The popular high-rating Ray Hadley show in the mornings will also go with Triple M being axed in the regional areas including Orange, Bathurst, Lithgow, Wagga, Dubbo, Albury, Gosford and Coffs Harbour.

In 2016 Nine did a deal with Southern Cross, leaving WIN to sign on with the 10 Network.

It also saw Nine create 15 new regional newsrooms and they'll operate until the changeover, although Nine Local we get here is nothing to get excited about.

What happens then is anyone's guess.

Under the changes, WIN will do its local news bulletin in regional areas at 5:30pm before taking the 6pm state bulletin in each state.

The change will be confusing for some time with people who watch Nine having to switch to WIN for the football and other sporting events.

What happens to channel 10 is unknown but the Nine we're getting now will probably take its programs.

The decision to ditch Hadley was brave. He's topped the ratings for years with between 30 and 40 per cent of the available audience.

Radio station 2GZ had been belting away on the airwaves for 81 years before it was taken over by Southern Cross Austereo and its proud name changed to Triple M.

When it was a true local Orange station and not a relay from Sydney it produced announcers who went on to become top of the tree including John Laws who did his apprenticeship at 2GZ.

First petrol stations ditched providing a service to customers and now the Orange supermarkets and discount stores are turning us into their unwilling workers.

They're trying everything they can to push us into serving ourselves rather than using the checkouts, which at times in the discount stores can be as bare as winter trees.

Pretty soon the company bean counters will come up with more ways to save money and cut staff by asking customers to pitch in a bit more by stacking the shelves and doing a bit of cleaning while doing the shopping.

Then you collect what you want, pay for it with plastic at the self-service checkout robots and head off home, knowing you've done your part in helping the supermarkets make more money, get an employee or two sacked and change forever the way we shop.

That will enable these places to become huge, brilliantly-lit warehouses without the need for any staff and operated by self-serve customers while the owners sit back and watch the money roll in.

It's making us forget that once real people served us our bread, milk, eggs, corn flakes, vegetables and washing powder and took real money off us and put it in a real till.

The bottom line to all this is that a trip to the supermarket will eventually involve no interaction at all with helpful assistants, while the checkout robots telling you what to do will become the rage-inducing watchword of 21st-century shopping.

What better opportunity is there for corner stores to make a comeback so we can get some good old fashioned service.

A duck walks into a pharmacy and asks for a tube of lip balm.

The cashier - "That'll be $3.49."

Duck - "Can you put it on my bill."

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