Content Survey Live: Yesterday's Hero: Round 2: Night 4: The Post-Sharyn Conversation Part 2.

 The conversation continues... as we remember, this Anzac Day with the most powerful part of Laurence Binyon's 1914 poem "For The Fallen":

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning.
We will remember them.

Lest we forget.

The final night of the second round of Content Survey Live in 2025, is dedicated to the journalists and war correspondents who put their lives on the line on the battlefield to give us the story from the frontline, as well as to the memory of the Balibo Five (Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Gary Cunningham, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie), and the Australian journalist who went to East Timor (just before the Indonesian invasion) to find out about the Balibo Five's fate, only to not come home himself: Roger East.

Welcome to the final night of the second round of Content Survey Live, being published on the Anzac Day public holiday itself.

Last night, Sydney scored a 5.2/10, with a bulletin that was slightly stronger than Round 1, while tonight Brisbane may have the clever response...

We again tonight, have national stories listed in running order.

And now, the ground rules for the 2025 season.

Our focus, in Content Survey Live will be monitoring Ten’s five capital city news services (a benefit of technological change, now allowing us to watch interstate bulletins on delay), 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.

-(NEW in 2025) Local overnight news: Handled via a system we call collectively, the “Ray Robinson Number”: 1pt for V/O’d overnight news, 2pts for a full story, the total is reported at each survey’s end. A special prize will be given for the regular season’s Ray Robinson Number leader. 

-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

-(NEW in 2025) The “Hometown Rule” now applies to both Monday and Thursday night in the regular season as well as in the three Four Quarter Blitz finals (where the highest ranked participant goes first) outside of the Grand Final.

- (NEW in 2025) No 2nd survey (i.e. Tuesday/Friday) can be posted until 12hrs have elapsed after the live survey (Monday/Thursday) in the main season and the three Four Quarter Blitz finals outside the Grand Final. It can be worked on however, and scheduled.

-(NEW in 2025) Ties on the table, at the end of the season, have their seeding for finals decided by countback of fixture scores excluding byes (out of 40)

We open up tonights news, with the story that ended up in the 4th window of Sydney's news: the Cape Melville rescue, followed by a Anzac Day doubleshot, both on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, as well as a breaking news story on a Sailsbury fire, updates on a Toowoomba break-in pair, Easter Sunday speed demon in Townsville, a story on the Morven Vietnam nurses memorial, and medical research boosts with the big voice on this story...

Being, one Professor Cool.

Oh, Professor Cool, why do I feel many students make fun of your name.

Showing the world that science is cool, while trying to entertain.

It could be worse: Dr Joel making fun of Sky News Up Late.

And, we end up with a live cross on swells from Alfred and story with Tom Tate and Czech beer.

We do not know if they breathalyzed the Gold Coast Mayor before recording soundbytes for journos to used though.

Sport tonight was well balanced, but much like Sydney, they left out the game of the night tonight: Broncos V Bulldogs.

Overall, Brisbane's news tonight is really hammering it home.
The Scores
Five local stories.
Four voiced over stories
One live cross.
Sports product minus the game of the night.

Last round, Brisbane scored a 6.6/10.
Tonight, Brisbane scored a 6.2/10.

Here's the national pieces in running order:
Segment 1: Pope lying in state, 5th, election 6th, Bears return 8th.
Segment 3: Jerusalem fire/Turkey quake (not used in Sydney), US Baby Bonus 3rd.
Segment 4: Prince Louis birthday 3rd.

A very emphatic effort as it sees Brisbane now claiming it's second win of the season, with a victory over it's former hybrid partner and takes home two points.
Sydney: 5.2/10
Brisbane: 6.2/10

We now have a look at the standings going into Round 3, of this year's Content Survey Live.

Meanwhile: in the Ray Robinson Number race for 2025, Melbourne and Perth are sharing the lead (four points each), Sydney nipping the leaders (three points), Adelaide claiming one point, and Brisbane stuck on the bottom of this metric.

The 6:00 Sunday Night Sound.

At this point of time, we are no less than a few weeks off the sixtieth anniversary of the first major Australian embarkation to a battlefield in Vietnam (1 RAR, based in Townsville: a city that ultimately became the gateway to Vietnam combat for many a National Serviceman), and the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.

The first attempt, to celebrate the plight of the Australian Vietnam veteran was the very first single brought out by Cold Chisel, in 1978: Khe Sanh, which was a attempt to bring pub rock mainstream.

Khe Sanh, faced a uphill fight: as it had similar difficulties to early Skyhooks material in getting commercial radio airplay (particularly in the graphic detail of drug use and sexual habits, in light of what’d we’d later know as PTSD)… until Double J in Sydney took a chance on it, and launched not just the band Cold Chisel: but the career of it’s frontman, Jimmy Barnes.

Fast forward now, to 1983: when folk band, Redgum recorded a track written by their lead singer: John Schumann, using his own experience with Vietnam veterans, including one very close to his family (a brother in-law) to develop a track that was less of the Khe Sanh variety of pub rock but more of a song similar in vein to Eric Bogle’s “And The Band, Played Waltzing Matilda” (about WW1 veterans), and it became a hit, not long after the 1983 federal election.

That song: "I Was Only 19".

The most significant sign of it's popularity, despite the refusal in the eighties for Redgum to perform live on Countdown: was when the second Countdown Spectacular tour occurred in 2007, John Schumann was brought in to represent Redgum to perform, even though the closest thing the band got to being featured on the program, was the music video: as the song soared through the charts.

This one track, became the calling cry to a entire generation of veterans (most who were conscripted no less) to come together as a cohort. Suddenly, you started seeing Vietnam veterans leading Anzac Day parades, and on TV in early 1987: the Australian story of the Vietnam War was told by Kennedy-Miller (responsible for turning the 1975 dismissal of Gough Whitlam, and the Bodyline saga in mid 1930’s cricket into television events) as a significantly successful mini-series “Vietnam”, culminating in two significant events: the Australian Vietnam Veterans “Welcome Home” in Sydney on October 3, 1987 (inspired by a similar event in Chicago in the US in June 1986): and the construction of a Australian Vietnam War memorial in Canberra, ultimately dedicated on October 2, 1992.

To this day, any royalties earned from the use of “I Was Only 19”… goes toward the various organizations supporting Vietnam Veterans… especially, as some of the first “Nashos” that served in Vietnam, who are still suffering lingering effects of PTSD and Agent Orange use in the battlefield are now approaching their eighties.

Next Round: Ted Mulry, and Doug Mulray: and the time Warwick Capper (driven by Edelsten money) and Mark “Jacko” Jackson (who ended getting over by himself) tried to be hit parade material…

Well, that's it for this round.

Next round, will see the two leaders Brisbane and Melbourne fighting off on Monday night for a shot at a clear lead, while Sydney goes up against Adelaide to practically save their season on a Thursday spectacular... all while Perth enjoys a bye week in the middle of competition.

Round 3 will kick off sometime in May, more information concerning Round 3 scheduling, will be posted on Bluesky in due course.

See you then.

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