Kuttsywood's Couch: 24/7: July 1, 2026: Take Two: Melbourne's Wednesday Charge

Welcome, to 24/7.

This is indeed the second coming of a concept originally explored in Kuttsy’s Pitch X-Two in November 2024. This time round, it’s four metropolitan news bulletins: the four that traditionally would have been part of a Australian Content Survey Live season, alongside Brisbane (who is currently awaiting it’s date with Boston in September’s inaugural Content Survey Live World Championships, and will not be part of this event).

The plan for 24/7 is as follows:

The city order in this event is in reverse finishing order from Content Survey Live: Yesterday’s Hero last year.

This means:

Night 1: Sydney, which scored 39 and 3/4 for it's July 1.

Night 2: Melbourne.

Night 3: Adelaide.

Night 4: Perth.

The day, they have all been chosen to cover, is the first day of the new financial year: July 1, in the middle of the week, with no interference from local skewing factors (team lists, State of Origin and the like)

The rules are simple.

-Intros to stories don’t count.

-Locally sourced stories in the body of the bulletin (defined, as from after the first intro post-opener, to the sports preview) not only grab points (1pt for a voiced over story, 2pts for a live cross, and 3 points for a full story), but must also be timed.

-National stories, traffic and weather reports do not count toward the total.

-Meanwhile the following applies here for sports stories: 0 points for overseas sports news, 1pt for Australian-relevant voiced over sports news and 2pts for Australian-relevant full sports news stories (that can be doubled if a sports reporter gets their mug on the box on a market-sourced/relevant story). These stories do not need to be timed.

The total numbers will be tallied (local story points total+total time of stories+sports story points) to give a final number, the highest one wins this event, and becomes the Australian reserve for a event in 2027, if Brisbane loses the Content Survey Live World Championships.

Let the games begin… with Melbourne.

The first key difference since we last saw Melbourne (the grand final for Content Survey Live last year), has been that some investment has been placed into presentation: with Melbourne currently the only Paramount-owned station in Australia with a comparable set to most of the CBS O&O's in America (of which we've seen plenty of during Content Survey Live U.S.A.): the VR/AR virtual set, and it looks fantastic with their daylight tones.

Shame there is isn't the investment or the will to expand local news beyond the 5pm slot, so these high-tech digital sandboxes can be used to their full potential.

We begin tonight, with the Maya Joint win at Wimbledon running as the lead (2pts for sport), followed by tobacco arson attacks in Richmond (3pts), premier Jacinta Allan dodging the media (3pts), D-Day for Moira Deeming (1pt), Melbourne property value drops massaging a national piece (3pts), a Yarra Valley rescue as breaking news (1pt), holiday patrols of shopping centres by police (3pts), a unrelated car crash in Richmond last night (1pt), Snow leopard cubs at Melbourne Zoo get "fine dining" (1pt), Bluey's Big Play arrives in Melbourne (with Quarters only just realizing Bluey's a girl) (1pt)

The body of the bulletin had as follows:
5 voiced over pieces (for a score of five)
4 local stories (for a score of twelve)
No live crosses (for a score of zero)
Adding up to a running time of 10mins even of local stories (easily converted to a numeric score of 10: no quarters here... except the one doing sport)
Total score for the body: 27.

And, now we leap into sport:
beginning with the Maya Joint redux, with other Wimbledon stuff (2pts), a AFL wrap headlined by Luke Beverage railing against concussion prevention measures for Auskick participants (2pts), Swans training (1pt), Socceroos round of 32 (2pts)...

Quarters, you had to say those words...
Hit it, Jimmy.

Next, we have a World Cup wrap (0pts), Womens T20 World Cup (1pt), Kawhi Leonard trade (0pts), and Basebrawl at Fenway Park (0pts)

The score for sport:
two voiced over pieces (for two points)
four full stories (for eight points), for a total of ten points.

Overall: Melbourne scored with it's 1st of July bulletin: 37.

Sydney, however is still in the outright lead going into half time of this event.

We'll leave you with more shots of the Melbourne VR/AR experience...

(Secretly, I think the weather in Melbourne is actually being done better than the US with this setup: no additional clutter of on-screen graphics for the presenter)

Well, that’s it for the second night of 24/7.

We leave you with the anthem of EOFYS… thanks to three drunk monkeys... wait, that’s the name of the agency that got tasked with it all those years ago.