America, your survey is almost ready.
Welcome, to Night Zero: for Content Survey Live: U.S.A.
In April/May 2026, Content Survey Live, takes it’s biggest and boldest step to date, where fifteen CBS owned and operated stations and one CBS affiliate take the Content Survey Live challenge, that has become tradition at Kuttsywood’s Couch since 2020, with Paramount’s Australian stations taking the challenge. In late 2026, the winner of Content Survey Live U.S.A. will face off against the winner of the 2025 edition of Content Survey Live, Brisbane in a world championship match.
We will go through the ground rules for the US event and World Championships challenge at the very end of this presentation.
We now begin with the competition’s layout for 2026.
THE BIG DRAW:
In 2026, due to the requirements for sixteen cities being surveyed, it’ll be a return to the formula of Content Survey Live that existed in it’s genesis: one city one survey. But to decide the final week (and a overall winner, mind you) we will be adopting a new system: dividing the sixteen cities into four pools of four.
This is the primary purpose of Night Zero this year: setting the stage for who’s going to be surveyed and in what particular order.
We begin with the four leaders of each individual pool.
NOTE: FCC TMA, means "television market area" as defined by the US FCC, as used to manage cable retransmissions of broadcast stations.
Pool 1.1: New York (FCC TMA #1)
The largest television market in the US will fittingly be the first American city surveyed for Content Survey Live purposes.
Pool 2.1: Los Angeles (FCC TMA #2)
The largest television market on the US west coast, and potentially set to be the favourite to take out the whole thing. Also marks, much like Sharyn Ghidella this year in the Australian edition… yet another TVQ alumni is taking the Content Survey Live challenge in 2026 (albeit one who was there for a week’s talent exchange on her way to KHJ/KCAL at Norwalk from WGN Chicago in 1989): in Pat Harvey.
Pool 3.1: Chicago (FCC TMA #3)
The Windy City blows in as the third week’s anchor, and when survey comes in 2026, you won’t need to bundle up just to go out at night.
Pool 4.1: Philadelphia (FCC TMA #4)
One of America’s most confusing metropolitan areas (spreading over three or four states depending on who you ask) comes up to bat as the fourth week’s anchor: The Delaware Valley is raring to go for survey.
Now, you know who’s leading the pools next year… now it’s time to introduce the other twelve in contention… with their pool number.
We begin with: (drumroll please)… Atlanta: (FCC TMA #18) Pool 3.3.
Atlanta at this time is just fresh of it’s biggest TV shakeup locally since the New World/Fox affiliate deals of 1994. CBS, since late 1994 had been on a strong UHF station that fought to build a credible news image… that is until the owners of the station viewed that it’d be better off without a network affiliation, while CBS had owned a station in Atlanta since the days of the WB/UPN, and ultimately chose to end it’s affiliation with the successor to the WB/UPN in the CW in 2023, waiting until the time was right, for a conversion to CBS’s newest owned and operated station in August 2025. A local news operation is taking shape, led by the former news director of CBS’s O&O in Pittsburgh.
Which brings us to… Pittsburgh (FCC TMA #10) Pool 1.2.
The fact that KDKA has landed the #2 slot in Content Survey Live should be no understatement. The relocation of their news director to the CBS Atlanta project is the perfect opportunity to survey a station under new eyes (mind the pun) and see where it takes them.
Now, it’s time to turn up the heat… Miami (FCC TMA #21) Pool 4.4.
So Jim Berry’s going to have to wait until the end of the first portion of this event to get the Content Survey Live treatment. But for Miami, much like Atlanta, it’s in the midst of a changing news environment, with longterm ABC affiliate WPLG becoming a independent station (with ABC content living on a subchannel of WSVN, the longterm news innovator in the Miami market). How will WFOR respond to late night news as early as 9pm on the newly independent WPLG, and will it shake up the marketplace one more time?
But, now we are going deep into Texas… oil country: Houston (FCC TMA #15) Pool 2.4.
The only CBS affiliate (i.e. not owned by CBS) to get surveyed, and is showing here that it’s not here to make up the numbers. A clear representation of the body of non-CBS owned stations, that are affiliated with with CBS, and more notable for being a early broadcast home for Dan Rather in the sixties.
While we are in the Lone Star State: next up is Dallas-Fort Worth (FCC TMA #12) Pool 4.2.
We are going to have to wait a while do Dallas, and no, JR Ewing has not paid us for the ranking. This CBS O&O, has gone and likely alienated the CBS affiliates in this state by branding themselves on-air as CBS Texas, despite there being several CBS affiliates who could rightly lay claim to that title in the state (previously mentioned KHOU, being one)
Next, there is only one… JZ: Baltimore (FCC TMA #14) Pool 1.4.
WJZ: serving a market we’ve often compared in size to Brisbane in the past, enters the Content Survey Live fire as the closure to the first week of proceedings. A fun fact: a sixties WJZ music program, which famously pre-empted American Bandstand in Baltimore, whose struggles with racial integration in the mid 60’s (leading to it’s demise) ultimately became the inspiration for John Waters’s Hairspray films and Hairspray the Musical.
We now arrive mile high… Denver (FCC TMA #32) Pool 3.2.
As Night Zero arrives, KCNC has just passed it’s 30th birthday as a CBS O&O, a role it landed in as part of a transaction that gave NBC a O&O in Philadelphia. CBS Colorado, today rides high as the only CBS O&O between the Rocky Mountains and Dallas, and serves a significantly wider area through cable distribution. But, will the market that had the chops to call a referendum on a successful Winter Olympic bid fifty years ago have the chops to make it all the way, in a pool with Chicago and Atlanta?
This next one is reaching up and standing tall… Boston (FCC TMA #6) Pool 2.3.
WBZ in Boston has a news legacy that lives long: it’s heyday in the eighties up against changing news winds is still vividly remembered and celebrated. This challenge will be the toughest of all… as it’s drawn the same pool as Los Angeles and Houston.
Now, we are on the home stretch. We now reveal…. Sacramento (FCC TMA #25) Pool 3.4.
The state capital of California arrives into this event closing out week 3, but in a pool where it isn’t the underdog.
Next up, we light up the bay… all the way to San Jose: San Francisco (FCC TMA #7) Pool 1.3.
KPIX, San Francisco is the last Californian entry into this race. A news pioneer, as well as being the first station in the market has a strong legacy to uphold. Also notable for being the birthplace of the Evening Magazine(Westinghouse owned stations)/PM Magazine (non-Westinghouse syndication) magazine format fifty years ago. Up until thirty years ago (when the Westinghouse/CBS tieup happened that made the station a O&O), KPIX was also the largest affiliate of CBS.
The penultimate entry to this contest: Minneapolis (FCC TMA #13) Pool 2.2.
This midwestern entry is more of a market with many faces, not just dealing with it’s twin city, St Paul but with it’s curious position sitting on America’s broadcast borderline, the Mississippi River: where the majority of callsigns west of here begin with a K, and the majority of callsigns east of here (with a few historical exceptions) start with a W.
The final entry into the fight, is a market who (until the Atlanta operation kicks off) has the honour of being CBS’s newest local news product… Detroit (FCC TMA #5) Pool 4.3
WWJ Detroit, since CBS acquired the station (from it’s original African American owners, who had operated the station for thirty years prior to 1994) in the wake of the New World switches to Fox in 1994, has had a patchy history with local news investment, mainly due to channel positioning (until the CBS Atlanta launch, CBS Detroit was the highest numbered CBS O&O on the UHF band) before a significant push back into local news in 2023 (as Detroit was also the last market… again before the CBS Atlanta launch, to receive it’s own local news streaming service). WWJ is set to be the underdog in it’s own pool, especially as it’s news has only been around in it’s current form for a blip of the history of it’s other three competitors.
We now present to you, the table for the pools set to come your way in 2026.
And, now: we announce the ground rules for both Content Survey Live U.S.A. and the Content Survey Live World Championship later in 2026.
Our focus, in Content Survey Live will be monitoring multiple news services over a significant timespan (a benefit of technological change, now allowing us to watch American news bulletins here in Australia), using the a slight modification of the same criteria we used in the “Great Local News Study” from Kuttsy's Pitch XI in August, 2019 and in Content Survey Live between 2020 and 2024.
-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 and traffic reports are not counted.
-Sport stories are counted for one point if it’s a voiced over piece: but… if you have a reporter on the scene reporting on the event, it counts for two points. This sports reporting scoring system is a modified version of the “Ray Robinson Number” from the 2024 special event, and the 2025 edition of Content Survey Live, which was utilized to examine overnight news, and will be counted up at the end of the regular season as a special secondary achievement going to the market who has the highest sports score.
This number, will be named… the David Hill Number: in commemoration of the role Hill played in revolutionizing sports coverage in Australia (as VP for sport for Nine in the mid eighties), the United Kingdom (launching UK cable powerhouse Sky Sports) and in the US (the founding father of Fox Sports, whose innovations reshaped NFL and other sport coverage for the better).
In addition, all scores in 2026 will be reported in a new format: a ranking out of 10: David Hill Number (e.g. 5.8/10 and a David Hill Number of 3) rather than separating these figures out.
Well, that’s it for night zero.
The official start date for Content Survey Live U.S.A. will be announced on Boxing Day, 2025 as part of the 2026 KWnetworkSelect.
That’s just three months away… from the beginning of the hype for what will be… the ultimate thrill ride.
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