People always have and will refer to ABC TV as “ABC” or “the ABC” regardless.
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I’ve heard those words throughout my time in the industry, and rarely do they eventuate into realistic plans. It brings on the age old question “how longs a piece of string?”
It makes sense to migrate online eventually, TV as we know it now will die eventually, but seeing as we’ve witnessed the ABC rebrand and change direction on a regular basis, I doubt it’ll happen any time soon.
While they have access to the broadcast spectrum needed, I don’t see why they’d switch it off.
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Let’s be realistic here: It’s unlikely that the main channel of the ABC (or any of the other networks) will disappear anytime in the immediately foreseeable future. However, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if some of the multichannels became online-only services by the end of this decade.
I don’t think we’ll see ABC Kids become online-only anytime in the immediate future given the ratings for some of their programs. Ditto, the news channel.
However, I wouldn’t entirely disagree with anyone who reckons the medium-long term plan for ABC TV Plus (and perhaps also ABC ME, can’t imagine there’s much of that channel’s primary demographic primarily using terrestrial TV in 2021) is to transform it into an online-only service.
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If ABC TV Plus actually shuts down, here’s what I would do.
Move ABC Kids programming to ABC ME
Put half of the ABC TV Plus Content onto iview, half to ABC TV
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So where does ABC ME go?
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It stays.
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But you’re suggesting to move the ABCKids onto ME, so how can it stay?
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As has been discussed here countless times; you can’t timeshare ABC Kids and ABC ME on a single channel as both channels have predominant daytime audiences.
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They also target different age groups, and we certainly don’t need a further dilution of free to air programming for children.
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The exact wording was “it the not to distant future it will cease to exist in linear form and go online”
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Have we ever seen any audience figures to support this? That ABC ME gets larger viewing numbers in the daytime, Not night time?
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I could believe that ABC Kids gets quite healthy ratings during the daytime, because titles on that channel typically dominate the list of Top 20 Multichannel Programs and frequently get larger audiences than primetime commercial network multichannel shows.
But ABC ME? I don’t think that channel rates too well even during the daytime.
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Ive never seen any daytime ratings for the channel.
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Let me rephrase. They’re both channels tailored to daytime audiences because they’re both targetted towards children. The idea of timesharing them would not work. They may as well get rid of ABC ME in this case since their audience is more likely to get content from online than ABC Kids’ audience.
Think of it like merging Nickelodeon and Nick Jr together. It wouldn’t happen.
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ABC Me is the ABC Education channel isn’t it? The one with BTN and all the other programming. While they both target children they are both very different targets. I can’t imagine primary school aged children wanting to settle in for the latest episode of Baby Jake or Play School just like I can’t imagine an 18 month old keeping up with the world affairs on BTN.
I would say ABC Kids would rate higher, as we’ve seen with it regularly appearing in the top shows as by the time the kids are older there’s more distractions and commitments for them like school, tablets, sports etc… Many places simply just have ABC Kids on all day whether it’s being watched or not because kids have very short attention spans.
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If they’re both tailored to daytime audiences, and Indeed ABC Kids goes off air at 7.30pm, it would seem strange to me for both channels to take a linear 24 hour channel only to really be needed for daytime
If ABC TV Plus is ceasing to be a linear channel and go online only, that means something must be planned for the 7.30pm period on ABC kids
The plan must be to reduce from 4 linear channels (ABC TV, Kids/Plus, ME and News, to just 3
ABC
ABC News
And the Kids teamed up with something
I can’t really see any other scenario other than ME becoming the 7pm feed of Kids
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Perhaps ABC Kids would continue through the night? ABC Kids’ linear stream via iview is 24/7 if I’m not mistaken? Or is that just on demand content?
I think the plan is to reduce from 4 channels to 3
Why remove a broad appeal adult block of TV Plus from 7pm - 6am ans replace it with pre-school programming when kids under 7 are in bed?
Makes no sense
Makes me think the way it’s set up now is ideal
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An addition to that prediction which may or may not ultimately turn out to be correct: If the number of SD channels is reduced from four to three (and yes, I’d probably expect some level of Kids/ME merger in such a scenario), I would probably expect to see a HD version of the ABC News channel take up the space being left behind on the multiplex.
Given that the ABC News Channel studios have been upgraded with the service now available in HD via online streaming, you’d think the next step would be to make it available in 1080i (or 720p as per the case in 2010-16, except this time with native HD pictures) on terrestrial/satellite TV.
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