Earlier this week, Nine News Darwin celebrated 40 years of news reporting.
Although Nine (then NTD8) had been providing a limited news service in its early years, it ceased to do so after 1974, when Cyclone Tracy decimated Darwin and left the channel off the air for ten months.
It was 1982 before the channel was finally in a position to access a microwave link to the eastern states to allow the timely exchange of news stories. Up until then the only microwave link available to Darwin was leased full time to ABC.
YouTube: aussiebeachut0
The first edition of News At Seven aired on 18 October 1982, initially in affiliation with the Nine Network but later changed to the Seven Network.
News At Seven later became Eight National News at 6.30pm, then after the station joined the Nine Network it became National Nine News at 6.00pm.
In 2017, Nine relocated production of the bulletin to Brisbane, adopting Darwin as part of its regional news output. The bulletin was suspended in 2020 amid the pandemic, replaced with a relay of Nine‘s Brisbane news supplemented by brief local updates for Darwin.
The restored one-hour Nine News Darwin bulletin, which began in October 2020, is presented by Paul Taylor in Brisbane but features stories filed by a team of reporters, camera operators and editors based in Darwin.
YouTube: QLD & NT Television Archive
