Free To Air Audience’s Slowly Dropping

26Jun07

by David Dale, Sydney Morning Herald

Yes, television as we know it is a dying medium. But the death throes are so gradual that we won’t see its burial in our lifetime.

This column has just come into possession of figures that let us offer a progress report on the slow shrinkage of Australia’s most massive medium.

In 2003, an average of 3.795 million people in the mainland capitals were watching Seven, Nine, Ten, ABC or SBS between 6pm and midnight every night. This year, an average of 3.506 million are watching prime time television on any night.

That decline has been masked by the battle between Seven and Nine and the apparent resurgence of the ABC. In 2003, Seven was averaging 972,000 viewers in prime time. Now it’s averaging 1.025 million, while Nine has dropped from 1.180 million to 958,000. The ABC looks to be going through boom times because of the success of Spicks and Specks and The Chaser’s War on Everything, but in reality it has dropped from 593,000 in 2003 to 566,000 now.

The table below shows the full story.

So here’s the situation: Since 2003, while the population of Australia rose by one million, the number of regular viewers of free-to-air television in the mainland capitals dropped by 289,000.

What, you are bound to ask, are those people doing instead?

Watching DVDs? Definitely. In 2003, Australians bought 30.8 million DVDs. In 2006, they bought 63.6 million.

Going to the cinema? Apparently not. In 2003, we bought 89.8 million tickets to the flicks. In 2006, we bought 83.6 million. The movies may be passing through a brief blockbuster-led recovery at the moment, but after these school hols, it’ll be back to the doldrums for the movie distributors.

Surfing the net? Definitely. The Bureau of Statistics reports that in 2003, Australia had 5.08 million active subscribers to the web (of whom less than 10 per cent had a "non-dialup” system), while in the first quarter of this year there were 6.43 million (of whom two thirds used broadband). Most Australians are now in a position to bypass the commercial stations and illegally download American TV shows before they are shown here.

Playing video games? Definitely. GfK Marketing reports that in 2003, Australians spent $751 million on games software, while in 2006 they spent $925 million (mostly PlayStation 2 stuff).

Watching more Pay TV? Yes, but not enough to counterbalance the losses of free TV. In 2003, an average of 410,000 people in the mainland capitals watched subscription TV in prime time, while now, Pay’s average audience is 672,000.

Reading more books? Hard to tell. The latest available figure on total book sales in Australia, provided by the Bureau of Statistics, was 79.9 million volumes in the financial year 2003-2004. Having nothing more recent to compare, we must leave this question for a future column. It’s nice to live in hope.

Average audience in the mainland capitals, 6pm to midnight

Station ……     2003 …..     2004 …….     2005 …….     2006 …….     2007*

ABC ……..     593,694 ..     636,971 ..     586,916 ..     563,251 …     566,203

SBS ……..     172,095 ..     172,593 ..     226,957 ..     196,857 …     196,309

Seven …..     971,793 .       934,046 .     1,007,591 .     1,018,416 .     1,025,021

Nine …..       1,179,758 .   1,126,743 .     1,088,735 .     1,068,199 .    957,999

Ten ………     877,796 ..     893,997 ..     811,727 …     815,807 …     760,531

All FTA .       3,795,137 .    3,764,350 .    3,721,925 .     3,662,531 .   3,506,062

All Pay ….     409,524 ..     416,963 ..     509,929 ..     592,122 …       671,922

* 2007 averages are over weeks 7 to 24. Others are over weeks 7-48.

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