Content Survey Live 2022: Night Four: Mediocrity, My Old Friend.

 

Welcome to the fourth night, of the ten best nights of 2022 in our books: the third edition of Content Survey Live. This year's changes are significant, but the ground rules always stay the same here.

The Ground Rules:

Our focus, in Content Survey Live traditionally has been monitoring Ten’s five capital city news services (a benefit of technological change, now allowing us to watch interstate bulletins on delay), in order of their ratings position within the network (with each market covered once) over a week, using the same criteria we used in the “Great Local News Study” from Kuttsy's Pitch XI in August, 2019.

-Locally sourced stories: that is stories reported by local journos. Really big local market stories with national impacts, also fit here. Voiced over local stories are counted separately.
-Live crosses: stuff that is used to embellish a story.
-Weather is not counted.
-Sport is not counted if it’s done by obviously freelance journos, or voiced over pieces: you gotta have dedicated reporters there, with their mug on air reporting a sports story for it to count.
-And finally: Ten Brisbane will have it’s Gold Coast content tracked again during it’s nights: something that has become a tradition in itself.

However in 2022, we have expanded to a two week format, with a entirely new way to rank bulletins
The first week, will seed bulletins based on comparisons with 2021 figures.
The second week, will seed bulletins based on comparisons with pre-pandemic and pre-centralization figures sourced from 2019.

A reminder now of this week's seedings:
Monday (22/8) Adelaide.
Tuesday (23/8) Brisbane.
Wednesday (24/8) Perth (which marked this site's 150th post).
Thursday (25/8) Melbourne.
Friday (26/8) Sydney.

Now, let's begin today's heaping bowl of broadcast news mediocrity.

And, a reminder: to purchase merchandise related to Content Survey Live 2022, head on over to our shop over at Redbubble.

For the first time ever, Melbourne's Content Survey Live study, won't have the shadow of a lockdown looming over a bulletin: instead, we are preparing for a upcoming state election campaign set to be dominated by the Victorian COVID response. Melbourne's results in these surveys was high because of lockdowns, and has had ratings corrections both in 2021 and 2022 to reflect where it should be ratings wise.

However: the limitations of the South Yarra studio, impacted greatly once centralization occurred in September 2020. The loss of weather presented away from the studio is still being felt. However, as we saw in Adelaide on Monday: (where both cities share a huge swathe of the bulletin, although airing in Adelaide on delay), because Melbourne is effectively trying to produce two bulletins at the exact same time, and trying to make perfection out of both.

 So, let us now look at the bulletin that was 10 News First Melbourne, on August 25, 2022.

We open the bulletin up with a piece on the truckdriver responsible for the Eastern Freeway crash in 2020 getting a appeal to slightly lower his sentence, a $1m reward for a Frankston cold case from Victorian police, stereo policy announcements at Melbourne's Royal Childrens Hospital and a local take on the Robodebt royal commission announcement.

All four of those stories were re-aired after 6pm.

In addition, we got two live crosses from Cranbourne about a hit and run 24hrs earlier, one in the initial segment, and one after 6pm, as well as a running theme (with the truck crash on the M80 near Fawkner getting mileage not just from the desk, but from both traffic reports during the bulletin) as well as a overnight break-in at Frankston.

Sports segments can easily be divided though. The segment shared with Adelaide, had two sports reporters mugs visible, including a lengthy interview with Josh Dunkley and a slightly shorter one with Jason Akermanis: who is currently trying to sell a apartment near the Gabba, in his post-football role as a real estate agent.
The post-6pm cut for Melbourne only, was very meaty, including a cross to the AFLW opener and a voiced over pair of stories relating to Cameron Munster contract issues, NBL player and the start of the Spring Racing Carnival.

The thing that drags it down however is the same problem as Adelaide: weather presentation in front of a tiny screen: compared to Sydney/Brisbane. Even Bob Turk in Baltimore presents in front of a bigger screen than this!

The scores:
Four local stories, all rerun after 6pm.
Two V/O'd pieces
Two live crosses (one after 6pm).
Sports segment post 6pm, fairly decent along with 5:45 shared with Adelaide.

In 2021, Melbourne's bulletin got 7.5/10.
In the first survey of two in 2022: Melbourne's bulletin got 6/10.

Ratings figures for 10's news are outside the 5-City metro top 20, yet again on Thursday: thus no access to ratings figures.

 Yes, it has dropped by 1.5 points since last year, likely because of the weather presentation being in such a cramped space, as well as the number of local stories dropping by one, and no original local stories at 6pm, unlike last year. Melbourne and Adelaide need very little work to split the scrambled egg in between the bacon of the bulletin: but while 10 needs to do significant work in Adelaide to regain momentum, Melbourne could go back to producing it's own local news tomorrow with very little changes in the way the bulletin is put together.

Tomorrow and Monday, is the Sydney survey: the first time since the Great Local News Study in 2019 where one market will be surveyed on two weekdays consecutively: a interesting shock for a survey that has already seen record highs and record lows in it's first week. In addition, on Monday, we'll be able to give you the first combined score, out of 20.

Now, we continue on with more advertising that is too extravagant for it's own good: this time, we go back to the 1970's and to a country race meeting... that becomes a ad to plug CUB's Melbourne Bitter: which actually, still exists.

From Jarooosa on Youtube.