Australia Wide
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Australia Wide is a rural focused soft news program produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A new episode appears each weekday on ABC2 and ABC Online. It is produced by ABC New Media & Digital Services.
It runs for approximately 27 minutes, the first 15 covering news items about regional Australia plus weather. The next 12 are devoted to a particular topic of the day.
These are:
- Monday: Video Lives – The five winners of the 2005 "Video Lives" competition present video diaries of their lives, their place and their communities.
- Tuesday: Gen Next – Stories about and for younger Australians, especially those living outside major cities.
- Wednesday: Earth Works – Stories about Australians working in and with our natural world.
- Thursday: Arts About – A showcase of the artistic talents and endeavours of Australians living in rural and regional areas.
- Friday: Outta Here – Shows what's happening with Australians in sport and play.
Content for the program comes from a variety of sources, including reports for state and territory ABC News bulletins, content for Australia Network, ABC Local Radio presenters and "Video Lives" competition winners.
Over summer, the program has a different format. Australia Wide Summertime screens 10 minutes of news and weather and replaces the second section with short documentaries from a variety of sources. These documentaries are only screened on ABC2, and not on ABC Online.
[edit] History
The program stems from the Radio Pictures program of ABC Local Radio, where local radio presenters from rural Western Australia were given video equipment and training, and told to produce local stories. This program produced a four part series for ABC TV in 1998. [1] [2] It rated very well in Western Australia [3].
In 2000, it was planned to turn this concept into a regular program to screen on ABC TV, and a pilot was produced. [4] However, the series didn't go ahead.
However, video equipment was still given to a number of additional Local Radio studios, along with training and additional staffing hours. A few more short series of "Radio Pictures" were produced, and video appeared on ABC Online.
In circa 2003, the regular series idea was turned into the week-daily "Australia Wide", it also including content from regular ABC News reports. It ran for fifteen minutes and was only available on ABC Online.
In March 2005, ABC2 launched, and Australia Wide became available to a wider audience (and with much higher picture quality).
In late 2005, the ABC ran a competition called "Video Lives" to find new documentary making talent.
In March 2006, Australia Wide was extended by 12 minutes. This additional time was devoted to a different topic each day. [5] The "Video Lives" winners collectively received one of these days.
