Streem releases state of the media survey summarising media industry trends
Realtime media monitoring provider Streem has today released its State of Australian Media Report for August 2022, exploring ten key media industry trends from 2022 so far.
Investigating issues such as the impact of the new federal government on the media industry, slowing growth in advertising spend, potential industry consolidation, and more, the report is a must-read for communications and corporate affairs professionals in Australia.
Streem’s communications lead, Jack McLintock, said: “2022 has been a substantial year for the Australian media industry so far, with the change in government and global headwinds rapidly altering the media environment. With major issues including broadcast rights for leading sports and a review into the News Media Bargaining Code still yet to come this year, the Report is designed to best-position comms professionals to stay ahead of the curve.”
Some of the key insights from the report included, social media establishing itself as a predictor ahead of traditional media, as demonstrated at the 2022 Federal Election, the changing news consumption patterns of Australians, including their platform of choice and their trust in the news; and, consumption of SVOD content in Australia relative to global subscription video trends.
For the first time in its history, Netflix has lost subscribers, with a slowing of subscriber growth also experienced by Disney+ and other streaming services around the globe.
The report cited previous data released that in Australia, slowing subscriber growth hasn’t translated into declining audience share. A recent report from ACMA highlighted that for the first time, more Australians were watching SVOD services than free-to-air television, a key tipping point in how audiences watch content.
Crucially, the drop in free-to-air TV audiences is faster than the growth of SVOD services and is not being made up by the growth of BVOD services.
The report also shared that Australia’s radio landscape has largely remained unchanged in recent times. Radio ratings surveys have tended to confirm existing trends and patterns, with a considerable amount of stability compared to television ratings.
Beyond exploring the changes to traditional media, the 2022 Digital News Report also delved into the prevalence of social media as a news source. 31% of respondents identified Facebook as a source they used for news, with 19% saying they used YouTube to source news, followed by Instagram on 11%. Considering that no online news publication got within 5% of Facebook as a news source, it is clear that social media is a significant driver of how people are consuming news.
In fact, according to the media monitoring platform, Streem’s own data supports the idea that social media is now more predictive than traditional news sources. Analysis of media coverage and social media discussion during the 2022 Federal Election showed that the topics and issues being discussed on social media were considerably more predictive of the issues influencing voters than those being discussed in traditional media.
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