Younger audiences continue shift away from broadcast TV shows multi-screen report
The latest edition of Australia’s multi-screen report for the second quarter of 2016 shows TV viewing amongst younger audiences is continuing to decline, while people over 40 are becoming increasingly glued to their TVs.
Today’s report shows the percentage of people being reached overall is dropping, with the report for the second quarter of 2015 reporting reach at 88.3%, and the current report at 88.1%.
Changes to the report’s methodology, specifically the new 28 day consolidated ratings being used this year compared to seven day data last year, suggests the number of people watching TV in terms of like-for-like is likely to be 1.8% lower this year.
The results showed a weekly average cumulative reach of 20.67m people, based on those who have watched it for at least one minute.
The hardest hit demographic is the advertiser friendly 25-39 bracket, which plummets from 84.2% reach last year to 81.8% this year.
The extended playback period appears to show older people are more likely to timeshift after the first week of broadcast, with each demographic over the age of 40 picking up.
While tablet and smartphone penetration have stayed stable year-on-year, up 2% each to 49% and 81% respectively, the number of internet capable TV sets has risen 6% to 36% of households.
Craig Johnson, managing director of media, Nielsen said: “With more and more devices in use within our homes, household viewing habits are evolving and expanding, offering more media touch points than ever before.”
Despite the gradual increase of other device penetration, the TV set makes up 86.4% of Australia’s total screen viewing time, within 28 days of an original broadcast. This is significantly higher than connected devices which account for 13.6% of viewing time.
However Australians are increasingly watching video online, with 23.5m viewers spending an average of 7hrs 37 minutes per month.
The 18-24s demographic are most likely to watch video on the internet, claiming 21 hrs 52 minutes per viewer per month online, watching both broadcast and non-broadcast content.
Doug Peiffer, OzTAM CEO, said: “The latest Multi-Screen Report shows people using their various screens to catch up with TV content at all times of the day.
“While viewing on connected devices is currently a small proportion of overall viewing, this behaviour is gaining momentum and broadcasters are smart to make their content available across all screens.”
Kim Portrate, chief executive, Think TV said of the latest report: “The latest Multi-Screen Report provides fresh evidence that watching TV on the TV set remains far and away our favourite viewing pastime.”
I don’t wish to go all “Ritson” but does a 2.4 point drop, or less than 3% of the previous figures, really count as “plummeting”?
“The hardest hit demographic is the advertiser friendly 25-39 bracket, which plummets from 84.2% reach last year to 81.8% this year.”
It obviously highlights a trend and one that we should all try to adapt to, but at that rate it is likely to take several years to get close to a level where less than half of that group couldn’t be reached through TV.
Those of us who work in digital do ourselves no favours by trying to over-hype the decline of other mediums.
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Nicely done, response bias priming.
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SHOCK! 80% of teenagers watch broadcast TV every week. Digirati cry into keyboards.
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Come on Mark. Sic ’em!
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hmmm so what is the definition of a viewer… With “”23.5m viewers”” is more than the Australian population. Not by much but enough to raise an eyebrow
Still it could therefor indicates viewing time spent per unique is actually higher.
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Nick, I’m unsure which Australia you are referring to. The ABS has the Australian population at 24.2+m.
Having said that, the 23.5m watching online video is 97.1% … which seems above the odds.
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