Check out some of tonight’s viewing post 8.30pm on FTA on the first Thursday of the ratings period
Nine, the current number one network has a repeat of Paramedics at 8.30 followed by a repeat of Australia Behind Bars.
The second ranked network Seven has yet another Hey Hey repeat in The Very Best Of The Best And Worst at 8.30 followed by a repeat of Mrs. Brown’s Boys.
Third ranked, ABC has Grand Designs: House of the Year at 8.30 that has already be shown on Foxtel followed by a repeat Joanna Lumley’s Great Cities of the World.
10 has a new program at 8.30 The Montreal Comedy Festival; that’s followed by an “encore” presentation of Would I Lie To You? Australia.
SBS has something about Secret Pyramid soccer playing Nazis an History channel doco on American Presidency With Bill Clinton.
It’s a vicious cycle of Networks doing F all → Ratings down → Networks continuing to do F All → Ratings plunge further and rinse and repeat again.
Though I’d be interested to hear if, for example, all networks showed first-run programming for Thursday nights instead of the half arsed effort would viewers actually tune in? Or have those viewers decided to switch off anyway?
It’s clear that live sport is something that will continue to rate on FTA. As a result, Nine and Seven have developed a mentality that they can put average programming on Wednesdays and Thursdays in particular because NRL, AFL, Tennis etc. will make up for it over the course of the year.
Overall free-to-air TV audience increases for first time in five years
The ACMA has released its annual How we watch and listen to content interactive report for 2022, which tracks broadcast and online content consumption trends in Australia.
The data shows that free-to-air (FTA) TV, including catch-up TV viewing in Australia, increased for the first time since data was collected in 2017.
The number of adults who reported watching any FTA TV in a given week increased from 64 per cent in 2021 to 70 per cent in June 2022. This includes 56 per cent who watched FTA TV, excluding catch-up TV, and 38 per cent for FTA catch-up TV and streaming services.
Paid subscription streaming services continued to dominate viewing preferences, despite long-term growth plateauing in 2022. In 2022, 59 per cent of adults streamed video content through a paid subscription streaming service in a given week, compared to 58 per cent in 2021. This is up from just 29 per cent in 2017.
For the first time we have started tracking viewing of user generated and short form online videos such as Tik Tok and Instagram Reels. This format is viewed almost predominantly by 18 to 24-year-olds who spent on average 7.1 hours watching content in this format in a given week in 2022, more than any other format, including paid subscription streaming services such as Netflix.
When it comes to listening habits, broadcast radio remained the most popular form of audio content with 75 per cent of Australians tuning in during a given week in 2022. Meanwhile, music streaming services continued to rise; up to 70 per cent in 2022 from 67 per cent in 2021.
The publication also tracks how Australians access news content. In 2022, the majority of Australians (81 per cent) accessed news from online sources in a given week, more so than FTA, catch-up and pay TV (67 per cent), radio and podcast (44 per cent) or newspapers (23 per cent).
Despite the demand for online news, FTA TV was still a leading source of news and was cited as the main source of news by the highest proportion of those surveyed (28 per cent).
The report is part of the ACMA’s Communications and media in Australia series which tracks patterns of consumer communications and media use over time.
TV’s inflection point is coming. Any time now (or maybe it happened in the last few weeks), the proportion of the Australian population who watch television the traditional way will fall below half for the first time.
Yesterday Brown said, of Streaming revenue, “We need some of that revenue put back into Australian stories. And I mean Australian stories. Not stories filmed in Australia with American accents. That’s a cultural death. We’ve been there. “Canada and France have legislated that revenue taken from their countries must go into local production. In France it’s over 25%. “A 20% reinvestment obligation in Australia, complemented by strong and sound IP arrangements will help secure the future of our industry and keep it vibrant.
“The Streaming companies will fight hard to not legislate, they are a business, and we must fight just as hard, because this is for our culture.”
The question of why Free to Air networks would worry over local quotas on Streaming is an obvious one, but networks are nervous that an increase in local production will drive up the costs, with shortages of crews already a huge factor, as well as potentially seeing some of the best scripts secured by multinational corporates with deep pockets. “The Australian screen sector is booming. With independent data from Screen Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing that there is more production in this country right now than ever before, the Government needs to be very clear on what problem it is trying to solve. “Simply adding fuel to an already raging fire of cost escalation in the production sector will have a significant impact on the ability of Australian broadcasters to continue to deliver the Australian programming that our community relies on.
I find it extraordinary that FTA are trying to stifle more productions in Australia, for fear that it might drive costs up. If we’re producing more, then the industry can employ more people. If you need more people, then train them up and grow the business. Which other industry tries to stifle its growth like this?
