Round 3 of Content Survey Live 2025, has finally arrived.
Welcome, finally to Round 3, of Content Survey Live in 2025, delayed by two weeks due to significant reasons we can now explain.
That second round, was the hardest set of content surveys we’ve ever done… not just for the Pope Francis breaking news from WA and SA on Monday April 21… a little over twenty four hours prior to that story breaking: I had some hard news of my own: a phone call, at 4pm in the afternoon on Easter Sunday: a passing we’ve been expecting for months (after a significant rapid health decline), my grandfather, who I’d only seen, for the last time in November last year, in a aged care home in the Blue Mountains. Thus, on May 5: what would have been the first survey of Round 3 (QLD Labour Day public holiday, just 48 hours removed from a significant federal election in my lifetime)… I was instead, on the road to Sydney to say my final farewells to my grandfather: at the church he pretty much made his own during his lifetime, as well as go through stuff within the house in Sydney’s west to bring back to Hervey Bay.
Tonight’s title is apt: because it represents the journey I made just to get here.
Brisbane, on Anzac Day easily disposed of it’s former hybrid partner. Tonight, it faces a challenge like no other: Melbourne, as the result for the first fixture this round is assured of the lead in the regular season, and potentially one foot into the 2025 Content Survey Live grand final: especially important, as Brisbane has a last round bye in the regular season.
Now, let’s look at the ground rules.
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 begin tonight's survey, with three straight live crosses, one outside the QLD Scouts HQ after a story broke concerning a Scout leader being charged, the last big junket... I mean meeting for IOC President Bach in Brisbane concerning the 2032 Games in Brisbane, which would rightfully be the Tokyo 2032 Olympic Games, had Queensland not gotten their empathy stuck in a Japanese washlet in 2021, and a live cross from Rome for the papal inauguration.
The first full story we got in tonight's news was the Queensland State of Origin team announcement during the first segment.
A significant amount of voiced over content during the body of the bulletin, including a dingo bite at K'gari, Owen Wilson filming his latest on GC streets (getting in before that 100% tariff on foreign made films kicks in), more details on a child safety inquiry with more priority than what's really needed in Queensland: a 2032 Olympic bid forensic inquiry and the impending sale of the property that inspired Ludo for the Bluey episode "Grandad".
Two good weather crosses, and two full stories on GC trespass ala parkour (yet Bach let it slide with Paris) and RBWH Giving Day.
Sport goes into more details into the Origin team announcement including a live cross from Suncorp, and a small AFL wrap, with the Gold Coast Suns being now unusually in the position of being the hunted, not the hunter.
Overall, although the number of local full stories was light: the live crosses at bulletins start did far more to embellish stuff than had if they ended up as voiced over content.
The scores:
Two local stories
Three sports stories, including one live cross where the reporter showed his face... believed to be the first for the season.
Four voiced over pieces
Four live crosses.
A Ray Robinson Number of zero.
Last round, Brisbane scored a 6.2/10.
Tonight, Brisbane scored a 6.65/10.
Getting very close to the 7/10, but everything (including the possibility that Brisbane is just one win away from a direct Grand Final berth all rides on Melbourne's results with tonight's news, due out tomorrow morning.
THE 6:00 SUNDAY NIGHT SOUND.
It's oddly fitting, that tonight’s choice is about a song about a car, in light of tonight’s title.
It's none other than Ted Mulry Gang’s biggest hit, and the video Countdown produced for it, at 2SM’s Concert on The Pontoon in March 1976: months after it’d hit number one.
Ted Mulry (the band’s namesake), sadly isn’t with us today, after first a announcement of a terminal brain tumour in early 2001 (which led to the Gimme Ted benefit concerts in March 2001), before leaving this world on September 1, 2001 (a day shy of his 55th birthday on September 2): just three days after the passing of Shirley Strachan of Skyhooks.
Tomorrow night, we bring you another fallen legend, this time of the radio industry: who somehow ended up on Countdown in it’s final years… with not a guest hosting gig, but a music video.
And, speaking of cars... here's a surprising content announcement.
Cars, and almost 5000km this year travelling in them, has also led to a interesting piece coming to One Queensland later this year… calling for significant rethinking of how Queensland deals with road safety, particularly driver fatigue, and how we could be world leaders in dealing with fatigue management, if the political will is there.
Well, that’s it for tonight. Tomorrow, we have Melbourne’s survey, and the big question will be: how close will Melbourne get to Brisbane...
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