Australians binge more and watch less live sports and news
Details
Joseph O'Halloran
| 14 August 2017

There is much in how Australian TV consumers are behaving that is positive for the media industry with more online video consumption, says Deloitte’s 2017 media consumer survey.

Fundamentally, Australians are increasingly combining multiple sources to get more of the content they want, and when they want it, said Kimberly Chang, Deloitte technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) leader. “Not only is watching TV and video content on any device the preferred entertainment activity for 59% of Australians (alongside browsing the internet), we are also watching more videos or TV show content each week than ever before and we are binge watching for longer,” she said.

The report shows Australia is seeing a general in TV-type content viewing with consumers watching content in very different ways, particularly through subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services such as Netflix and local regional rival Stan. Overall, Australians are watching an average of 17.5 hours of content per week in 2017, compared with 17.2 hours in 2015. Of all age groups, those over 50 have increased their viewing the most by 1.3 and 1.7 additional hours per week respectively.

Half of respondents now own IP-enabled TVs, and ownership of over-the-top boxes and portable streaming devices is at 26% and 17% respectively. SVOD subscriptions have increased since 2016, up ten percentage points to 32%, surpassing pay-TV subscriptions for the first time. Nearly a third of SVOD subscribers access multiple services to get the right content, up from just 18% in 2016. The majority (59%) of survey respondents are binging by watching three or more consecutive TV episodes in a single sitting. Nearly three-tenths of respondents do so weekly, and the average length of a binge session has increased from five to six episodes in the past year, totalling 4.5 hours.

Looking at business that such demand drives, after word of mouth and its digital equivalent, advertisements have the greatest influence on advertising decisions with 53% reporting high or medium influence. Most survey respondents will skip an ad playing before a video (77%), and half (50%) will abandon a short video completely if they cannot skip the pre-roll ad. A third use ad blocking technology to avoid ads altogether.

But despite this increased demand, Deloitte Consulting Media leader and co-author of the Deloitte 2017 media consumer survey Niki Alcorn warned that the data showed early warning signals for commercial broadcasters around changing consumer patterns in watching live sports and news. Fewer than half of 2017 survey respondents indicated they most often watch the news at the time of broadcast, compared with 63% in 2015, and just fewer than a third of survey respondents most often watch sport at the time of broadcast compared to 38% in 2015.

“News and sport are still what we watch most often live at the time of broadcast, but both have declined markedly over the past two years,” she noted. “Some of the change might be attributed to the growing awareness of so-called fake news: 58% of respondents agree that they have changed the way they access news material online given the prevalence of fake news.”