A serious question here: Could JR Ewing have actually afforded with his fictional fortune to build AT&T Stadium for the Dallas Cowboys?
As we reach out to the world in 2026 and beyond (a teaser for the future perhaps), we are emphasizing your safety on the internet in the age of AI. And, that is why we believe the best choice for a VPN (where you can lock in US pricing for your trip to do a grassy knoll tour of Dallas (alongside a visit to the Texas Schoolbook Depository), or perhaps figuring out if there indeed is a fort in Fort Worth, or just checking out pricing at Walmart/Target without leaving your house in Australia) is Surfshark VPN. A VPN can make your life a whole lot easier when organizing your next trip to the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area in general, (or Australia, if reading from the US: we'll leave the shrimp out to defrost while you come across the Pacific). Follow our link, and it helps deliver better content for you, and drives the challenge home.
And, now: onto the ground rules.
THE GROUND RULES
Our focus, in Content Survey Live will be monitoring multiple news services over a significant timespan (a benefit of technological change, now allowing us to watch American news bulletins here in Australia), using a slight modification of the same criteria we used in the “Great Local News Study” from Kuttsy's Pitch XI in August, 2019 and in Content Survey Live between 2020 and 2024.
-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 and traffic reports are not counted.
-Sport stories are counted for one point if it’s a voiced over piece: but… if you have a reporter on the scene reporting on the event, it counts for two points. This sports reporting scoring system is a modified version of the “Ray Robinson Number” from the 2024 special event, and the 2025 edition of Content Survey Live, which was utilized to examine overnight news, and will be counted up at the end of the regular season as a special secondary achievement going to the market who has the highest sports score.
This number, will be named… the David Hill Number: in commemoration of the role Hill played in revolutionizing sports coverage in Australia (as VP for sport for Nine in the mid eighties), the United Kingdom (launching UK cable powerhouse Sky Sports) and in the US (the founding father of Fox Sports, whose innovations reshaped NFL and other sport coverage for the better).
In addition, all scores in 2026 will be reported in a new format: a ranking out of 10: David Hill Number (e.g. 5.8/10 and a David Hill Number of 3) rather than separating these figures out.
THE TALE OF THE TAPE... DALLAS.
The land of oil, beef and JR Ewing, steps up tonight to the plate, but what we expect to see tonight is less of the "Dallas" we know from TV, but more of the Dallas-Fort Worth we don't see on our news services: a similar feeling happened with us, concerning New York back in late April: what seems like a eternity ago.
So, it's 10pm, the late news for KTVT is about to shine like a star over Texas: much like the star in the Texas flag itself.
We open tonight's news, with a renewed search in Everman for Noel Alvarez, followed by a fairly significant I-Team piece following up on a January investigation into Dallas charity, Hunger Busters (a tale likely coming to CNBC's American Greed in a few years, if the hiatus ends)
AMERICA, YOUR LATE NIGHT IS READY.
14. Arsenio Hall: The Great Syndicated Success: Syndication 1989-1994
Arsenio Hall, was a great standup comedian, who got his first big break on television, doing a 14 week run on the Late Show in 1987 on Fox after the departure of Joan Rivers, and was not just good at late night (was popular with younger demographics)… but had the makings of a star. Afterward, Arsenio would be off to film with Eddie Murphy, “Coming to America”, a movie that became a box office giant for the time: which ultimately saw Arsenio under contract to Paramount Television. And, thus one of the biggest syndicated television gambles (traditional syndicated talkers were afternoon products: late night was hit and miss: most significant, was Merv Griffin, which had only ended a decade long syndication run once the Metromedia stations that formed the nucleus of Fox pulled the plug post-Murdoch acquisition) was born: the Arsenio Hall Show, debuting on January 3, 1989: just a week before CBS unveiled a traditional late night product (steeped in Carson logic) with Wheel of Fortune host, Pat Sajak.
Arsenio won the fight with Sajak: with numerous CBS stations choosing to buy the syndicated tonight show over their own network’s product, while coming in as a affordable option for Fox stations that had been given slots back after the Fox Late Show died a slow death in 1988 (after reruns, then a last ditch attempt to revive it with a new presenter (after failing to get a now hot Arsenio): most famously, in the case of WSVN (a former NBC affiliate in Miami, switching to Fox/independent status on January 1, 1989) effectively replacing Johnny Carson (headed to newly NBC-owned and operated channel 4) leading out of their 11pm news, with Arsenio leading out of their 10pm news hour).
At one point, Arsenio Hall was so successful in syndicated late night (due to the targeting of a younger audience), Paramount as a syndicator was making more money from Arsenio… than it’s biggest primetime program Paramount was producing at the time: Cheers for NBC. The program at it’s peak: can be symbolized by one moment: A presidential candidate struggling to get the young vote in then, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, choosing to go on Arsenio: and bringing a saxophone with him, to play Elvis’s Heartbreak Hotel.
However, the late night upheaval that ultimately took place in September 1993, cost significant pain on Arsenio: with both NBC and CBS now chasing the same demographic that Arsenio owned in the wake of the end of the Johnny Carson era in 1992: while losing access to some of it’s best performing markets (CBS stations that carried Arsenio, now carried David Letterman, and of course Fox stations being made to carry Chevy Chase… for six glorious weeks), which ultimately saw the end of the original incarnation in mid-1994, before a year long revival in the early 2010’s.
And, for those interested in learning the rest of Arsenio's story: Arsenio Hall's memoir was released in Australia on April 14.
Well, we are now halfway through the back end of the Content Survey Live U.S.A. regular season. And, with it we exit the last timezone change of the regular season. Next up, we hit Motown, and a city that CBS has had three decades of trouble trying to establish a news brand in.
Detroit, the Motor City is up next. See you then.
A reminder of our socials:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kuttsywoods.couch
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/veritasonkw.bsky.social
Substack: https://veritasonkw.substack.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment