On the bulletins of Nine News Queensland aired on 20 and 21 August 2011, newsreader Eva Milic conducted two crosses, one on each night, to reporters Melissa Mallet and Cameron Price, respectively, in the station's helicopter which claimed to be "near Beerwah", where the remains of murdered schoolboy Daniel Morcombe had been found earlier that month. The crosses were revealed to be fake when, on the second night, rival station Channel Seven filmed footage of the Nine helicopter sitting on the helipad outside their studios at Mount Coot-tha at the time of the broadcast. Radar footage also revealed that, on the first night, the helicopter was actually hovering over Chapel Hill, 70 km away from Beerwah. Both Mallet and Price, as well as news producer Aaron Wakeley, were sacked by the Nine Network following the incident, while news director Lee Anderson resigned in protest over the faked crossings. Despite the scandal, Nine experienced a spike in its 6:00 pm news ratings in the weeks that followed, managed to win more weeks than it did in the previous three years combined (winning seven of the 32 ratings weeks up to the first week of October), and recovered to reclaim its mantle as Queensland's most-watched news service by 2013. See also Television broadcasting in Australia References External links Nine Network Television stations in Brisbane Television channels and stations established in 1959