Welcome, to Boxing Day, welcome to the KW Network Select for 2025.
A reminder: of our Hugh Cornish obit, we posted to Kuttsywood's Couch late on Monday night (23/12/2024, if reading this in the new year).
We begin with the highlights for next year… for Kuttsywood’s Couch.
2024, for Kuttsywood’s Couch will be remembered, as it’s second biggest year on record in terms of posting: only one year eclipses it: 2009 (due to the Hugh Cornish obit, published days ago, we are level, but with far more words than 2009). Next year however, we intend to stake a bold claim with you today. Kuttsywood’s Couch in 2025 will break the joint record held by 2024 and 2009, and deliver a groundbreaking forty pieces next year. And, we begin this section with unveiling the first 26 to 28 of those pieces for 2025.
Will we remember 2024? A year remembered for all, the year Adelaide finally broke through and took home the Content Survey Live prize. 50 years of Brisbane news on 10, rewarded by coming home again, with a scalp from Seven to boot.
But in 2025 the game has changed. The hybrid’s history and everyone starts the same.
But in 2025 the game has changed. New rules, new format, it’s a all new ballgame.
In 2025, Content Survey Live: Yesterday’s Hero… comes alive… comes alive!
Content Survey Live: Yesterday's Hero, next year will be a significant event, as it brings many things together for a event like no other.
Starting on April 4 next year, Content Survey Live goes for it’s biggest adventure in it’s history.
The format for 2025 is as follows:
-Five rounds of round robin survey akin to Season Mode this year and what we call the Four Quarter Blitz, a new post season format that evolves the concept from 2023 into a tournament in itself.
-As the name suggests: “The Four Quarter Blitz” will see the top four from the regular season face off in a finals format, we have gotten down to a science:
-The top contender for the season will get a express pass to the Grand Final.
-#2 will have to face one more fixture to get a GF spot, while 3 and 4 have to face each other, before facing #2 for a GF spot.
If this format existed in 2024, Sydney and Perth would have qualified for finals.
-The Grand Final of Content Survey Live in 2025, will presented as two firsts: the first same night fixtures and the first ever best of five night series.
-In addition: The regular season will be played over a ten week period: one week on, one week off: a tightened up version of the 2024 season.
The ground rules for 2025 are as follows:
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) 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) 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) 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) 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)
In 2025, the game has changed. New rules, new format. It’s a all new ball game.
Content Survey Live: Yesterday’s Hero, comes alive in April 2025.
Content Survey Live: Yesterday’s Hero, comes alive in April 2025.
It comes alive!
The fixture for the regular season, is now available. 
The significance of the Sydney/Melbourne fixture kicking off Content Survey Live next year (on Friday April 4) should not be lost on many.
April 5, next year marks the sixtieth birthday of 10 Sydney: and the concept of running a Sydney/Melbourne opener is outright fitting due to the fact that when Ten Sydney opened at North Ryde (in 1965, outer suburbia: today, the original TEN-10 studio site is apartments at the eastern extent of Sydney’s Metroland, with only one key reminder of it’s past: “Network Place”.), it’s first major production “TV Spells Magic” was relayed to the only other member of it’s network open at that time… ATV 0 in Melbourne.
The titles for both pieces were also decided on at the same time as the decision to go with a Sydney/Melbourne fixture: paying tribute to the TEN-10 and ATV-0 opening night spectaculars:
-Sydney: “Content Survey Spells Magic” (in honour of TV Spells Magic, TEN-10’s opening night spectacular on April 5, 1965)
-Melbourne: “This Is It… Night Two That Is” (in honour of This Is It: ATV’s opening night spectacular on August 1, 1964)
In addition, we will be running a non-competitive one-day Content Survey Live-style survey or two (but more resembling the 24/7 format from Kuttsy’s Pitch X-Two back in November) on Good Friday, 2025, if 10 are intent on running national news on that date.
Twenty eight pieces confirmed (potentially 30, if the grand final really gets down to the wire!).
The next stop, is confirming the date for next year’s DST Guide.
That date, will be September 27, next year: with KW360 and Veritas on KW One subscribers at Patreon getting next year’s guide on September 20 next year.
And finally: we have one more thing to announce.
“But maybe, just maybe… there’s something in the lexicon coming fourth…”
The closing words of Kuttsy’s Pitch X-Two in November.
Lexicon News: Goes Fourth.
For ten days in August next year, will be occuring what we have said since 2023, will be the final installment of Lexicon News.
Lexicon News Goes Fourth, will happen… from August 4, to August 15 2025 (tied in with the 2025 EKKA, a lexiconer’s paradise), with a weekend break. The final segment of a series, that is destined to end on a high note: with 100% more posts than previous years.
The highlight for One Queensland in 2025, is simple.
“2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the most famous modern review of Sydney’s rail network: the Christie Report (devised by longterm NSW railwayman, and head of the Sydney Olympics transport operation Ron Christie) which looked fifty years into the future for Sydney’s rail network, including ideas such as rail to the northwestern suburbs, even a direct rail service linking Chatswood to Sydenham via the CBD that are now solid gold reality to Sydneysiders. In the year, Queensland’s railways turn 160, it’s time… to do the exact same thing.”
QR2075.
What this piece will be about, is planning the rail network Queensland (more particularly areas from Rockhampton south: literally a area the size of the areas surrounding the UK’s East Coast Main Line) needs by the mid-2070’s.
Ideas that will be explored include.
-Pushing narrow gauge to it’s limits, the potential for Brisbane and Rockhampton to be linked within four hours (equivalent to London to Edinburgh).
-Embracing the need for better rail freight connectivity in SEQ… that doesn’t strangle our existing network built over the last 160 years.
-Turning Inland Rail from a feeder to Brisbane, to being part of a fully realised alternative route between SEQ and CQ for rail freight.
-Developing a true regional rail network surrounding SEQ that isn’t tied to the needs of the tourism industry.
And most critically: the rail needs beyond Cross River Rail: and how if we can think better, we won’t ultimately have Beaudesert rail in a trench through Acacia Ridge goods yard.
QR2075, will be out in late July-early August 2025: to tie in with the actual 160th birthday of rail transport in Queensland and as a warmup to another milestone for railways as a whole: the 200th birthday of the modern railway on September 27, 2025.
BLUESKY VISION.
In just twenty days, we will be singing our song, and we will be gone from Twitter.
A bold statement we made in late 2023 announcing a Twitter windback (culminating in mid-January next year) in favour of Bluesky, a decision we made back when Bluesky was far smaller than it is today!
I’m proud enough to remember our user #’s (and these will be added to our account’s profiles progressively from today.)
-LYBASkw: #1,080,404.
-VeritasOnKW: #2,476,732
-OneQueensland: #2,491,550
In fact: One Queensland has had the biggest boom, in terms of user growth: it’s Bluesky follower numbers just doubling our Twitter follower base hours after our closure on Twitter on December 1... all from us positioning ourselves with one word: “Queensland”.
As we stated on One Queensland’s final day on Twitter…
“We have doubled engagement there (Bluesky) in a month... because of a decision we made twelve months ago to establish a One Queensland beachhead there... long before it became cool.
We are building a new image and a new family on Bluesky in a lovely shade of maroon.”
The MaroonSky campaign began with a starter kit… and will hopefully blossom in 2025.
Sorry Elon, your carton of Powers Bitter (personally autographed by Bernie Power himself) is in the mail.
The final life-support for the KWnetwork on Twitter (Veritas on KW) will be pulled into nightlight on January 15, 2025 at 12 noon. At that same time: all our accounts on the stagnant platform that is Twitter will be locked to new followers.
And at the same time….
Kuttsywood’s Couch One:
On January 15, 2025, Veritas on KW: on Sunday will return for the 2025 season, in one of our infamous Specials (i.e. the Veritas on KW: on Sunday… you run, when it’s not Sunday!) looking towards the TV year to come.
A reminder to support us on Patreon, to have access to all our additional content, we push through every week, as well as early access to KW Network Selects, and the DST Guide.
And finally… one more thing.
In early 2026, Content Survey Live is coming to America.
Content Survey Live’s first foreign foray, will consist of reviews of all fourteen CBS owned and operated news products in the late night timeslot in the US based off the pre-2025 ruleset. In addition, two other non-CBS owned (but CBS affiliated) products will be added to the event to give us a even four week event (likely to run Tuesday-Saturday, Australian time) of four surveys a week.
With this announcement, this also means there will not be a traditional Australian-focused Content Survey Live in 2026 in the way we see it today, or has been for the last couple of years.
More will be said concerning Content Survey Live: U.S.A. both at the end of Content Survey Live: Yesterday’s Hero mid-year and in next year’s kwNetwork Select.
Our hope by announcing this series a year or so out from it’s first survey, is to also ultimately secure a sponsorship for Content Survey Live: U.S.A., a first for Kuttsywood’s Couch.
(There also will be a basic pitch for sponsors (explaining the premise, and what options that will entail) that will be publicly posted (i.e. open to the public) at Kuttsywood's Couch One on Patreon sometime between January and March in 2025.)
(There also will be a basic pitch for sponsors (explaining the premise, and what options that will entail) that will be publicly posted (i.e. open to the public) at Kuttsywood's Couch One on Patreon sometime between January and March in 2025.)
Well, that’s about it for this year’s kwNetwork Select. We would like to thank you for your support in 2024. Next year will change the game… in 2026 however: we will take on the world.
A reminder once again, to support us at Patreon, because it helps drive ideas such as 2026's foreign Content Survey Live mission, and also allows us to bring into our possession artifacts that deserve to be preserved: we want to bring more old TV Week's in to our portfolio (after all we acquired just last week, a edition that is seen as a value generator: May 11, 1974 (Brisbane version), the very first TV Week to mention TVQ's news (which kicked off on May 13, 1974: and whose fiftieth anniversary we marked earlier this year.), and other items, and ultimately get them digitally preserved, as well as exploring new frontiers for us beyond the content survey we've made famous since 2020.
Join us, get together with us, and see how far we can go. It'll be one hell of a ride when we work together.
No comments:
Post a Comment