How South Australian media coped with ‘unprecedented’ conditions of a State-wide power blackout

Severe storms that lashed South Australia have created unprecedented demand from media outlets for information by the public, but also posed unprecedented challenges thanks to a total power blackout.

Power across the entire State went out just before 4:00pm, creating problems for the staff at the Adelaide Advertiser and news crews at the free-to-air broadcasters as they prepared for the evening bulletins.

Overnight metro ratings show Seven News drew 1,000 viewers in Adelaide while Nine News recorded a zero figure, with almost everyone in the State unable to watch TV.

Staff at the Advertiser were attempting to put together a print edition of the capital city paper when power went down. While the newsroom was able to run on half power thanks to a back-up generator, the print presses at Mile End were completely without power.

“We had to make the unprecedented decision to print the papers in Melbourne and have them trucked in overnight,” Dan Demaria, general manager of marketing and circulation, told Mumbrella.

The front page of today’s Adelaide Advertiser

Those trucks are due to reach Adelaide at around 9:00am today.

When power came back on at 10:30pm, Demaria said the paper decided to print home delivery copies there, as it took 90 minutes to get the plates ready. He said those hit people’s driveways this morning, with left-over copies sent to retail outlets this morning.

However, the blackout, which left homes without access to media such as TV, meant it was one of the highest traffic days for the Advertiser’s website ever.

“We had a generator at the building so we were able to keep the website going,” Demaria said. “We also sent our social media manager down to the press conference and we broadcast that via Facebook Live, again something which modern technology has allowed us to do.”

Demaria also penned a piece for the Adelaide Advertiser website on the challenges.

Graham Archer, director of news and public affairs at Seven Network in Adelaide, told Mumbrella the conditions were the “most challenging” he had faced in his career adding: “It was one of those events that you either cope or you collapse.”

Seven’s Adelaide offices also had a back-up generator which was able to provide full power to the studio, although Archer admits it was “touch and go” in getting the show to air at 6:00pm.

At five minutes to six the Seven news team was still struggling to publish stories which had been filed by correspondents in the field, and Archer said he was worried the generator would run out of diesel.

“We actually had to send a couple of people out to find filling stations that had power and fill up gerry cans to bring back to make sure we could keep going,” he said.

Despite this, they managed to get half-an-hour of news and the 30 minute Today Tonight programs out, despite “pretty well nobody having TV reception at that time of night”.

It also presented difficulties for reporters with crews in the field caught in gridlocks with traffic lights out, problems with communications and reporters running out of charge on their mobiles.

But the blackout meant Seven directed people to watch the live stream on the internet, while reporters also used Facebook Live and had reports posted to the Seven Adelaide Facebook page as well.

Indeed the situation was so bad that when he got home Archer could not open his electric-powered gates, and admits he had to drag a bin to the gates and climb over.

But with more extreme weather and stronger winds to come the state is bracing itself for further disruption.