[stephenb (Stephen)]

The ABC's much talked about news channel has started running its promo back-to-back on the ol' ABC HD channel.

I only get to see Sky News on Foxtel at my place of work, as I do not have Pay TV at home, so I'm glad there will be a service such as this on free-to-air TV.

If we cast our minds back prior to Sept 11 2001, News Bars - that scrolling text along the bottom of news services - didn't exist in Australia. It was mainly due to our exposure to so much US news services surrounding 9/11 and the increase in Pay TV in this country that local newtorks took on this feature on every news service in Oz. (At Channel 9, we used to call them "pull-throughs" when referring to the horizontal scrolling advertisements or information during live cricket).

So, now in Australia 2010 we will have a digital 24-hour news channel. How our media has evolved.

There have been some negative publicity about the technical issues at "Media Hub" facility in Sydney (co-operated by WIN-TV) and based in Ingleburn, in Sydney's South-west suburbs.

As someone commented online this week "...we have all been watching too much drivel on other channels. I watched, “A Current Affair” the other week (for once) and they had three segments. One was about the worst neighbours, the next was about womans bra sizes and the last was something to do with politics..."

My thoughts exactly.

No doubt the commercial networks will have such channel in the future, but for now I hope that we can trust such a new initiative in this country to Aunty, and allow her to treat it with respect.