Content Survey Live 2022: Night Three: A Mediocre Way To Mark 150 Posts.

 Welcome to the third 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 will also mark a significant milestone for Kuttsywood's Couch).
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.

Perth, for Ten, has historically been a fair rating news market, often seen as competitive with the 6pm bulletins on the competition (especially due to the historic ratings difficulties Nine has had in the marketplace). However, since 10's 2020 centralization of Perth's news production to Sydney, Nine's advances in the West to try and get people to change long-held habits at 6: have spilled into the preceding hour: first with Nine's afternoon news shift to 5pm in December 2020, with a key recruit: former newsreader for both 7 and 10 in Perth, Monika Kos, followed by a second rework of the 5pm product into a exclusively WA format early in 2022: 9News WA First. This move by Nine has made serious inroads on 10's ratings in Perth, especially when comparing the figures between the 2021 and 2022 surveys for 10's bulletin, shows a remarkable drop of nearly 30%, year on year (after a famed 7% drop between 2020 and 2021).

The difference between Perth and Adelaide, is stark however, because of one key factor that hinders Adelaide, yet works to Perth's benefit: the fact that WA's timezone allows for a dedicated bulletin for Perth (albeit presented in Sydney) with no content sharing with the Sydney/Brisbane hybrid. It is for this reason, it was the only bulletin in 2021's Content Survey Live to not just retain it's rank from 2020: but ultimately win the event: a job that will be much harder in 2022, with the two week format.

In addition, as the title states: Content Survey Live's first visit to Perth this year, also marks the 150th published post at Kuttsywoods Couch: a milestone that took us nearly fifteen years to achieve. The champagne corks are being popped as we speak.

So, let us now look at the bulletin that is 10 News First Perth, on August 24, 2022.

We open, with a strong lead story: opening day at a coroners inquest (far different than the one on Monday in Adelaide) concerning a death at Perth Childrens Hospital in 2021. This story was also rerun at 6pm.
In addition, we got a full story about a new clinical testing facility in Joondalup.

The opening segment, also had four strong voiced over pieces (all were also run after 6pm), first concerning a incident at Perth's main railway station, then impending moves to penalize the relatively minor number of unvaccinated police, a spud gun attack from a few months earlier makes it to court, and a mishap over medication in a Perth hospital.

We now get into the real gems of this bulletin: now not just with local sports presentation: but local weather presentation as well: something eastern states viewers miss dearly. The lack of live crosses for stories in the bulk of the bulletin is compensated by no less than five live crosses (three weather crosses, and two during sport to plug the return of cricket season) which also got a sports reporter's mug on the TV for the first time this series of Content Survey Live.

As for the sports segment pre-6pm: easily the best produced and decided so far, especially as it pans out the gameplan for Fremantle's home final against the Bulldogs next Saturday, as well as of potential week 2 opponents (if the Dockers do bring it home) either Geelong or Collingwood in Melbourne.

Some other highlights: I hope the sports presenter keeps his word: and tomorrow night joins quite a few others in trying to drink a beer through a hot dog, as yesterday's play of the day is given a rare redux. As for the weather presenter: please send him a box of twelve dozen donuts: as being the only market-specific weather presenter in the entire network these days, is hungry work.

The scores:
Two full local stories (one rerun after 6pm)
Four V/O stories, all rerun after 6pm.
Sports presentation: still has the two point advantage.
Live crosses will be a unbeatable five.
In addition, there is extra points also for having weather presented locally.

In 2020 and 2021: Perth's news pulled the same score: 8/10.
However, in the first of two surveys in 2022: Perth's news has pulled the score of: 8.75/10.

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

A record for Content Survey Live, and is well deserved: because the bulletin is relevant to it's market and most critically, taking the challenge when Nine made significant changes last year to their product, and and 10 is actually succeeding. This would have ranked a 9, if full story count had matched 2021 numbers.

Paramount: Your bulletins outside Perth need to resemble Perth's layout and identity. The intros to stories may well be done in Sydney, but the bulletin identifies with it's city far more now than it did in 2021. It is pretty much now, not a Perth bulletin presented in Sydney, but a Perth bulletin that has enough "Perth" in it to outweigh the Sydney presentation: something Ten actually did very well once upon a time, and something four other cities could only wish to have with current news department management and budgets.

With that, we are off tomorrow to Mewbourne... I mean Melbourne, and we'll be returning to the late shift in Perth next Tuesday, in what will be a interesting adventure.

Continuing on with advertising too extravagant for it's own good, is a recent entry to this list, from Perth: in the state which still has it's own TAB, which is currently on the market. Let's see how the TABtouch app, is sold (likely to be ditched if Tabcorp or Ladbrokes/Neds parent buys the WA TAB)... by none other than aging Gene Simmons, from Kiss.

Video from the official Youtube channel for KISS.