Australia’s actual TV viewing habits remain cloudy
Australians are either sticking with free-to-air TV or switching to subscription services in droves, depending on which organisation’s figures are being used.
Over the weekend, two reports exploring the state of Australia’s TV viewing habits were released, each telling completely different stories.
Oztam’s new Streamscape report is a quarterly state of the union that promises “the first unified picture of how Australians watch video content across all major platforms”.
However, it only gathers data from television sets — connected and traditional — neglecting the large swathes of the population that view content on computers, tablets, and mobile devices. In addition, Oztam’s reporting only collects data through streaming TV meters and in-home measurement boxes from panel homes, as well as from BVOD data.
This collection method naturally skews towards linear and BVOD viewing habits, and this is borne out in the results, which claim that over 60% of all TV viewing in Australia happens through free-to-air broadcast television. An addition 8% are viewing these same free-to-air channels via BVOD, meaning that just over 30% of viewing happens through digital streaming services.
According to Oztam, the overseas streamers are severely lagging behind. Netflix has captured just 8.5% of the market, despite having an estimated estimated 6.2 million subscribers in Australia. Youtube, by far the world’s biggest video platform, commands just 7.9% of Australian viewing, according to Oztam.
Disney+ has approximately 3.1 million subscribers in Australia, but makes up just 2.5% of all viewing, while Amazon’s Prime Video is faring even worse – with just 2%.
ASTRA, the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association, has also released a report, which focuses largely on the economic contribution of subscription services to Australia, but also includes viewership statistics.
The report delves into the 2024 financial year, making the data set over a year old, however it shares insights from Australian Communications and Media Authority (AMCA) that suggest the trend is — shock, horror — moving away from linear TV viewership.
The ACMA data shows that viewership of free-to-air TV in any given week has declined from 71% of the population in 2017 to just 46% in 2024. On the flipside, 91% of Australians now watch online video content in a given week, with viewership of paid subscription services up from less than a third of the population in 2017, to 69% in 2024.
Viewing behaviour by media platform, 2017-2024
The average number of services used continues to rise, from 3.6 in 2023 to 4.3 in 2024, with the shift online being largely driven by those aged 35 years and over, according to ACMA.
Subscription TV and streaming viewership by age bracket, June 2024
According to the ASTRA report, the most popular online video services used by people aged 35 years and above were, in order: YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+.
As ASTRA noted in its report: “Australians have continued to shift away from traditional linear TV services to paid and free video streaming services, such as ABC iView, YouTube, Kayo Sports, Netflix and Disney Plus.”
The two reports may soon present a more unified outlook. Despite Streamscape currently only using data from television sets, Oztam’s website promises that reporting from “all other connected devices (computer, tablet and smartphones)” will “follow soon”.
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