Ain’t going to catch me though…
Welcome to the penultimate night of the regular season for 2025.
Monday night's Survey of Origin 2, went the way of Adelaide, but the final picture of the regular season will not be clear until after tonight at least.
Perth tonight, has two choices here. A win tonight, means they have a week’s break until their face off against next Monday’s winner. A loss leads to a tiebreaker for that position… and going into this final there was a chance: that they’d have to do it back to back.
In addition: Perth also needs at least one overnight story tonight to claim the Ray Robinson Number title for the regular season.
A crescendo for the regular season… indeed.
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, with a sentencing concerning a 2023 Lockridge murder, a story about the Shot-Hole borer extermination program getting funding cut (and a shadow agricultural minister who can't say infestation properly), and a significant look at the WA state budget, analysis and two live crosses to both state treasurer and shadow treasurer (something Brisbane needs to learn from for next Tuesday). Three voiced over pieces, a Coolbellup car rollover (1pt Ray Robinson Number), and two whale stories from Geraldton and Bunbury.
Sport tonight, led with surgery ending the season for the Eagles Oscar Allan, the traditional Perth AFL wrapup, including local reception to Origin 2: whose story was buried deep despite it happening in Perth, departures from the Wildcats, and the BBL draft fortunes of the Scorchers.
Overall, Perth doing it right on a significant night: WA state budget no less.
The scores:
-Four local stories.
-Two live crosses.
Three voiced-over pieces.
A great sports segment, although Origin 2 in Perth needed to be bumped up slightly in the pecking order.
A Ray Robinson Number of 1.
Last round, Perth scored a 6.85/10.
Tonight: Perth scored, a 7/10.
Perth may well have secured it's spot in the Content Survey Live preliminary final next Thursday, potentially sending Adelaide and Melbourne to a elimination final dance.
Meanwhile, Sydney has to now earn 3pts with it's survey... to overtake Perth to claim the Ray Robinson Number crown, something Perth now stands alone... awaiting results from the east coast.
And for those wondering... yes it was fog in Perth this morning, not smoke still trying to get out of Optus Stadium from the pyro at the end of Origin 2 last night.
THE 6:00 SUNDAY NIGHT SOUND.
It’s fitting, that the last two parts of this journey that began with Countdown in it’s genesis, ends with the best videos produced in that genesis. In a world prior to video killing the radio star (and in the case of Foxtel next month killing both in one hit, with the axing of audio services and Paramount run music video channels), it is important to remember the roots of music videos on television came from promotional clips, in fact, the very birth of MTV itself can be inextricably linked with a Australian: Russell Mulcahy, who started out doing clips for Soundz on Seven at the same time as Countdown launched in the mid seventies, and ultimately went on to produce the video for The Buggles “Video Killed The Radio Star” in 1979… that would also ultimately be the choice for the very first video that would play on MTV, at 12:01am, August 1, 1981.
The first fifteen minutes of a revolution.
It would take another fifteen years before Australia would gain it’s first 24/7 music channels, but as we slide back into the seventies, especially after the arrival of colour: the music video was a novelty: but the way Countdown did them, was pioneering: thanks to their own innovator: Paul Drane. One of the earliest attempts at a Countdown music video, is fittingly the tagline for this year’s series of Content Survey Live.
It's taken 19 surveys… and we now give you, the music video for John Paul Young’s… Yesterday’s Hero.
This music video helped drive JPY to his first top ten hit. Within a year, he’d be near the top of the charts… denied that elusive #1 by another song driven by a music video, and became part of Countdown lore: for the way Molly promoted them, none other than ABBA’s Fernando.
Tomorrow night. BYO: Sausage roll… No, if you know the words, you’ll ruin the whole thing… Only kidding, if you know the words join in…
The finale of the regular season is not that far away.
See you tomorrow, where we wind back up where we started on April 4.
Will Sydney survive?
A reminder of our socials:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kuttsywoods.couch
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/veritasonkw.bsky.social
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