Tim Burrowes at Mumbrella has just published a wrap of the year’s free-to-air television results. Perhaps the most interesting statistics though are those published by non-commercial broadcaster ABC regarding iView. Is this a strong indicator to the future of broadcasting???

Here’s the iView excerpt from Tim’s post:

….although the ABC officially doesn’t care about ratings, it released some helpful analysis today.

The most fascinating stuff is around the ABC’s iPlayer and video downloads , which doesn’t get picked up by OzTam.

ABC iView (which is streamed from the site) has had more than 6m views since April, with an average of about 600,000 visits to iView per month. Last month, there were 286,000 visitors and 1.054 million visits to ABC iView. That suggests that iView will have a massive impact next year.

And video downloads of ABC content have amounted to 7m.

Interesting also to see how important adland show The Gruen Transfer is to the ABC – the 1.3m the final episode of the second series pulled in on May 20 was ABC1’s fourth biggest audience of the year. The penultimate episode was also ABC2’s sixth biggest show with an audience of 138,000.

The Gruen Transfer recorded 258,000 vodcast downloads this year (across the series rather than per episode). It recorded 70,000 views via ABC iView and in April it was the most viewed program on iView.

Meanwhile journos’ favourite show (until they’re on it)  Media Watch achieved a series average of 736,000 this year, peaking at 936,000 on October 12.

Media Watch also recorded 149,000 views via ABC iView and 869,000 vodcast downloads (across the series).

Next year will be the one where the full impact is felt….

Source: The Newcastle Herald – James Joyce

Home-style cooking, home-made crimes and daggy old variety television were the flavours of the TV year in Newcastle and viewers can expect more of the same in 2010.

The official 2009 ratings survey finished at the weekend with NBN holding on to its crown as Newcastle’s No.1 station.

NBN’s nightly news bulletins, rugby league telecasts and crime drama Underbelly 2: A Tale of Two Cities made it a clear winner in its home market, capturing 32.9 per cent of prime-time viewers.

Two reunion episodes of Hey Hey It’s Saturday also boosted the Nine Network owned station. The Daryl Somers comeback shows drew more than 97,000 viewers each to most-watched programs.

But the hottest new show of the year was dished up by Southern Cross Ten. Kitchen contest MasterChef Australia helped make third-ranked Ten Newcastle’s most improved station in 2009, with a 20.3 per cent audience share (up 1.5 percentage points).

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Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

To mark the end of the “official” ratings year, the networks have started telling their tales. Amazingly, it seems that everybody won. Here’s a roundup of the stories so far …

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Source: smh.com.au / AAP

The Seven Network has won the TV ratings battle for the third year running, but Network Ten boasts the highest rating TV events of the year, thanks to MasterChef Australia and the AFL grand final.

With the official ratings period now wrapped up, Seven is the clear winner, scoring the highest audience share across the board, with or without its digital channels.

The networks disagree about using multi-channel figures, with Nine and Ten keen to use them but Seven not.

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After weeks of mystifying silence from regional broadcaster Prime regarding whether and when they would begin broadcasting the new digital channel 7TWO, Paul Ramsay has spoken. Unfortunately the answer was rather inconclusive.

Prime Television has given it’s first indication that the station is preparing to carry a second channel during the opening address by Chairman of Prime Media Group, Paul Ramsay at their Annual General Meeting yesterday.

Ramsay told attendees that Prime will be in a position to launch their second channel either by years end or early next year, after the completion of their infrastructure upgrade.  No indication was given to whether Prime would take 7Two as a whole service, or would create their own service.

Meanwhile, revenue for the television arm of Prime Media Group has dropped 3 percent in the last 12 months, but has fared better then other regional broadcasters, which according to Prime is thanks in part to the strength of programming supplied by the Seven Network.

Over at GetSticky I have posted 8 reasons to turn your marketing inbound in 2010.

Considering that Australian’s spend more time online than with any other media, should your organisation be marketing like its 1999 or should it be ensuring that inbound marketing is in the mix?

Tell me what you think??

I just love this little video. Its nothing to do with media, but plenty to do with marketing, focus and passion. We could all learn something from this guy. Highly recommended.

Hat tip to Australian Anthill, where I first came across the video.

 The Newcastle TV Ratings, week ending November 21

Note: These ratings results are compiled using the combined resources of SC TEN, NBN & Prime’s weekly AGB Nielsen Media Research reports.

All the stations ratings seem to stay on a constant plateau, except SC TEN. Why is that? What is this station doing right or wrong each week that it’s ratings are like a yo-yo?

NBN keeps a steady win in the 30′s, Prime a consecutive 2nd place around the 20′s, but what about SC TEN? This station, every week, keeps rising and falling around the high teens.

Where do you keep disappearing to SC TEN?

Check out who made the Top Ten Most Watched Programs for last week.  Read the rest of this entry »

The National TV Ratings
Week ending November 21
Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

Channel Seven consolidated its victory for the year, averaging 30.0 per cent of the prime time audience last week (a figure that includes the audience for 7TWO). Nine and GO drew 27.4, Ten and ONE 20.1, ABC1&2 17.1 and SBS1&2 5.4. Go below to see what women watched last week.

Pay TV boosted its share of viewing last week, apparently because the free to air stations seem to have declared the silly season two weeks early. This was Pay’s account of itself: “The ‘Tiger Woods show’ topped the week with FOX Sport’s coverage of Live: Golf: JBWere Masters drawing 152,000 viewers. In other sport, Rugby League: Four Nations was watched by 88,000 people, Live: Football: A-League Bris v Melb had 73,000 viewers and Live: Cricket: Ford Ranger Cup was seen by 69,000 people. Finally, in the early hours of Sunday morning, 63,000 dedicated fans watched the Socceroos beat Oman in Live: Football: AFC Asian Cup Qualifier Oman v Aust (all on FOX Sports).

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by David Dale

AUSTRALIA has made an enormous evolutionary leap over the past ten years, and we should be proud of the way we’ve matured into sophisticated, discerning consumers.

That’s one theory, anyway. Cleaning out a mouldy filing cabinet last weekend, I came across a way to test if the claim is true — a fat document, sent out to journalists exactly ten years ago, with these words on the cover: “RATINGS REPORT – NINE SHINES IN 1999″. It’s Channel Nine’s 60 page analysis of trends in television at the end of the 90s. I can say with absolute confidence that Nine will not be sending out a report anything like it this year.

Since we’re only a week away from the end of the 2009 ratings period, it’s possible to find some illuminating differences between the way we were and the way we are. Check out these ratings charts, and see if you agree with the comparisons I make afterwards…

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