Content Survey Live 2023: The Call of The Tribes: Semi Final 2 (Adelaide V Sydney): Night 1: Sydney

 Week two of the content journey from hell.
Yet, here we are again for another spell...

Welcome back, to Content Survey Live, as we now arrive into our second semi final, between Sydney and Adelaide. 

At a off-screen coin toss on Sunday, Sydney took the call and landed with first cab off the rank tonight. After the performance last week of the Brisbane side of the Sydney/Brisbane hybrid, they are hoping for "not another repeat".

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 tale of the tape now, for Sydney leading into this year's Content Survey Live:

What can be said for Sydney, is simple. The hybrid product with Brisbane was great for it’s time, but it is in our opinion no longer required. Sydney, much like Brisbane requires significant news investment, to even reinstate itself on the level of Melbourne and Perth: especially as the growth of the city continues unabated. Sydney’s news needs to stand alone, and not drag Brisbane down with it.

Tonight, we will likely see the last vestages of the hybrid bulletins try and make their point be known. But will Sydney slip into Brisbane’s scoring range for the first time? Will they drop below their record lows last year? It’s a matter of how the content is sorted out.

Are you ready to survey some content...

We open the first survey of week two, with a similar setup to Melbourne on Monday last week: a story on the Matilda's do/die match with Denmark in the FIFA Women's World Cup (in which this survey is being written during the match) along with two live crosses (Sydney Olympic Park and at the Darling Harbour live site). The next big story, was a voiced-over story on a sentencing in a longterm murder case in Dubbo, followed by a lengthy piece on the beginning of consultation concerning a resumption of aerial brumby culling in the Snowy Mountains, a impending rebuild of Victoria Road in Rozelle as well as a platypus discovery in Sydney's west. Finally, we have a voiced-over piece about more impending T3 Bankstown Line closures.

At this time, we've literally written the Sydney window's content into this post... while watching the first two hybrid segments.
The hybrid sports segments were very lean concerning NRL coverage, a common trait of the Sydney/Brisbane hybrid: although there was a live cross to Stadium Australia pre-6pm.

Russell Island fire story played post-6pm (after running second (yes, second!) in the Sydney local window) with a "Russell Island QLD" tag (because 10 expects their viewers outside Queensland to not know that Russell Island is in Queensland), meanwhile the main post 6pm window, lacked even a single local story relevant to the Sydney market!

Overall, tonight's Sydney bulletin has again shown why it's falling, while Brisbane news is attached. When you have a bulletin whose opening window (supposedly for Sydney news) is running a story from Brisbane, as #2 shows a lack of reporting coverage in Australia's largest market, while Sydney's coverage of tonight's Matildas game is infinitely worse than Melbourne last week (which is within a standalone bulletin, unlike the Sydney/Brisbane hybrid). Melbourne's coverage made you feel like you wanted to be there (especially thanks to weather being on the road last Monday night). Sydney's take with the same product was far worse, purely because it had to fit around Brisbane news.

The scores:
Four local stories (with nothing from the Sydney market post-6pm)
Two voiced over stories
A very lean NRL story only focused on the impending Des Hasler move to the Gold Coast... with token Manly on the side.
Four live crosses, all to do with the Matildas story in Sydney.
Last year, Sydney scored 4/10 (night 1), and 3/10 (night 2)

Tonight, Sydney's news scored: 2/10: slightly higher than the combined score Brisbane got last week.
It's getting very likely, that Sydney will end up with Thursday night's survey... much like Brisbane last week: it's entire run through this competition depends on it and whether or not Adelaide can finally swoop over the line, sending the Sydney/Brisbane hybrid to a early end in this the game that is Content Survey Live.

Mondays with Hank.

After, the 1991 Superbowl, ABC went into a entirely new direction with Hank Williams Jr. A entirely new track was commissioned to get people literally dancing in their homes every Monday night. The “Monday Night Boogie” was first launched at the start of the 1991/92 season, with this clip.

(Monday Night Boogie #1 from TheGetzGuy on Youtube)

This iteration was surprisingly successful. And tomorrow night, you’ll see the sequel to the original Monday Night Boogie…

Tomorrow is Adelaide's Monday night moment of truth. Will the newly standalone Adelaide news perform like Melbourne did last week? See you then.

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