Content Survey Live: Yesterday's Hero: Round 1: Night 1: Content Survey Spells Magic

Content Survey Live in 2025 kicking off on a Friday night… We are going to have a good time tonight.

Dedicated, to Harry Vanda (still with us, at 78), and George Young (who passed away in 2017), who shaped the Australian sound of the sixties and seventies as ARIA Hall of Fame songwriting pair, Vanda and Young: responsible for John Paul Young’s hits from 1975 onward, “Friday on My Mind” for the Easybeats (of which Vanda and Young were members, alongside lead singer Stevie Wright (who passed away in 2015) and all three parts of Evie, sung by Stevie Wright, as his biggest solo hit.

We salute the team that gave us JPY’s hits, especially as this year’s tagline is named after one of them.

So, welcome to the first ever Content Survey Live season kickoff survey… on a Friday night. The reason, why the 2025 season is kicking off on a Friday night will be explained…  With the ground rules for 2025’s season of course:

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 in 2025) 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 in 2025) 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 in 2025) 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 in 2025) 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 just twenty four hours, a milestone for the second 10 station to open will occur: Ten Sydney, tomorrow night will celebrate sixty years on-air. This is why we are kicking off the 2025 season with Sydney and Melbourne, the old rivalry happening on the biggest stage of a Content Survey Live premiere for the first time.

At this time sixty years ago, the final preparations for the opening night of 10 Sydney (ultimately also relayed to Melbourne on the same night: that’s sixties high tech for you), “TV Spells Magic”: about to take shape in shining new studios in the suburb of North Ryde, in Sydney’s northern outskirts, the site today was partially swallowed by the M2, and the remainder redeveloped into a large scale apartment complex, surrounding North Ryde metro station (and is the first stop after Chatswood, going into Sydney’s Metroland in the northwest suburbs), with one solitary reminder of it’s former role: Network Place, at the centre of the development.

Very little still survives of “TV Spells Magic”, mainly coming from highlight reels and documentaries done by the network prior to the move from North Ryde, to Glebe (and ultimately Pyrmont).

Will tonight spell magic for Sydney…

TALE OF THE TAPE: SYDNEY.

The inevitable separation of 10’s NSW and Queensland news services in September last year has seen the Sydney news service take some leaps and bounds: freed from the shackles of having to insert Brisbane news, into a product that was near terminal. However, Sydney has a significant chance to stick one up on the board, after a long slump: going from bronze in 2022… to just one victory in the 2024 season: against Brisbane no less. Tonight, a standalone Sydney needs to strike some significant magic.

Because, tonight: we’ve got Friday on our minds.

Made in Sydney indeed...

We open tonight's bulletin with the superannuation hack, that has cost people money, followed by a very Western Sydney focused federal election piece, which culminated in the faceoff between both leaders at the Blacktown Workers Club... at a News Corp-run function.

It's something that is ringing alarm bells over at the "Nothing Suss Institute Of Political Science", or NSIOPS for short.

"Nothing suss!!!"

Is there anything suss, about News Corp conveniently holding a function in Western Sydney, and inviting our political leaders to said function, especially one that said News Corp is going out of it's way to trash in the papers it owns?

Especially, as every shot of both leaders at this function on 10's news somehow has the "Daily Telegraph" brand clearly in shot.

This sort of stuff should be familiar to Queenslanders: as the QLD Government last week announced it's latest iteration of Olympic planning... at a News Corp-run function:

(image courtesy of the ABC)

Which had many of us asking whether the significant conflicts of interest by News Corp concerning some venues that needed to be disclosed long ago, as it would not pass the Dickie/Masters test, would have a severe impact on Olympics planning.

A updated version, of a image we posted in 2021 in the DST Guide.

If I were a journalist with values and ethics, (of which there are plenty) I would not attend a event held by News Corp, and is designed for it's own benefit unless News comes clean concerning it's political links to the SEQ Mayors or QLD state government in it's entirety and any Olympics-related conflicts of interest that may have impacted reporting on the 2032 bid.

Our suss rating for the News Corp "Future Western Sydney" event today (as decided by AI (actual intelligence) is 84.35% suss.

Now we've got the suss out of the way.

We now lead onto the second and last full local story of the night: a government giveaway to some surf clubs.

As introduced by a contestant from the 1982 Queensland Surf Girl competition (although, I'm worried there's a alternate universe where Kerrie Friend is reading 10 Sydney's news leading into the station's sixtieth year, and Sandra ended up as the hostess on Perfect Match)

Meanwhile, we got five voiced over pieces, a collision in Lurnea (winning the sole mark for the Ray Robinson Number for Sydney tonight), Ku-ring-gai Council's rates increase, a Clovelly fig tree is spared the axe, Martha Stewart is set to come to Vivid (provided her insider trading conviction 20 years ago don't trip her up at the border), and a graduation of firemen from the academy.

We have a soft spot though for the Clovelly fig.

Meanwhile, a US-sourced story from a recording booth somehow got a blank stare.

But, the biggest highlight was the sport, with live cross-ception at Allianz Stadium.

The one at the end of the chain probably shocked her spot was right outside the FatHead stand.

A stock standard NRL wrap, and a slice of Giants training made the news, despite the fact that the Cowboys/Panthers thriller kicked off at the same time as 10 Sydney's news in Parramatta, there was no mention of running scores from the game.

Relevancy unfortunately counts plenty here.

10 Sydney, has improved back to the standards it was playing at in February last year, without the stress on Sandra backing up for Brisbane news. However, the lack of actual stories (with a heavy reliance on V/O content: of at least two could have made great full stories) outside elections and a NSW government spend on surf lifesaving and some relevancy concerning sport has dragged Sydney down.

The lack of mention of Saturday's milestone on-air is very surprising.

The scores:
Two local stories.
Three live crosses.
Five V/O'd pieces outside sport.
Two sports pieces relevant to the market, but due to the lack of relevancy concerning Cowboys/Panthers: the overall score will be marked down by one point.
Tonight's Ray Robinson Number for Sydney, is a 1 (solely consisting of the Lurnea car accident)

Last year, Sydney's highest score, was in Week 1: a 5/10.
Tonight, Sydney's score was a 5.5/10, however due to the lack of relevancy in sport: the score gets knocked down to 4.5/10.

A significant improvement for Sydney on this time last year, now performing close to average. But will it out perform Melbourne tonight (likely leading with the Tony Mokbel bail story (which was buried deep in the Sydney bulletin), and most critically: could it outperform Brisbane, the longterm laggard of Content Survey Live... who now also stands alone.

We also interrupt this scheduled content survey, for a special Week 1 offer concerning Kuttsywood's Couch One on Patreon: Use code "TVSPELLSMAGIC" to get 60% off your first month's subscription to our Veritas on KW: One and KW.360 tiers. Our first ever discount Patreon offer expires on April 15 at midday.

The 6:00 Sunday Night Sound:

Welcome to “The 6:00 Sunday Night Sound” our tribute throughout the regular season, to the milestone that is the fiftieth anniversary of of ABC music institution, Countdown televising it’s first episode in colour, which passed on March 1. We begin with the Sydney contribution, to the early days of Countdown: none other than… the band they call Sherbet.

In the mid 1970’s, Australian teenagers had a stark choice: support the pop-standard look of Sherbet, or glam rockers Skyhooks (which is being featured tomorrow night). The popularity of Sherbet in 1975 was so significant, it’s lead singer, Daryl Braithwaite (who’d create a successful solo career in the late eighties) would end up winning three years straight, TV Week’s King of Pop, and at the 1975 awards saw both Skyhooks and Sherbet take out three gongs each (Sherbet winning the popularity gongs for one hit in particular)…

That hit, was none other than “Summer Love”.

Well, that’s it for opening night, of Sydney’s Channel 10, up next it’s a news update and Telescope… Wait… That’s it for opening night for Content Survey Live for 2025. Tomorrow night (Saturday), will be a review for Melbourne’s Friday night news, and on Monday and Tuesday: we’ll have Brisbane and Perth line up for their first outings this year. Good night, and remember to never have that recipe again.

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