Disclaimer: Perceptric, through one of the Directors, Chris Gilbey, has an interest in Vquence. A company that gathers statistics on Youtube metrics. – For that reason – we are omitting any analysis of Youtube in this article.
There used to be a joke doing the rounds a few years ago…..
There are 365 days per year available for work. There are 52 weeks per year in which you already have 2 days off per week, leaving 261 days available for work. Since you spend 16 hours each day away from work, you have used up 170 days, leaving only 91 days available. You spend 30 minutes each day on coffee break which counts for 23 days each year, leaving only 68 days available.
With a 1 hour lunch each day, you used up another 46 days, leaving only 22 days available for work. You normally spend 2 days per year on sick leave. This leaves you only 20 days per year available for work. We are off 5 holidays per year, so your available working time is down to 15 days. We generously give 14 days vacation per year which leaves only 1 day available for work and I'll be damned if you are going to take that day off!
Well Television these days is a little like that. There’s you and there’s me, and I’m damned if I want my share full of advertising……
We start with an excerpt from a report entitled:
Digital Future Project 2009
Pages 5 and 6
Trends in Online Media Use -- Looking at the use of online media, Internet users in the current Digital Future study reported increases in their time involved in most online media. Users reported spending the largest amount of time spent playing online video games and listening to online radio. In what could be considered evidence of the ongoing decline of printed newspapers, users reported large increases in weekly reading of online newspapers, now at the highest level thus far in the seven Digital Future studies in which this question was asked. Other peak levels for the Digital Future studies were also reported for reading online magazines, and watching online television and online movies
I thought I would take a look see at Australian online free to air (FTA) trends.
Who is looking at what?
Previously, we have covered that the average person watches 4 hours and 11 minutes of Television per day.
The interesting thing here is that the main ABC site is actually .net.au, but the abc.com.au website gets more hits than either channel 7 or channel 9.
(In fact the ABC.net.au website gets the cream of Australian online attention at 700,000 plus users.)
But then with Channel nine – we have to be aware that ninemsn are also the default “home” on IE browsers – so we need to look at that url as well.
Yep – a 2.51% rise in visitors over the last year. (That Microsoft partnership is sure paying off big time.)
The online winner? Channel 10 with a 65.58% rise in online attention over the last twelve months.
Empirical evidence is pointing to the fact that the younger demographic (under 25) may be watching as little as 32 minutes per day whilst the 25-34 year old demographic is watching only about an hour and 38 minutes per day.
However, if we look at the claims of Oztam, (138% of the population – based on 4 hours 11 minutes)) and Foxtel (26% of the population based on 4 hours 11 minutes), then Australians population must actually spend 7 hours per day in front of the television as obviously no-one goes to work or uses the Internet.
So in 2005 no-one in
Hang on Koltai, where did you get that?
From the submission to the House of Representatives
BROADCASTING SERVICES AMENDMENT
(MEDIA OWNERSHIP) BILL 2006
EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM
Changing patterns of media use in
of new sources of entertainment and information. It has been estimated that
prime-time FTA television audiences have dropped nine per cent over the
period 1995-2005, from 3.05 million to 2.77 million. Some of this shift has
been to pay television – OzTAM ratings reports from 2003 to 2006 show that
subscription television audiences grew from an average 10% share from
You mean even
We wouldn’t say they were rubbery…. We would say – hell – take a look for yourself…..
Sources: Various Newspapers and Blogs with OzTam top shows for the year numbers
And what about Foxtel?
Sources: Foxtel Submission to ACMA, Telstra ASX Presentation
And according to the Oztam ratings numbers, in 2009, no Australians actually used the 3.7 million Facebook accounts owned by Australians – or played any of the popular games on Facebook that last month had 571 million game players spending an average of 18 minutes per game session.
“The amount of time that Internet users spend online now surpasses an average of 17 hours per week. The study found very large differences between the online hours of heavy users and light users. Light users spent an average of 2.8 hours per week online, compared to heavy users who average 42 hours a week online.” From Digital Futures Project
And of course, the authors of the Digital Future Project must be wrong in the conclusions that claim that some users spend as much as 42 hours per week online. (I gotta say – personally, I agree with OzTam, those researchers were way wrong. I spend about 80 hours per week online.)
Lets try an experiment.
Now lets allocate one third of the population to each of the light, average and heavy categories and report the result in hours.
So now we can see that the average usage for Internet in
And if we say that the discretionary entertainment time that was given to television exclusively in the eighties of 4 hours and eleven minutes is still the same, then obviously, the 12,500,000 million internet users in
Hah – Got you Koltai….. there’s 21 million people in
Well, yeah, is that the audience that is either too old, too poor, too illiterate or too dumb to buy a PC?
Yep – that’s the advertising demographic in
14 30 second adverts for the 70% of the population that don’t have an IQ box.
Oh. 8,750,000.
And about 6 million of them don’t have credit cards or even wallets yet.
Oh.
So now we have established that people in
Well they wouldn’t have time would they? Spending seven hours a day in front of the TV. My God – what a country of couch potatoes.
So Koltai – why do you think the Oztam figures are wrong?
Not for me to say really. Possibly they can’t afford to hire a real economist to do the numbers for them.
Gee you’re funny Koltai. Any other reason?
No, I can’t think why a company owned by Channel 7, channel 9 and channel 10 would want to misrepresent the popularity of Free to air TV in
Well, Foxtel looks like the winner then.
Not if you read their complaints about the lack of sales activity by Optus. Or if you closely examine the radical change in their customer offerings over the last 18 months.
Minimum two year contracts reduced to 12 months.
First Month Free.
Free Instalation.
Second Digital Set-top box free.
And the Austar guys? No contracts at all…
Nope, those guys are desperate.
Now that those two year contracts are expiring…. People are not merely jumping ship, they are leaping so hard that there is not one of them that wouldn’t qualify for the Aussie long jump team in the next Olympics.
Why?
Well it’s the advertising. 22 minutes of it on every channel except the movie channels – and of course they don’t not advertise in the movies because they’re nice guys – they’re doing it to comply with their content broadcasting license which prohibits advertising interruption in their movies. (That’s basically the differentiator between the FTA content broadcast license and the cable companies license agreement. – It ensures that
Last year Foxtel posted 230 million revenues from advertising.
But Koltai, in the above chart there’s only just over 900,000 eyes for Foxtel advertising.
(Well less really, because 30% of Foxtel subscribers have an IQ so they just fast forward the adverts.)
OK, so they have 600,000 advertisement watchers.
With 78 channels? Who are you kidding. My two lads used to, (when we still had Foxtel) sit there with the remote control in their hands so they could channel surf with no delay when the ads came on. In fact they used to argue about who’s turn it was with the remote control and blame each other for not reacting quick enough to the ad appearance.
Ok so they have maybe 500,000 ad-viewers. Gee that equals an acquisition cost of 460 dollars per viewer. In other words, even with the viewers who only subscribe for the minimum $39.95 per month, Foxtel are still making their $80-$100 per month per subscriber.
Yep. Clever those Foxtel guys…
The advertising actually works out as the subsidy on the lost revenue on the entry level subscription plans.
What about all the new subscribers?
Hey Koltai – there’s an Australian born every minute and an immigrant arrives every minute.
OK cool – that means we have an additional household created every two minutes and twenty seconds.
Wow, that’s 217,639 households created per year.
It doesn’t mean they automatically sign up for Foxtel.
It’s a new household. They don’t have the money for Foxtel. Or a new Digital TV antenna booster.
What do they have money for?
Well food and water and electricity I guess with some left over to possibly cover the mortgage.
What about petrol?
Work car.
And so how do they get entertained ?
Well the husband has a laptop and the company pays for his internet account.
And?
Well, there are over 300 (legal) video streaming sites on the internet.
And?
Well there are over 100 different P2P clients available.
And?
Well, just on one of those indexing sites there are over 294,633 TV show episodes available for download.
Really? And?
Well they don’t have any adverts in them.
Sources: Various & Australian P2P Research Server Statistics – April to August 2009.
So everyone is downloading their entertainment then?
No, not everyone. Evidence would suggest that at least 43% of Australians don’t download from the P2P networks.
So I guess, that’s the Audience left for Foxtel and Free to air advertisers.
But Koltai that’s only 9,456,363 people. Slice off 1.4 million Foxtel subs and that leaves only 8 million free to air viewers.
(Well, maybe now you understand why the Government is umming and ahhing over that DTV thing.)
Yep – and it seems to be the western suburbs “least able to afford it” crowd that sign up for Foxtel. (Which actually probably explains a lot of the increasing churn rate. We all know that
Geez you’re thick Koltai… WTF (that’s a Why and not a What) would any young couple setting up house even think of poisoning their lives with 22 minutes of hardcore advertising per hour, (and having to pay for it) when all of that free content is available on the Internet?
Oh you mean all that illegal P2P stuff?
No, actually, that is growing less relevant by the minute. I’m talking about social interaction through games.
Hang on – you said they had to pay for it. They don’t have to pay for Digital TV. It’s free.
Oh yeah? Have you priced the cost of a set-top box, a digital antenna, the signal booster and the installation guy lately? Plus of course with all that new content being delivered in 1080P it looks awful on a standard definition TV so ya have to spring for a new plasma screen. So all up, the cost to the new household of free TV is about $1500 (or three years Foxtel subscription on the $438 minimum per month plan).
That’s ok Koltai, we’re going to have a couple of kids and the Government will pay for our new plasma with the baby bonus. For 10 grand I can get a 60 inch LCD with 5-1 surround sound.
Oh good.
So next week we’ll talk about the media companies turning
On the weekend we will discuss where Australian Advertisers should spend their money to advertise to maximize bang for buck.
Some User Comments on the Introduction of Digital TV in
- I have been using a cheap SD box for years without issue, it was just plug and play. Even with an indoor antenna it was great & external it was perfect….. but with the extra channels and HD coming online I decided to upgrade to a HD box. I expected it to be better than the SD. How wrong I was… the first day i set it up all was good… next day I had pixellating & no signal messages for CH10. Moved the cable and it came back but I lost CH9. For the last week I have had no CH9 no big deal as if I had to pick a channel to lose it would be CH9 as I mainly watch 10, SBS, ABC & sometimes 7.
Tonight I lost it as CH10 started to pixelate right in the middle of a show. Pulled out the neatly set up HD box out of the cabinet and re set in up in a higher position and I now have full channels after 10 minutes of stuffing around although I don’t expect it to last long. Its annoying the place that I have put it as it’s difficult to use the remote and has the red, white & yellow cords hanging over the front of the unit away from the external aerial coax.
Long story short, the HD box seems to be overly sensitive to it’s location & the slightest movement of the cables or HD box can cause pixelation or complete channel loss whereas the SD box just worked perfectly where ever it was located.
- I can only get 7 and SBS of the
- All my viewing is ABC iView and channel BT so I don’t really care at all about the changeover. But my mum and my girlfriend both have digital and it looks and works great. We’re hardly in rural areas, though.
This is definitely something that needs to be fixed. Because people in rural areas don’t have access to good internet either, so they don’t have my option of ignoring this.
References:
2009 Digital Future Report (Summary Highlights)
http://www.digitalcenter.org/pdf/2009_Digital_Future_Project_Release_Highlights.pdf
2009 Digital Future Report (Full Report – Purchase Option)
http://store.digitalcenter.org
Is digital television a boon or a disaster?
By Angus Kidman http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2008/08/is_digital_television_a_boon_or_a_disaster/
