Tuesdata: Time in with the telly, for 30 years and counting
Welcome to the Tuesday edition of Unmade, where we explore a new piece of data every week. We call it Tuesdata. You can probably work out why.
Today, we look at the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ annual Time Use Survey, which was released on Friday. Covering the Australian population over the age of 15, it offers some interesting, fresh data about media consumption. Further down, we’ll also cover yesterday’s movements on The Unmade Index.
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Square eyes?
One of the great things about government funded data sets is that they go back a long way.
Take the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s Time Use Survey. It goes back several decades. You have to dig around to find the old stuff, as the ancient PDFs aren’t searchable. Even Google seems to have struggled to crawl them properly. But they’re there.
You can see this year’s on the ABS web site. Although the ABS sternly warns against directly comparing the data as sample sizes and methodologies evolve, the processes are close enough that I’m choosing to make those comparisons.
The set of data released on Friday covered what consumers were getting up to from November 2020 to July 2021. Those with a good memory may recall there was a bit of a coronavirus going around at the time .That’s one drawback in comparing trends. It’s fair to conclude that people were at home rather more than usual. Nonetheless, the data is interesting.
Further down, I’ll compare it to the same data of 30 years ago
The survey is conducted by asking a sample of just over 2,000 households around the country to complete a diary of their activities. The ended up collected data from 3,630 individuals, all aged over 15.
Statistically, that’s not a bad size sample. Usually 1,000 would do it.
One statistic stands out above all the others. Television dominates as the most popular free time activity the most recent survey. For how people spend their leisure time, television is still the daddy. And mummy.
After work, sleep and other commitments, people end up with an average of 5 hours, 27 minutes of daily free time.
According to the survey, on average 75.8% of men and 75% of women spent some of their free time watching TV or video. They spent an average of 2 hours 55 minutes doing so.
That was well ahead of the next most popular activity – labelled as “general internet and device use”. A Lot of doom scrolling during that period, if I recall correctly.
And, as you’ll see from the table above, audio was well behind TV. A total of 7.8% of men and 9.9% of women recorded themselves as listening to music, radio and podcast.
However, these statistics respond to the primary activity. So if somebody was driving themselves to work and happened to have the radio on, it wouldn’t be captured in this number.
What’s just as interesting is how the amount of time watching TV and video has changed compared to 30 years ago.
Oner subtle difference is the question. Back then it was “watching TV or videos”. Think VHS.
Now it’s “TV and video”. Think streaming.
Back in 1992, the number was 108 minutes per day – about an hour less than now, which is up to 175 minutes.
Audio patterns were even more different 30 years ago. “Listening to radio, compact discs etc” clocked in at just six minutes a day. Much more of a companion activity, back then.
Sadly, the ABS no longer classifies certain, lost activities, presumably because they are now irrelevant.
The charmingly labelled “Relaxing, thinking etc” which occupied 36 minutes per day back then, is gone from the survey. So too is “enjoying memorabilia”, which even then received the asterix signifying next-to-zero.
The next set of data, which will cover Australian consumption habits as we moved back into more normalised patterns of consumption behaviour will be the one that signals how mjuch habits have changed in the long term.
Although it feels like forever, the rise of streaming is still recent in the scheme of things. Netflix and Stan only launched in Australian in 2015. The next wave of ad-supported streaming. channels (such as the forthcoming Pluto TV announced at the Paramount Upfront event last week) may shift habits again.
Even allowing for lockdown viewing, the data shows one thing. The death of television has been postpopned again.
The Unmade Index: More red
The Unmade Index of ASX-listed media and marketing stocks followed the wider sharemarket downwards yesterday. While the ASX All Ordinaries dropped by 1.5%, the Unmade Index was down by almost 2%, to 660.6 points. The index had opened at the start of the year on exactly 1000 points.
Yesterday’s falls were spread across the market, with not a single Unmade Index stock in positive territory. Amongst the larger players, real estate platform Domain saw the biggest drop, down by just over 3%.
Message us: letters@unmade.media
Time to let you get on with your Tuesday. I’m back on the road today, with a quick jaunt into Melbourne for the Carsales upfront event. The company suggests it’s going to announce “its largest media innovation leap yet”.
The time commitment is something of a leap of faith as Carsales hasn’t shared any detail under embargo of what they’re going to say. If it’s interesting, I’ll share it here tomorrow.
Have a good day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
tim@unmade.media
