Oztam report finds TVs still dominate video at home

Nathan Jolly

February 12, 2026 11:05

Oztam report finds TVs still dominate video at home

Free-to-air viewing is still king, Oztam says

Oztam has included data from smartphones, computers, and tables in its Streamscape report for the first time, and despite the change, the television set continues to dominate video consumption in Australian homes.

For the last quarter of 2025, the Screamscape report found that 85.3% of total viewing minutes occurred on actual TVs.

Smartphone video viewing accounted for just 7.2%, with computers making up 4.7%, and tablet viewing at 2.8%.

Oztam is jointly owned by Seven, Nine, and Ten. The broadcast TV sample size used for Streamscape is captured from 8,300 people meter households nationally, while the streaming data is from ~6,000 streaming TV meters households.

On TV sets alone, free-to-air viewing during the last quarter of 2025 accounted for 62.1% of all minutes watched, with live broadcast TV alone making up 52.3%.

According to Oztam, across the full year 2025, free-to-air broadcast TV and BVOD viewing on a television set accounted for 67.4% of minutes, while streaming made up 32.6%.

Free-to-air viewing still rules the TV set, according to Oztam

This runs counter to research from ACMA, released in December 2024, that found that free-to-air viewership had become a minority activity (compared to all other activities).

ACMA’s survey data (based on recall over the past seven days) showed that free-to-air viewership dropped below 50% for the first time in 2024, dropping from 52% in 2023 to 46%.

The biggest demographic drops in free-to-air viewing were for those aged 35–44 (30%, from 42%) and 75+ (77%, from 87%), while both males (50%, from 55%), and females (44%, from 49%) also fell.

Regional free-to-air viewing dropped (53% from 60%), while the lowest free-to-air viewers are the 18-24 age range, with just 19% watching free-to-air and 13% watching the free-to-air BVOD channels.