Don’t blame Netflix for the audience shift to streaming, blame the TV Networks
It’s not the streaming services stealing viewers from free-to-air, it’s the TV network’s abandonment of natural half hour scheduling which is luring audiences away and creating a new 9pm online “primetime” argues Maxus’s Nathan Cook.
Free-to-air networks need to stop blaming Netflix. It’s not the streaming platform’s fault consumers are making the switch.
A lot of the disloyalty among viewers has been caused by TV network arrogance in the way they treat viewers.
Local programming that runs over, US programming that doesn’t air day-in-date. Living in the global community, how can we expect people’s curiosity won’t get the better of them, driving viewers to seek content elsewhere?
It’s a good point
And don’t get me started on the lack of HD on all of the FTA channels. Once you have watched programs in HD on Foxtel or via one of the new platforms, it’s a bit like travelling business class and then being asked to fly Economy again when you see the cricket on Nine.
At the end of the day, people will no longer watch ad breaks!
For a start they got used to recording and zapping through them, now they don’t even have to do that with Netflix etc.
and just to rub salt into the wounds some”reality” shows encourage people to tweet or hop on-line during ad breaks – not much of an incentive to advertise on the show?
Spot on. Tv needs to realise it’s real battle is getting people to watch tv at all. They can keep fighting over a shrinking audience between themselves or they can try and build one with shows people want to watch.
Agree with @Tigger. Cricket in SD on Nine while fresh reruns of McHale’s Navy are on in glorious HD on Gem is madness. There was a time when the free-to-air stations were on HD, but then all their HD programming moved over to their other channels. With many consumers now on 5K TVs and retina devices, free-to-air just isn’t keeping pace with their audience.
Also, once you’ve recorded, and yet missed the ends of all the programs you watch due to the staggered timeslots that @NathanCook mentions, it does tend to send you off to a service where you can watch these programs and catch the whole thing in your own time, ad-free. And yet I’m happy to consume GoT weekly on a Monday streamed “at the same time as the US” because Foxtel is meeting the market. I’m happier to pay for the whole thing than watch part of it for “free”.
And while we’re at it Free-to-Air — what happened last night on The Voice or MKR is not NEWS!
Couldn’t agree more with this article. The FTA networks have shown nothing but contempt for many years now, let alone the rubbish they serve up under the name of entertainment.
Totally agree Nathan. As a new Netflix subscriber my viewing habits are absolutely about the 9pm slump on FTA. I am able to view on catch-up anything I miss in the witching hours of 7-8pm, but the scheduling on FTA prevents real time viewing.
Couldn’t agree more. Perfect. And yet the Networks will just cry and blame everyone else. Well said.
Actually a really good article, but we all know the FTA networks are too short sighted and lack the imagination to change.
The bell tolls
Too late, too late… I used to watch television before there was a generic schedule. If the program ran 61 minutes, it would be on for 61 minutes. I still watched when the generic schedule took over, and five minutes was taken out for station ID and promos. I would still watch now that the programmers ride roughshod over the generic schedule, if there was anything worth watching. But there isn’t.
I must say I was disappointed with Netflix. The model I like but there’s just not much on there. Until then, it won’t replace Foxtel or plain old TV.
Really? Pay TV model – Foxtel and still get ads, what’s that about? Free to air and all of the reality shows= cheap TV they serve disguised as entertainment?
Would rather spend time reading or playing board games with the family but will investigate streaming and see if it represents value for money as an alternative
ABC still for me is the best FTA channel
In best quality content and no ads!
Good point and well written opinion piece
Random stuff you might like (shattered with ads) versus selected stuff you will like with no ads.
Not rocket surgery.
Commercial FTA is trading on decades of goodwill and that’s it. Every customer who learns about the alternatives is a customer lost.
I couldn’t agree more with the notion that the networks have driven people to Netflix.
When I’m faced with the choice between watching garbage like Married At First Sight or watching shows like House of Cards, it’s a no brainer where I’m going to go.
I’m currently in the US for work and basically every one of my colleagues has ditched their cable for Netflix. It’s only a matter of time before it happens in Aus…. Sooner the better in my opinion…
The FTA networks who seem to disregard their audiences (not putting them first) are 7,9 and 10. To be fair The ABC and SBS, do seem to value their audience.
The cricket world cup, on Nine was the biggest joke in history. Yes it was the ICC (I believe), who apparently insisted on half of our TV screens covered in advertising, however, come on guys! If I had been a head honcho, at Nine, I would have been on the phone to India and not got off, until those ‘banner’ sizes had been reduced, so sporting fans could actually watch the cricket!
Watching a film on either 7,9 or 10, is impossible, yes IMPOSSIBLE. I will never, ever, watch a film on any of those channels. Ad breaks are dead and that is evidently what is killing traditional, commercial television.
What @Paridell said.
Plus I still love Aunty ABC.
The future of commercial-FTA will be two tiny cut-down networks, sharing a niche residual market, propped up by the occasional mandated sporting event.
FTA won’t die (nothing does, you can still find a blacksmith if you look hard enough), but it’s all downhill to irrelevance from here.
There’s a few issues with Aus TV no one is willing to address.
First, yes the programs run over. And not just 10 minutes either.
Next, you’ve got the disruption model, where decent first run programs get repeats in the middle, disrupting consumer flow.
Then, you’ve got the fact the FTA stations have chosen business over quality. Our TV shows don’t get us hanging on the edge of the couch, waiting for the show to drop. I’d wager that if you threw some eyetracking behind locally made TV, half the time we’re not even watching it.
So how do you expect people to put up with the ads when the delivery method is screwed and the quality leaves a lot to be desired?
If you want people to consume ads to pay for FTA, make the FTA worth watching in the first place.
Seriously, blaming shows not finishing at 1/2 hour intervals? What a load of baloney. Once upon a time networks did that and people complained bitterly about how much shows were edited to fit into the 1/2 hour slots. Come one guys, you can’t have it both ways. For me, I’d rather not have the excessive and poor editing to keep shows in 1/2 hour time slots and much prefer them to run over. Can’t believe you even mentioned that as a reason people are shifting to streaming services… Don’t you think the content has something to do with it?
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