Content Survey Live 2022: Night Eight: Another Load Of Mediocrity Cliches.

 Welcome to the eighth 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 (29/8) Sydney.
Tuesday (30/8) Perth.
Wednesday (31/8) Melbourne.
Thursday (1/9) Brisbane.
Friday (2/9) Adelaide.

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.

Last week, saw a fairly reasonable effort in the two windows Melbourne had. However, tonight is a far different story: as we are just twenty four hours away from the start of the road to the one day in September, that matters to so many in Victoria: culminating with the AFL Grand Final finally returning back to it's traditional home of the MCG after two years of COVID disruptions, saw both the Gabba in Brisbane (2020) and Optus Stadium in Perth (2021) host the AFL's biggest day of the year. If Aussie Rules is a religion, then the finals is pretty much Christmas come early.

So, let us now look at the bulletin that was 10 News First Melbourne, on the last day of winter, August 31, 2022.

We open with a live cross: concerning upcoming isolation period changes for COVID, and the end of mandatory masks on airplanes, due to happen on September 9. This live cross is again repeated after 6pm.

We then have the first segment: a story on a sentencing of a drug driver from 2020, during lockdown that somehow sent a police officer flying, the announcement of a pandemic research facility in Melbourne and a Melbourne-sourced piece concerning hayfever.
The hayfever piece is left out of the 6pm window.

In addition, there were three voiced over pieces: about two car crashes, and a post-6pm piece on the Melbourne Fashion Festival next month.

As for sport: the build continues toward the start of the AFL Finals tomorrow night, with two live crosses to Brisbane (one post 6pm), and a interview with a Cats player: with a very dodgy Skype connection. There was also more news concerning the Freo/Bulldogs game, with now both sides having injury issues. In addition, a press conference with Craig Bellamy gets a brief mention post 6pm.

However, the jokes concerning the cavoodle on the field yesterday at Lions training at today's Lions press conference are uncalled for: especially if some journos attending (out of towners perhaps) are likely unaware that for twenty years (1972-1992) QLD greyhound racing called the Gabba home long before the Bears and Lions did.

Weather presentation is still too pokey.

The scores:
Three local stories (two rerun post-6pm)
Three voiced over stories (one exclusively post 6pm)
Two local live crosses (for COVID changes)
A decent build for the beginning of AFL finals tomorrow night.

Last week, 10's Melbourne news scored: 6/10.
Tonight, 10's Melbourne news scored: 7/10.
Melbourne's score over the two weeks of survey: 13/20

10 News First on Wednesday didn't make the OzTam 5 city top 20, a very consistent pattern, compared with previous years.

Melbourne's news actually showed a upswing tonight compared to Sydney on Monday. It has likely cemented a strong second place in the Content Survey Live event this year, and is probably going to be a force to be reckoned with... provided the investment exists. The only thing holding it back is 45mins of hybrid segments (compared to Sydney/Brisbane's 60 minutes) however, these segments can be unwound a lot more easily than Sydney/Brisbane if the need arises.

Tomorrow night, is Brisbane's final judgement day, and what will be the penalty to their score concerning Monday's coverage of the Fernvale plane crash?

But, before we say goodbye Melbourne... let us remind you of the inspiration for tonight's title: The D Generation Late Show's take on Things of Stone and Wood's early 1990's hit Happy Birthday Helen, making mirth about cliches about Melbourne...

From mytoob24 on Youtube.

I think we can squeeze in one more Melbourne cliche.

From autopenguin on Youtube.

We might have another one: to help fill out our mission to find advertising that is too extravagant for it's own good: this time, for the Bank of Melbourne: not the Westpac reboot that replaced St George in Victoria, but the original that ended up becoming a Westpac takeover target in the 1990's, after surviving the economic waves of the early 1990's recession.

The big ticket recruit for the original Bank of Melbourne and it's advertising push, was none other than actor Jack Thompson (most notable in the advertising world at the time for selling Australians on Nissan cars (fresh off the rebranding from Datsun), which some were locally made until 1992), and was shot in probably the most fancy, modern, bank branch you could find... in the late eighties/early 1990's.

From Tapesalvage on Youtube.