The revolution is here – so why isn’t it being televised?
TV networks need to stop treating viewers like second class citizens and deliver some basic services or risk slipping into obsurity, argues Alex Hayes.
I joined the 21st Century on Sunday and bought my first flat screen TV. It’s a 40-inch smart TV, with full HD of course, that’s standard. Now all I need to find is something to watch on it.
Since getting it I’ve noticed just how poor standard definition TV broadcasts are. I’ll be honest, I never really thought HD would make a difference to my viewing experience, but it most definitely does.
Before I would have had very little sympathy for someone like Josh Rowe who has been campaigning for years to get the AFL grand final broadcast in HD by Seven, but suddenly I see his point. Millions of Aussie homes have these shiny, sleek TVs capable of high quality pictures, and the biggest broadcaster in the land can’t get its act together to make the most of the available tools.
Of course, it’s expensive to upgrade the equipment, and Seven has admitted it produces its AFL coverage for its primary channel in standard definition.
And Nine is no better, telling us today it is not sure if it will broadcast the NRL grand final in HD next Saturday. After all, they’ve only had six months to think about it this season, and it’s only one of Nine’s highest rating programs of the year. Indeed when they retained the rights David Gyngell even promised in 2014 that the NRL would be broadcast in HD from this year. We’re still waiting.
More infuriatingly for fans, they still put a delay on their “live” broadcast matches, and cram them so full of ads they take more than two hours to air. In the days of social media, where armchair fans are sitting on the sofa with a smartphone in hand following live scores from mates at the game, the teams themselves, or just a news site with live updates, there is now a situation where they know a try has been scored minutes before it’s shown on TV.
Telstra is also piping highlights to its subscribers as they happen on their mobiles, so how is Nine offering fans the best possible viewing experience?
Ironically in one shop I went into whilst looking for my TV there were special offers on some TVs marked as “Footy Finals specials”. Why not buy an HD TV for those SD quality broadcasts? A 2011 Newspoll study found that 78 per cent of people looking to upgrade their TVs though HD picture quality was “very or extremely important”. That’s 78 per cent of people who have been left sorely disappointed for three years.
An interesting piece popped up on TV Tonight earlier today looking at why primary channels aren’t broadcast in HD, and it’s a simple subsection of some regulation preventing it. That could be abolished at the stroke of a pen, and is another example of antiquated regulation of the media.
Even so, there’s nothing stopping Seven or Nine simulcasting the finals in HD on their multichannels except expense, and fears they might fragment their audience. For once they might want to look at rivals Ten, which has been broadcasting Family Feud across all its channels as a simulcast, with the same ads, and getting ratings provider OzTam to provide one number for the broadcast. Yes, even Family Feud is on an HD channel.
Ten has at least dabbled with the Winter Olympics, simulcasting some events on its digital channel One. We’ll wait and see if they repeat that experiment with the Big Bash cricket, or next year’s V8 Supercars, its real marquee sports codes.
Foxtel of course offers the choice to watch shows in HD, but having to pay an extra $10-a-month for the privilege after spending money upgrading my tele seems a bit of a rort. They will have an HD replay of the grand final on Fox Footy on Saturday evening, although for fans of one of the teams, that’s not going to be an appealing prospect.
I understand Seven, Nine and Fox Sports all need to maximise the revenues they get around these matches having forked out a $2bn between them for these rights. That means getting as many viewers to sit through as many sponsor messages and ads as they can.
The problem is, the more ads they cram in, the more they risk testing viewers’ patience. Suddenly the vaunted ‘halo effect’ of promoting their other shows during these large audience events, is under threat as people tune out, or find their good will for the broadcasters tested.
More than that the free-to-air networks have been lobbying for changes to laws which would see them allowed to put more ads in prime time shows. Given a recent survey we did found around a third of major prime-time shows is ad breaks anyway, that’s probably not the best way to pick up more viewers, and at best a band-aid on an increasingly deepening wound. Having any adverts on pay-TV is still a bone of contention for some subscribers.
Our traditional TV broadcasters know they’re locked in a fight to the death for viewers at the moment, as more people turn to video streaming through legitimate, and not so legitimate, means. Privately they acknowledge audiences aren’t anywhere near where they were, with 700,000 viewers the new million. That’s not going to get easier as internet-based upstarts like Netflix, Quickflix and Hulu pursue more content deals, more aggressively.
If you think the media world is fragmented now, just wait to see how it looks in a couple of year’s time, when all these services sit side-by-side on your connected TV.
While these kind of services might have a lot of choice and offer content on demand, they’re not streaming in HD and they certainly don’t have live rights for premium sports, yet, so there could be a major point of difference immediately.
And Aussie broadcasters are jumping on board with their own offerings, like Nine’s Streamco partnership with Fairfax. So there’s even more of a scramble for TV rights than there was, especially for the big US dramas, which have proved so appealing in recent years. And worryingly for our broadcasters even the shiny floor talent shows and reality fare aren’t anywhere near as attractive to viewers as they once were, with numbers for shows like X Factor, Big Brother and Biggest Loser all down on last year.
While we’d all love to see more high quality local drama, like the ABC’s promising looking series The Code, I fear that’s unlikely, with high production costs and limited runs making them harder to make a good return on. At least, hopefully, we’ll see the end of staggering the broadcast of blockbuster international shows, although it’s interesting to note Downton Abbey is back on in the UK, but shows no signs of returning yet on Seven.
There are a lot of well documented threats for these broadcasters, but they’ve not made things easy for themselves by doing the basics a lot of their counterparts around the world have, and treating Aussie viewers like second class citizens too often.
The next two months sees the annual upfront presentations where all the networks give their best sales pitches for their upcoming shows to media buyers, attempting to persuade them to spend more money with them. I hope this year, rather than concentrating solely on the content, they have a long, hard look at the user experience for the viewers. After all, happy viewers makes for happier advertisers.
There might not be an obvious business case for it, but today people expect better service than ever before. It’s time for our TV networks to step up to the plate and start delivering for the people who will make or break their fortunes.
Alex Hayes is editor of Mumbrella.
The root of all problems for Australian media…
Foxtel of course offers the choice to watch shows in HD, but having to pay an extra $10-a-month for the privilege after spending money upgrading my tele seems a bit of a rort
….everybody wants everything but is not willing to pay for it.
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Although you claim that it’s the recent invention of social media, etc that has led to “there .. now (being) a situation where they know a try has been scored minutes before it’s shown on TV” , in my house the situation has always been that way. I have a device called a wireless (which you younger people might recognise as a radio) which has told me instantly when a try/goal/point is scored at these big events for many decades now.
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Fox HD is 1080 interlaced, not true HD. That said it’s better than SD.
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Given that for increasing numbers of people, live sport is the only reason to bother plugging the aerial into the TV, you would think they’d want to p*ss those people off as little as possible. Evidently not though.
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@fraser
“everybody wants everything but is not willing to pay for it.”
The Foxtel box manufacturers says 99% of Foxtel content is filmed in HD but then downgraded to SD for broadcast. Foxtel dumb down the quality of the content in order to rort another $10 out of you.
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Excellent article, Alex. Thanks for expounding the views of thousands. But will TV executives listen, or they will continue their arrogant approach? Personally I am looking for alternatives to free-to-air TV whilst they play their ‘damned or be damned’ game.
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Stream of consciousness from an FTV programmer:
More ads, less expensive broadcasts, more ads…more ads…more ads……oh hey why is it that no one watches us anymore. What’s this piracy I keep hearing about? Where did the audience go? Why did they leave us? ….I dunno let’s run more ads.
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Good point weasel I’d overlooked that. I guess my point is that for fans it’s harder to avoid the live score now than ever before – whether you want to or not.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
The point is well made but there are two other important points in this discussion –
1. Why is the AFL and NRL happy to have SD masters as their archive of these important historical events that they intend to sell as keepsakes to fans and have to download and replay in future years? No other producer of content today asks for an SD master? Why don’t they insist that at the very least, the big games be made in HD?
2. Why are advertisers paying for all their ads to be finished in HD then paying a massive premium for time in these broadcasts, only to see them run in SD?
We are talking about a very big difference in quality here – HD is 1920 x 1080 and SD is 1024 x 576.
2.1 megapixels v 0.6 megapixels. Or 71% lower quality!
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I did a double take too at the $10 more per month. I actually thought, if that’s all it is then I might get it. But it says on the brochure it’s $74 per month to get FoxSports. almost $900 per year. Quite a difference.
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In order to be replayed in high definition, it needs to be produced in high definition.
Channel 7 aren’t being completely honest if they’re telling you they produce the broadcast only for their SD channel. All networks, and external suppliers like Global Television, have spent the last 15 or so years replacing all their Standard Definition equipment for HD capable gear – the same gear being used on Saturday’s Grand Final coverage.
If Foxtel are able to screen a replay in HD, then the original broadcast must have been produced in HD (unless of course they are duplicating 7’s broadcast with their own cameras – I’m not across their arrangement so it’s possible but I doubt it).
NSW and Qld get to watch live regular-season AFL on 7’s secondary channel 7Mate as the ratings aren’t deemed strong enough for broadcast on their main channel. Similarly, Nine show live NRL on GEM in Victoria. Both channels are HD, so ironically, fans of either code have to travel to regions where their chosen sport isn’t as popular to watch games in HD – a stupid, stupid situation.
For 7 and 9, broadcasting their Grand Finals in HD is a simple as flicking a switch.
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i would expect the major television networks are monitoring the downfall of print media with considerable alarm…however they are not learning any lessons.
the newspapers are trying to hang on in an online world by offering lower quality content, with less funding, and less full time employees, and more advertising and data collection. it isn’t working and consumers simpy aren’t paying!
the same challenges face the current tv industry. if media bosses take the same approach and try to lowball their customers, the same result is guaranteed. the only solution is to invest, to listen to your customers, and to provide desired services that can’t be missed or ignored or called into question.
(by the way Alex, i like the Gil Scott Heron ref in the title, good form.)
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Why is everyone so cheap? Fox Sports doesn’t just show sport in HD, it treats viewers with respect: NEVER interrupting live play with ads, hiring intelligent people to commentate and showing a huge amount of content live, along with replays in prime time. Seven, Nine and Ten treat viewers with unabashed contempt, best exemplified by the abysmal coverage of the F1 this season, in which Ten shows races in SD with moronic Australian presenters and then takes ads every time it looks like Dan Ric is about to overtake someone.
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“Of course, it’s expensive to upgrade the equipment….”
Alex that is bollocks – every company involved in producing video content upgraded equipment years ago. HD has been built into every piece of equipment for the past decade if not longer – not sure if you can even buy SD stuff anymore. From cameras to OB trucks, everything in the chain is HD capable. And no-one gets an HD ‘allowance’ ha ha ha so there is no costs/upgrades involved.
Simon is absolutely right saying “The Foxtel box manufacturers says 99% of Foxtel content is filmed in HD but then downgraded to SD for broadcast. Foxtel dumb down the quality of the content in order to rort another $10 out of you.”
Worldwide almost every bit of video content intended for broadcast is shot and distributed in HD and buyers convert it to whatever format they want to use.
If Alex gets Foxtel his shiny new set will also reveal the appalling picture quality of some content. The biggest sports event or blockbuster movie screens with the least compression while other channels and material suffer. Have a look at any fast action on screen such as sports replays when the images are so degraded you can’t distinguish details such as player’s faces – just blurry blotches.
Sadly the vast majority of people who connect their screens to Foxtel watch everything through Foxtel. They forget they can often get much better quality pictures for free to air networks by switching over to their screens built-in TV turner that uses the normal home aerial connection. This can be a major revelation when Foxtel outages force people to flick back to free to air. Some installers remove the ‘old’ aerial which prevents the comparison.
Competing services ARE available in HD and lots of people like watching their movies in Blu-Ray format as well. It seems stupid for the embattled broadcasters to make their poor image quality a major point of difference between themselves and the growing competition.
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Yeah the F1 coverage is a bit dire, Rusty is a bit dusty and AJ is a bit senile (though mildly amusing at times). They should just take the whole SKY feed and be done with it.
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… forgot to mention that the hot new format buzzword is 4k ie 4 x HD resolution.
YouTube and Vimeo support it, the new Gopro Hero 4 can shoot it and you can easily buy a 4k screen today at your local mall.
So you can point your Gopro at anything and play it back at home, all at 4K and the not-so future step is 8k – but here we are, still waiting for local broadcasters to transmit in proper HD.
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“Of course, it’s expensive to upgrade the equipment”
HDTV is not ground breaking new technology. It dates back to the last century. If broadcasters and/or their contractors do not have HD equipment in 2014 then they’ve been doing it wrong.
Keep in mind too that the commercial networks have been recipients of generous licence rebates from past and present federal governments. So what are they delivering with that extra money floating around?
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Lets get one thing straight. The replay of the grand final that fox footy will show tomorrow night IS NOT in HD. It will be the SD coverage from ch7 UPSCALED
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When you get them to fix this, can you then start on their timekeeping. I’m sure no TV station owns a clock or a timer of some sort.
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“While these kind of services might have a lot of choice and offer content on demand, they’re not streaming in HD and they certainly don’t have live rights for premium sports, yet, so there could be a major point of difference immediately.”
Alex, Netflix streams in full 1080p HD and even supports 4K for some of their original content. Hulu and Amazon Instant are also HD. As for premium sports, PremierLeaguePass, NBA, MLB are all available subscription services (PLP requires SmartDNS but the others don’t) and stream in full HD.
Your article hit the nail on the head. These TV networks need to get with it NOW and start giving us HD because I know just by word of mouth that people are signing up to Netflix in their droves….
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The public are there to consume the advertising,being entertained is no longer on TV’s executives agenda. Ads,Ads,Ads,Ads, Golfer putts ball ,Ads ,Ads,Ads,Ads,Cricketer hits four, Ads,Ads,Ads,Ads
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Don’t forget that Channel 10 were producing and broadcasting AFL every week in 1080i HD way back as far as 2006 or so.
As has been stated, I’m pretty sure Channel 7 is acquiring and mixing the footy in HD. They’re just choosing not to broadcast it that way.
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Adam – didn’t realise that as I don’t have foxtel, but if thats the case the Foxtel sports fans are really getting ripped off as HD is a big part of their advertising.
The equipment used to capture the game is all HD compatible. Seven has been broadcasting games all year into NSW and Qld in HD on 7Mate so why would they swap all the gear out for SD now? It doesn’t make sense. 7s not being completely truthful.
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It’s not a cost problem it’s a decision that the FTA networks have made in consultation with the sports bodies so they can get the maximum amount out of Foxtel.
Next year V8 Supercar fans will only see races in SD and only 6 live.
Meanwhile we shoot all of our Community TV program “In Pit Lane” in 1080p only to have to downsize it to SD.
After next year we’ll have to downsize it to radio.
\
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“There are none so blind…”
When FTA becomes totally irrelevant, they will have nobody to plame but themselves.
Ironic (and prophetic) that Youtube offers higher technical quality then Aussie FTA.
It is true abut 4K. Producers had in the past had to decide when to commit to colour, to stereo, to widescreen, to HD. Now they are having to decide to commit to 4K and most are.
BTW Aussie SD is not always 1024×576, very often it is 720×576 with the pixels across the screen being stretched into rectangular shape. Anamorphic.
(of the TWO electronic portals for SD commercials, one accepts widescreen, the other is still unsqueezing anamorphic)
Who watches “data” channels like ‘Spree’ (?) which is continuous infomercials. Even TV4ME disguises its commercial content as advertorial.
And is it compulsory that the “stars” of infomertial have annoying voices? Who IS that guy with the swivel-sweeper?
FTA TV using “data” channels the way they do is no different to the newspapers deciding their salvation lies in selling papers with ads only. It isn’t.
Have the TV Bosses stopped to think of the effect their cross-promotion has on Advertisers? If we have paid for content on Gem, how happy are we to have some better content advertised for Nine during the content we’ve paid for? Who goes to a pub and announces there is better beer and a better crown in another pub? Would the Publican be happy? Really?
Is the irony lost when Brekkie shows play amusing internet content and feature newspaper headlines? Who cares what the Advertiser has on its front page?
Tools like Karl chortle at the “funny” interwebby like the bird sitting on the cuckoo eggs. He doesn’t get it.
Here’s a sobering thought: the big money years ago was SHEET MUSIC – Composers resorted to hiring singers to plug their songs. Punters bought the sheet music to play at home. Since then there came radio, gramaphones, CDs, Walkmans, iPods, iPads, phones, iTunes, internet streaming. However, sheet music isn’t dead, there is still a shop in Sydney that sells it. Just not very much these days.
And so, we can say FTA ain’t dead. Just as truthfully as the man without a parachute can claim to be alive… all the way to the ground.
In 1956 they feared (or hoped) TV would just be “a fad”. In the 70s we laughed at that. Right now, it might just prove to be right.
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Oh, and one more thing.
If the Networks ignore sport other than footy, how can they whinge when the footy codes demand big money. “It’s not like it’s the only game in town… oh wait, it is”
If they spent a fraction of time building other sports… oh never mind.
(Channel Nine has an AFL Marathon today. All day. Melbournians are all a-twitter because some player used to play for a different team. Sydneysiders are assumed to be equally excited. As we say, a big punt. Tomorrow will no doubt analyse all the games all day.)
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It’s simple. They want to get rid of free to air television and make the public pay for anything they watch.
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