iview costs hitting ABC hard
ABC's iview has become so successful and costing so much money to operate that it risks impacting on production content.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
ABC’s catch-up platform iview has become so successful and costing so much money to operate that the broadcaster is concerned it is impacting on production content.
iview scored 3.2m visits every month in the last financial year.
“It’s doubling every 18 months at the moment. There’s such a rapid take-up, not only of faster broadband but also the richness of the content,” said Director of Television Richard Finlayson told ABC’s PM.
“We have to pay every time a video is initiated. We have to use a content distribution network and that’s in the millions of dollars a year at the moment for the ABC.
“Every dollar that we spend on that is a dollar we can’t spend on content going onto the screen.”
iview cost the broadcaster $3m a year at launch in 2009 but now the traffic is so high some are calling for a subscription model for Aunty’s premium content.
“It’s not something that’s on the drawing board at the moment, as far as I’m aware,” Finlayson said.
But iview also ticks two very big requirements of the ABC Charter, firstly to innovate and secondly to bring more ABC content to more Australians.
The results of TV Tonight‘s Audience Inventory will be published soon, including the results of catch-up site popularity.
27 Responses
The ABC must be saving heaps of money now by switching off hundreds of analogue transmitter sites across the country which have been in simulcast with digital for over a decade.
Re-allocate that spend into supporting iView!