Apologies if this has been asked before but I couldn’t find it above in the thread.
Why does News Night replay reports from 7 and 9 News, without credit? Is there an agreement in place or something?
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I think being the #1 most watched Pay channel is something to crow about, especially as 5 years ago they were not even in the top 10 most watched
It’s fair to to criticize Foxtels low penetration of the market which is far less USA uk and even Sky in NZ
But sky’s performance on a low penetration platform is astounding.
Day in day out they are the most watched channel.
Relatively (with around 75,000 for their top show with distribution of 2 million homes) they are more watched than CNN in the US (who average about 2.5 million viewers from a distribution on 90 million) but not quite as watched as Fox (who average about 3.9 million viewers)
Credit where credit is due.
The dud is Foxtel. Not Sky.
Year on year Sky is up 33% all day and 21% primetime. They are at viewership highs in their 20 year history
10 9 7 and aBC are at viewership lows and declining tear on year while Sky grows massively
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ABC’s audience increased this year.
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Yes, long-term agreement is in place.
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Their share increased (the % of people measured against their competitors)
The actual audience (number of people watching them) did not
10, ABC and SBS had increased ratings this year (and in the case of the latter two, the increase was quite significant)
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Almost every bit of vision you see on Sky is from 7 and 9.
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Back when the channel first started (and was owned by 7 & 9 as well as BSkyB) a lot of the content was direct from both networks - as Sky News has grown, it has reduced the reliance of taking stories direct from either network, but I believe they still have agreements in place to share content.
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They increased their shares amoungst other FTA broadcasters. That is- the % of people watching them…when measured against 5 FTA networks
But the actual amount of people watching each network declined on 2019. It’s just ABC, SBS and 10 moved some % points of viewers from nine and seven. But year on year the amount of people watching is less.
The point is, in 2020 the FTA networks all had less
People watching them then anytime in their history. Sky has more people watching than anytime in their history. Sky is growing its audience whilst the FTAs have been shedding audience for 3 decades now
That said, I don’t see sky keeping that growth up year on year - especially with foxtel subscribers dropping
On that basis, the next question would be did Foxtel grow their reach?
No. Foxtel peaked a few years ago. Foxtel has been losing subscribers for a few years now.
So Sky also grew in a reducing Pay TV share?
Sky grew the actual amount of people watching their network, as pay Tv subscriptions dropped.
However - the same cannot be said for the FTA networks. They lost viewers.
I’m not sure which is declining faster, foxtel subscribers or FTA viewership.
Either way - Sky had more people tuning in in 2020 than 2019.
And more in 2019 than in 2018.
Seven, nine, ten abc and sbs all had less. They are losing audience every year. They are at historic lows, sky is at historic highs
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You can’t say characters don’t work, something the FTA networks don’t appear able to work out. The secret is distancing opinion content from direct news content, although you may need to blur those lines initially to get more people to start watching it as it establishes itself.
Admittedly, Sky’s audience growth is off a very, very low base and their national numbers are comparable to what ABC News in just WA gets.
The Sky brand is trash to anyone that knows is exists and isn’t in the alt right. There’s a reason Speers and others have walked.
You also probably couldn’t do Sky after dark on proper FTA with our broadcast standards and ACMA. I’ sure SNOW flies very close to the edge at times but probably avoids getting pinged because the audience already believes whatever they spew out
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When you have such a low base to begin with it’s not always easy to recruit new viewers. We see this with 10 - with less people watching 10, less people see their promos - and 10 actually has to fight harder for every viewer than the other guys because they are coming off a low base
Foxtel has low penetration. It’s around 25% of household I think. Abs of you have Foxtel viewership is spread across 100 channels. That leaves not a lot of people actually watching sky, seeing promos for sky, or being exposed to the product.
So yes, you can say when you have a low base of 60,000 viewers - add just 10,000 viewers and that’s 15% growth. Easy. But when you have a low base or viewers and only 1 in 4 Australians even can watch your service - it’s actually pretty damn hard to add 10,000 viewers
ABC News airs into 100% of WA homes. Sky airs Into just 25% of homes. So obviously hard to compare the numbers in context.
When you look at markets that have both Sky News and ABC News as 24 hour FTA Channels (Cairns, Gold Coast, Newcastle, Can erra etc - WIN markets) you will see the 2 channels are neck a neck in ratings shares
I agree the content on Sky is not to my liking at all. It’s very right wing and borders on looney sometimes. But it homes where both channels are on an equal footing - FTA - as many Aussies choose to watch Sky as ABC
That says something…
In fact just checked, Year to date 2020 in markets where both channel are on FTA Sky is ahead with a 1.7% share to ABC’s 1.6% share
Broken down Regionally in Queensland sky DOUBLES abc’s audience, yet in Canberra / SNSW market ABC doubles sky’s audience
“Nationally” however sky wins and is more watched.
This is only because Sky has significantly better performances (> 2.0) in two markets (Queensland and Northern NSW) than the rest of the East Coast - without one (or both) of these markets, the share drops considerably on the back of < 1.0 shares. The sheer difference in the ratings is a fairly decent indication of where the content works and where it doesnt (not that it would come as much of a surprise).
ABC News’ ratings are reasonably consistent across the same market
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Yep, Sky is more popular in Queensland and NNSW. ABC is more popular in SNSW, VIC and TAS.
QLD and NNSW are also the bigger market sizes by quite a bit. So a higher share in a bigger populated market would also mean their viewing audience is bigger too, where as abc has the higher share in the more thinly populated markets
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This doesn’t surprise me at all. Last I checked, Canberra and the Illawarra (a significant chunk of the SNSW/ACT viewing market) are particularly strong Labor voting regions.
This has probably been said before, but I wonder if it’s entirely coincidental that Sky News on WIN outrates the ABC News channel in the two regional markets (Queensland and Northern NSW) which aside from having the largest population, also generally tends to lean more towards the right of politics at Federal Elections?
Of course there are regions in both of these markets which lean towards the left of politics on a federal level (Eg: there seems to be a fair bit of Labor voting in Newcastle & the Hunter, while there’s also that very left leaning patch on the Far North Coast) but I suspect that many people who reside in some of these places generally watch less TV.
And just for the record, if one were available in Sydney I reckon that a Sky News channel on FTA would potentially outrate the ABC’s here - especially if our radio ratings and newspaper readership figures are anything to go by!
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