60 Years of QLD TV

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Thursday, August 3, 2023

Content Survey Live 2023: The Call of The Tribes: Semi Final 1: Melbourne V Brisbane: Night 3 (Brisbane)

 After two cities together on one night,
The showcase of this round has come to life.

Welcome to night three, of Content Survey Live, 2023.
Brisbane, on Monday night pulled out a forward pass, to end up in this position: they are dependant on not just a good score tonight, but Melbourne being flat as a tack tomorrow night to even qualify for the preliminary final in two weeks.

Tonight, they are fighting for their lives in this competition.

And, a reminder of the ground rules:
This first semi final week, is between perennial Content Survey Live also-rans, Brisbane and newly de-hybrided Melbourne that came second to Perth last year.

The rules of combat... I mean survey are as follows:

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.

-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 during it’s nights: something that has become a tradition in itself.

The current score at the halfway mark of Semi Final 1:
Melbourne: 8/10.
Brisbane: 1/10.

Are you ready to survey some content...

We open tonight's first window, with a update on the nearly weeklong story at the Whitsundays concerning a military helicopter crash, where human remains were finally found. This cross to inform of this important development came from... the Brisbane newsroom, despite 9/7 still having crews in Airlie Beach that actually ran live crosses. We would soon find out why, once the second story of the night aired: the fate of East Brisbane State School: complete with it's own live cross. Meanwhile a vape shop literally had it's lease torn up in Ashgrove and a tale about the need for superannuation for teenagers. The only thing rerun after six of this lot: was the Whitsundays story sans live cross.
However: two of the three voiced over pieces in the entire bulletin were rerun at six: 30secs on a sinkhole on the Gold Coast and a childcare worker abuse story that applied to both Sydney and Brisbane.

Camp Matildas got a run on sport, while the NRL coverage is actually worse than Monday night: with no mention at all of the Roosters V Manly game tonight at the SCG!
Both were rerun after 6. A live cross taking a entire segment of the hybrid section of the news: as long as it's coming from Arnhem Land.
And, meanwhile SCA threw into the breaks another four infomercials, including one that lasted a entire two minutes!

Overall, a night that 10 Brisbane would rather forget.

The scores:
Four local stories.
three voiced over stories, two inexplicitly replayed after 6PM!
Three live crosses: but none from where it needed to be concerning breaking news.
NRL coverage that is ignorant of what damn day it was: game day.

Monday night, saw the Brisbane bulletin rank a 1/10.
Tonight it needed to do a respectable number to prevent Melbourne walking away tomorrow night with the win.
Brisbane did not do itself justice on this night.
It ranked... 0.5/10, with a total this week of 1.5/20.

Brisbane is walking out of the Content Survey Live tournament this year, faster than Matt Burke left the studio after the 6pm sports segment tonight, and has the likely potential to see Sydney join it next week. The Sydney-Brisbane hybrid deserves to be broken up, especially in light of 10's upcoming move to have Neighbours become the lead-in to their 5pm news four nights a week come September (a move made even worse, considering that weeks after the return: Neighbours will be delayed into Queensland for six months (along with a enforced pre-record for 10's Brisbane news window, unless a move is made to split presentation entirely before then).

10's shortcomings outside the SE shine through once again with the choice of a newsroom live cross. No wonder Kleva and Global Shop Direct see the very few left outside the SE watching 10's news as a rusted on market.

Melbourne knows it's got the week in the bag: it knew so on Monday night... it's a matter of how many points they can load onto Brisbane tomorrow night in what is effectively a victory lap.

The Halftime of our Lives.
We begin our salute to half-time, with a look back to when you actually put in effort to bid for the Olympics (instead of 2024, 2028 and 2032 being handed to host cities with little opposition): especially in the wake of the success of Los Angeles in 1984. Case in point, Melbourne’s bid for the 1996 Olympics: hitting it’s stride in late 1989 where a long-term Labor state government, tried to paper over significant issues in that state was facing (State Bank Victoria’s issues with it’s Tricontinental subsidiary, the looming failure of Pyramid Building Society, and a growing issue with the public transport network, first concerning a new ticketing system involving scratch tickets (while the world was going toward electronic systems) which cascaded into a 33 day industrial dispute: also seeing the famous image of 250 trams blockading Melbourne’s CBD streets in early 1990) with a heavily developed campaign to bring the Olympics to Melbourne in 1996.

So, how do you market a bid while so much of Victoria was in the news each night? You hold a glossy half-time spectacular with 2200 performers during the last VFL grand final (set to become the AFL in 1990) with the world watching and hope some of it is seen by those voting on the 1996 Olympics a year later.


(1989 VFL Grand Final halftime entertainment: from Gezza1967 on Youtube)

Ultimately, Melbourne, were knocked out of the race in the third round of voting in September 1990, with Atlanta hosting the 1996 Olympics, after besting Athens (who’d ultimately host in 2004) but a interesting piece of Australian Olympic history is available to peruse digitally: the bid books for Melbourne 1996 over at the official Olympics library.

Well, we are one day off from the end of the week, and a decision on who goes on to the preliminary final in two week's time will be made official tomorrow (although it technically has been made with Brisbane's performance tonight: right after Melbourne has their second survey this week, as well as more half-time goodness.

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