adelaide edition of the program (John Riddell was mainfill in until being promoted to weekday newsreader), whilst Tina Altieri presents in Perth, and the East Coast edition is presented from Sydney by Anna Coren.
Criticism
In Barcelona Tonight
ABC's Media Watch programme revealed that Today Tonight had fabricated much of a report about Christopher Skase.
Today Tonight sent producer Chris Adams and reporter David "Sluggo" Richardson, along with a camera crew, to pursue Skase who was claiming that his health prevented him from being tried. Richardson alleged that because the Today Tonight crew's videos showed that Skase was in good health, Skase used his connections to the Mallorcan government in order to establish police roadblocks to seize the Today Tonight crew's videotapes. The only support for these claims was a video of Dave Richardson driving past police, exclaiming "Roadblocks! Let's get out of here". Media Watch proved, through examining the broadcast report, that this footage was shot in Barcelona, not on the island of Mallorca. The "police" that Richardson was passing were in fact Spanish urban guards, who use roadblocks to control traffic flow in central Barcelona.
[Video of the Media Watch report, debunking the Today Tonight claims]
Presenter Naomi Robson faces court in Melbourne
In 2005, Today Tonight journalists were taken to court for naming the protagonists in a "Boy divorces Mum" case, in breach of the Children and Young Persons Act. See [Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Media Watch report on this story].
Code of practice compliance
Since the show's inception, there have been many investigations by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) resulting in the breach of the Australian Commercial Television Code of Practice. These investigations were mostly around factual accuracy, fair representation and privacy issues. [link]See also
- The satirical Frontline (Australian TV series)
- List of Seven Network programs
- Media Watch (Australian TV series) (critical analysis)
External links
- [Official Today Tonight Website]
- [Official Today Tonight Adelaide Website]
- [A critical look at Today Tonight's ethics in reporting]
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