Sky News: We beat ABC News 24 for tsunami audience
Sky News has joined the debate over TV coverage of the Japanese tsunami disaster, claiming that it won the audience battle with ABC News 24 in homes that had pay TV available.
Sky News’ comments came after ABC News 24 pointed out that on Friday night it was for the first time the most watched free to air digital channel with a 3.4% free TV audience share. ABC News 24’s top rating programme averaged 162,000 viewers to Sky News’ 114,000.
In a press release issued this afternoon, Sky News did not name its publicly funded rival ABC News 24, instead referring to it variously as “Australia’s Free-To-Air produced 24 hour news service”, “the FTA produced news channel” and “the other channel”.
The Sky News release said: “Where viewers could choose between Sky News and Australia’s Free-To-Air produced 24 hour news service, Sky News won a share of viewing up to 6.5 times greater than the other channel. And those who chose Sky News watched for almost twice as long as those who watched the FTA channel.”
The release continued: “In subscription TV homes on Saturday March 12, the Sky News National channel won a 5.2% share of viewing. The FTA produced news channel had a 0.8% share.”
Sky News also said that at certain times it had a bigger audience in all capital city homes, not just those who receive pay TV. It said: “In all metropolitan TV homes… Sky News on Saturday had a greater average audience than the FTA news channel during four separate hours. For example, from 9am-10am on Saturday, Sky News had an audience of 92,000 viewers compared with 86,700 for the other channel.”
Sky News’ comment’s came after criticism of ABC News 24’s decision to run some scheduled archived content rather than switching to rolling news coverage of the disaster.
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I have Foxtel and much prefer ABC News 24 over Sky News. Now all we need is for ABC News 24 to be picked up internationally so one can view it from hotel rooms around the world.
The intellectual quality of Sky news in comparison to ABC News 24 is undeniably different. ABC is (supposedly) independent and Sky is well… FOX.
Will
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Another technical point, and reason why SKY will often do better than ABC24 is the huge portion of FOXTEL homes that are NOT HD. I have an SD IQ box but it doesn’t allow me to watch ABC24 as it’s a HD channel. Same problem as the digital tv audience that has SD boxes, however I’d argue the portion of HD BOXES on FOXTEL Is much much lower than for HD Digital Tv boxes,
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Big fish, small pond.
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I do not subscribe to Foxtel, but I would have thought I too would have watched the service I was paying for over the free service. Either that or consider it as another reason to unplug my Foxtel service.
I just can’t work out why Sky News is gloating here…someone tell me who is David and who is Goliath?
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Are SNA counting only homes with Foxtel HD choosing between ABC News 24 and Sky News, or any home with Foxtel? Because the vast majority of Foxtel subscribers won’t be on HD and so can’t access ABC News 24 through their STB… seems difficult to draw valid comparisons.
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ABC AND SKY NEWS……….go tell those effected in Japan that you’re fighting over ratings, thank the people for their lost. It just shows that media don’t view human lives, they just see ratings. Let’s hope the nuclear reactors blow up there be some more ratings for ya both.
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For me, on Friday when it had good full coverage on I watched ABC News 24, either via the FTA channel or the foxtel broadcast on 202… I did flip at times between that, Sky, and BBC World, but mostly on ABC.
However on the weekend, when the archive replays started, then I was spending more time on Sky and BBC. In general I much prefer ABC’s coverage to Sky, but only when it is actually current and live
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Arguing over who won 3% of the viewers in a nation of 20 million people is like talking about who watched community television in a city of 20 million people like New York. It’s pathetic.
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That’s a fair point to make, Anonymous. That’s my situation exactly. As a non-HD Foxtel subscriber, ABC News 24 is unavailable to me at home (except via online streaming) as it’s not worth my while to buy a Freeview box as that is the only FTA channel unavailable via my IQ.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I’m sorry but putting out releases about ratings and share and trying to capitalise and get publicity off the back of such a major disaster is utterly shameful
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This is revolting.
Nice one Sky News, you’re #1 in heartlessness.
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Tim, don’t you also miss out on the other HD FTA channels like Gem and ONE HD?
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We had the telly on Sky News last night for a few minutes. I was alarmed to hear that “Japan seems to be losing control of this situation” and that “Japanese tourism has already been affected”. Good grief. If they could only transmit on FTA they’d be able to rival the size (and quality) of the Today Tonight and A Current Affair audiences – putting a dramatic spin on the bleedin obvious. Think I’ll stick with BBC and ABC for informed opinion.
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Hi John,
They are also retransmitted (presumably at an additional fee) on the SD channels, so they are available to non HD subscribers such as myself
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
If ABC24 is so great, why does it need to be taxpayer-funded?
Why can’t those of you who love it, pay for it, and those of us who would prefer to spend our money on Sky be allowed to do that?
For those of you who hate Sky, how would you feel if part of your every paycheque got deducted automatically and sent to SKY whether you watched it or liked it, or not?
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And what about the people who can’t afford Sky but want to have good access to news? Are they to suffer because Mike doesn’t want to contribute any of his pay check to the government to produce content available to all.
What about when the commercial provider goes bankrupt? Who runs the service then.
Australia’s social system works in a way where everyone contributes a certain part of their wage through taxes to a huge system of social welfare, healthcare, support and benefits and everyone takes what they need from the system as they need it.
True?
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