Content Survey Live: Yesterday's Hero: Round 1: Night 4: So, We All Have To Deal With Basil Now?

 This post is not sponsored by West Coast Cooler…

Welcome to the final survey of the first week of 2025’s Content Survey Live.

Brisbane, last night set a unusually good pace for their season opener: marking a score of 6.6/10, higher than their entire season's score last year: 3.2/40, and is emerging as the big threat for the 2025 season.

And now, the ground rules for the 2025 season.

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)

TALE OF THE TAPE: PERTH.

Perth last year, got the bronze medal, by a narrow margin. Twelve months ago, it was one of just two bulletins for 10 produced standalone in it’s home market. Now, it’s in the middle of a growing pack. The potential for a resurgent Sydney and Brisbane has likely got them rattled. But, this week has them on a longhaul task: It closes the first round tonight: and will open round two on Easter Monday, one of two times this season a city will close a round, and open the next (the other being Brisbane, who drew Anzac Day for posting in round two (although the survey is of Thursday’s news), and open round three with the Labour Day public holiday in Queensland, literally 48hrs after the 2025 federal election).

We open tonight's Perth bulletin, with the same story that opened Brisbane's news tonight, followed by a story on a overnight fire at Innaloo (2pts for the Ray Robinson Number), a update on the disappearance of Richard Tu and a school bashing in High Wycombe. We also have a preview piece for one of the venues for Gather Round within the first window, while two voiced over pieces dominate the second window: a court appearance for a man booted off a late March Perth-Melbourne flight, and the death of the last surviving WWII POW living in Western Australia: Arthur Leggett.

We also have a third window story concerning the appeal for Perth cancer patient Frank Li, now reaching over half a million dollars.

Sport, however: is where Perth shone. A very heavy local twist on AFL leading into Gather Round, as well as a local piece on a Perth college basketballer about to face US college basketball's biggest stage.

And, yes: they kept the quiz.

While Sam Walsh telling Carlton fans to blame the players is only going to backfire.

Overall tonight, a very so-so night for Perth tonight, but it had one advantage over Brisbane tonight: a overnight story it sourced itself, but sadly this advantage is not strong enough to get a emphatic number tonight, in light of one flaw: deciding that the passing of Arthur Leggett only deserved a voiced over piece, when you could have bolted around the RSL, potentially others to get soundbites/camera shots to flesh out a full story.

The scores.

Four local stories.

Two voiced over stories.

No live crosses (alongside weather being shoehorned into a studio)

Three sports stories (including the story on Alex Condon, that actually deserved national replay)

A Ray Robinson Number of 2.

Last year's top score for Perth was in round 4: a 7/10.

Tonight's score, was a 5.8/10.

A correction or just Perth on a bad night... shades of February last year.

The second fixture of the first round of 2025:

Brisbane: 6.6/10

Perth: 5.8/10.

For the first time ever, since the move toward a fixture-based model: Brisbane has earned a victory in a fixture: up against a former Content Survey Live champion no less.

We now have for you, the standings after the first round. Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide are tied for the top, and it has the potential to be a deadlock until mid-season.

Meanwhile, in the Ray Robinson Number contest this week: Melbourne (on four points), is storming away this season with a two point lead over Perth (on two points) and three point lead over Sydney, on one point (with Brisbane not scoring a single Ray Robinson Number this week).

We also believe, that 10 needs to provide more variety concerning federal election coverage, especially in light of recent acquisitions. You cannot go following just Albo and Dutton all the time and try and get viewers tuning in: a push needs to be made to run a locally sourced federal election story in each market every night.

The 6:00 Sunday Night Sound.

We close this week with a promise: we’re revving up the Ol’ 55 machine, with their most famous hit.

Ol’ 55’s seed (unlike that of Skyhooks and Sherbet) came from a part time band: named Fanis doing covers, in early ‘70s Sydney, with the drummer Geoff Plummer (a Postmaster General public servant by day), by chance, meeting up with Glenn A. Baker (then, also a public servant, working at the Department of The Media: a short-lived federal government department established by Gough Whitlam, and ultimately folded up with the residuals of the PMG after Australia Post/Telecom Australia (now Telstra) were created as standalone operations in July 1975), and asked him to listen to his covers band. Baker took a gamble: became the manager for Plummer’s band, coined the Ol’55 moniker (from a Tom Waits track), and recruited two more people to join: a accountant that became frontman Frankie J. Holden, and a saxophonist, who today is more known for his name coined at Ol’ 55: Wilbur Wilde. The first big hit for the band, that wasn’t a cover, came in mid-1976: none other than… On the Prowl.

The good times for the original lineup of Ol’55 wouldn’t last. Within the first six months of 1977, Geoff Plummer, Frankie J. Holden and Wilbur Wilde would all leave the band, with vocal changes seeing the sound of the band change dramatically, before a final windup in 1983… right as the 1976 lineup reunited for a one-off gig.

Although, Plummer passed away in Feburary 2006: both Wilbur Wilde and Frankie J Holden are still strong in the music business, Wilbur becoming the fall-guy for Skyhook Red Symonds on Hey Hey It’s Saturday, while Frankie J tried acting, even a run in televised variety: the 1990’s reboot of IMT, all while the retro circuit called for both not just doing heyday Ol’55 content under various names, but most significantly, with a hybrid Skyhooks/Ol’55/Daddy Cool act, fittingly called: the Ol’ Skydaddys in the mid nineties.

Next round: a taste of Redgum… where it can go high… and make you cry… alongside Marty Rhone, and… a surprise we'll leave until Easter Monday.

Well, that's it for the first round of Content Survey Live for the 2025 season.

We'll be seeing you again... on Easter Monday.

A reminder of our socials:
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