With just one city left after tonight... will we lose ourselves...
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 visit The Henry Ford living museum, or perhaps figuring out how long the queues are to visit Windsor, Canada across the water, 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 Detroit 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... DETROIT.
CBS and Detroit, can easily be split into two pieces of history... all defined by one event: the 1994 affiliation changes in the wake of Fox gaining the NFC contract from the NFL. Prior to 1994, CBS had been high up on the VHF band in Detroit: with a affiliation agreement nearly fifty years strong with WJBK on Channel 2... that was until it ended up switching to Fox in late 1994. This forced CBS to find a new home... very quickly, first courting the NBC and ABC affiliates (the latter (which led to a wider ABC affiliation deal with Scripps (owner of the ABC affiliate in Detroit), that forced a affiliation change to Scripps's station in Baltimore) that ultimately triggered the Group W move to CBS... and the musical chairs in Denver, Philadelphia and Miami (which merely involved a transmitter) in September 1995.
After one more turndown (the former Fox affiliate ending up as part of UPN), it turned up with the pocketbook to acquire a station that had been pioneering in it's own way: WGPR, channel 62 (historically owned by African-Americans, with eclectic programming choices, and a door ajar for CBS: taking CBS This Morning when WJBK stopped airing it in favor of expanded local news). The move was then made to operate it as pretty much a relay station for CBS programming, with little to no news on the station before ultimately changing it's call letters to WWJ (matching a CBS-owned radio station in Detroit, and historically the callsign for Channel 4 in Detroit until the late seventies), a situation (bar a time in the early 2000's where a 11pm newscast was made by a recently added corporate partner (due to the initial CBS-Viacom tieup): the UPN station that had spurned CBS in 1994)
It took until 2022, for a fully realized news service produced by the station itself (this time, digital first: a model later partially copied by CBS-owned Atlanta 69 post-switch to CBS in 2025), to be launched on WWJ, ultimately launching in full in January 2023, and has pretty much become a clearinghouse for ideas ultimately adopted across CBS's digital assets.
Detroit... it's 11pm, and WWJ is about to go on the air with a news product that took 30 years of pain to ultimately shape into a product fit for Detroit.
WWJ's news streaming product, is pretty much a split between the national CBS News 24/7 product, and the local output: the majority of CBS O&O's we've seen produce additional content over prime-time to make the streaming service viable via replays of early evening content.
But the big problem in our eyes is the lack of live content for the streaming product at 11pm.
We tuned in, to CBS News Detroit's streaming facility at 1pm AEST: and the feed is showing reruns of tonight's CBS Evening News.
We then tuned in at 2pm AEST: and the feed was showing more CBS News 24/7 content.
It was at this point, we made a historic decision.
THE SCORE:
Detroit, due to the lack of presence of the local 11pm bulletin on the CBS News Detroit streaming service... is officially disqualified from Pool 4, and the Content Survey Live U.S.A. competition.
This means for the first time ever: a bulletin has been disqualified from contention from Content Survey Live.
The standings are, still the same as after Dallas's night:
Philadelphia 7.7/10
Dallas 7.69/10
Detroit: DQ: Nul points.
Tomorrow night, Miami is set to make it's claim in a pool that is closer than ever... and one that could be a big game changer... especially as the only local content shown in the window by Detroit tonight on the streaming service... was simply...
AMERICA, YOUR LATE NIGHT IS READY.
15. That Time Pat Sajak Tried To Be More Than Wheel: CBS, 1989-90
To understand what CBS tried to do in 1989, was more underestimating the longevity of Johnny Carson by broadcasters (much like Fox tried to do in 1986/87) while underestimating the intelligence of local station management at their own affiliates.
Pat Sajak had been doing Wheel of Fortune since 1981: at first a network daytime version for NBC, and then the big profit engine: syndicated Wheel (usually shown in primetime) from 1983 onward. Sajak was then offered the CBS late night gig, while retaining syndicated Wheel duties (the network version ultimately died in 1991, after a shift to CBS, and then back to NBC all without Sajak). But network Wheel lasted longer after Sajak… than the talk show he left it to host.
A eighteen month gamble, ultimately died in April 1990, while CBS went back to airing movies in the 11:30 timeslot, a gamble made worse by the Arsenio factor, which saw some CBS affiliates choose to aim for a younger demographic with the syndicated product, that launched a week before CBS’s attempt with Sajak… or was it cursed from the start… Sajak’s first guest after all was none other than: Chevy Chase.
Tomorrow night, we say goodbye to 33 years of late night tradition… by going back to where it all began for CBS... in the wake of Johnny Carson's retirement.
And, with tomorrow night fast approaching, it is down to one city left in the regular season.
Miami... especially with a pool that is as close as it is, let alone tonight's DQ... And that, will be a a interesting tale going into tomorrow night.
See you then.
A reminder of our socials:
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