★★★★★ 0/5

Survey: The Audience Inventory

Should shows start on time? Should we overhaul Classifications? Are credits important? TV Tonight wants your opinion on the big issues.

29
Leave a comment

watch-televisionAt the moment television is undergoing lots of navel-gazing.

Free TV Australia wants to know your thoughts on the Code of Practice. The Rudd Government is asking for feedback on the Anti-Siphoning sports list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority is looking at Privacy, and has just completed a lengthy look at Current Affairs shows.

So it’s time to see what TV Tonight viewers think about some of the big issues in television too…

Are you unhappy with shows starting late? Which network is the worst offender? Which one finds ways to reschedule shows it cancels? Should we overhaul the Classifications? Should Pay TV have more HD channels? Are credits at the end of a show important? Do you have TiVo or IQ2?

All this and more is up for discussion in The Audience Inventory.

The survey takes around 10 minutes to complete (slightly more if you’re really opinionated!) with 25 questions, including some mandatory demographic questions at the end.

Closing date  is August 31st with results due in early September.

Check out the survey here.

29 Responses

  2. Survey needed some “don’t know/not available/don’t care” options for some of the questions, particularly with the programming concerned ones.

  3. There should have been a question asking “Have you disconnected your set top box and gone back to watching analouge, because the digital signal was crap”.
    I would have voted yes on that question.
    Surprised there was no question asking if happy with the reception of the digital channels as opposed to analouge.
    Channel 10, 7 and GO seriously need to fix the signal on these channels.

  4. Good survey David. I’m sure we’d all be up for doing them a lot more often too.

    I agree largely with what RichoTB said, except that he’s a fan of Moonlight.

    Oh, one thing I forgot to leave as a comment at the end of the survey: still waiting for Seven to air Reaper! They showed short promos of it for ages, ages ago, then didn’t even try it in a single timeslot.

  5. Sky are thinking of joining freeview? Wow – that’d be fantastic. Between abc1&2, witha dash of sbs – you could nearly ditch the rest of the channels !!

    I felt kinda bad kicking C9 – but how long can they keep going on treating the viewer like they do?

  6. All of Foxtel’s channels should be broadcast in HD, as they all currently do in the US. The fact that only a small number of its channels are currently broadcast in HD (and then subscribers are slugged extra for the privilege), is why I refuse to subscribe to it.

  7. Nine is pathetic at axing shows, their over-reliance on 2.5 men/20 to 1 and their Tuesdays alone over the past few weeks demonstate this. Even their big local hopes like You Saved My Life and Trouble In Paradise get pulled after a few weeks. At least with GO! shows like Gossip Girl, Damages, Chuck, Moonlight, etc will finally get the respect they deserve.

    The ABC has far and away the most reliable programming as they never axe shows just because they don’t come 1st in their slots or win every demo. You can trust that they’ll provide a quality service every week, at the same time, without fear of chopping and changing. Unless they decide to suspend a show for 2 weeks to please the wowsers calling for censorship on talkback radio.

  8. The new digital channels are great. I watch ABC2 a hell of a lot more than the commercial nets, and even GO! is better than anything on Seven, Nine and Ten. The only thing I’m watching on commercial TV is Boston Legal repeats. If Sky News gets on board with Freeview that would be fantastic.

    I couldn’t care less about the credits or 4 minute ad breaks, but networks should really try to play a series through once it starts, in consistent timeslots. That’s something you’re lucky to see these days on commercial FTA nets. Other important issues (by TV standards) should be embracing media convergence and online platforms. ABC does this great with iView, now viewers can watch programs anytime, and any way they want. I used to catch The Gruen Transfer on my iPod on the train as I’m out on Wednesday nights. Fast-tracking is also a good idea for shows like Flash Forward that are premiering soon.

    And Seven need to hurry up and announce their 2nd channel already. I expect we won’t hear anything until late September. Its slack, they should be supporting Freeview and multichannelling, not ignoring it.

  12. I want to see those in-show pop up ads gone! They’re annoying, obstruct and distract, and are an insult to all those that have just sat through a 4 minute ad break.

    The networks have gone water mark crazy, Nine annoys me with their shiny ‘First on Nine’ tag during a story and channel 7 has to have 2 water marks for Today tonight.

    I wonder, how long until we end up like Fox news, that has a tiny square in the middle that is free of water marks.

  13. All i want is for seven to launch its second sd channel
    A forth network
    And more fta extra channels
    i dont care about mux or whatever, or hd. hd is wasted anyway sd is ok
    extra channels can be accommodated, its not impossible

  14. The credits have to be shown. At the moment, Ten reduces its credits to 1/20 of the screen with no sound and an ad on top of it, Seven gets rid of the real credits and replaces them with their own version- and again an ad on top of it, and Nine doesn’t show the credits for Two and a half men at all anymore. I used to read the vanity cards.

  16. Yeh I want shows to start on the advertised time, so whether that’s on the half hour, or at a time that is advertised later (such as 8:34 pm), not doing that only ticks off the viewers (it doesn’t bring more in like channel 9 and 7 seem to think)

  18. yeah i’d agree with gerry, advertising can round off to the nearest half hour, but epg’s should improve. atleast to the standard that ten is now. ten always epg as “7:37”
    but have people noticed of latethat the shows still finish later. eg. TBYG is epg’s to finish at 7:39 but actually finishes at 7:45.

  19. I don’t mind if a show finishes a bit late, but I would like my EPG to be specific about these times – not just rounding it off to the nearest half hour. However, I do not want the FTA channels having promos/ ads like: The Amazing Race, Thursday 7:34 on 7. That’s just over the top.

  20. the one i am sure about is:
    “Q.12 And which is the poorest in rescheduling cancelled shows?”
    it has to be 9.
    so many shows are on for 1 episode taken off never to be seen again. it just doesn’t seem to happen on 7 or ten lately.

  23. I’m not sure i should bother complaining – the only show i watched on commercial TV in the last few months and probably all year have been the comedy festival debates, and i time-shifted them. The rest have been from DVDs and downloads. I don’t see that changing any time soon when they can’t even do something so basic as start their shows on scheduled time.

Leave a Reply