“We’re sick of Reality and we want more Drama & Comedy”
Viewers want more less Reality TV according to the results of TV Tonight's Genre Survey.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News, Top Stories
It was Peter Finch in the 1976 movie Network who got “mad as hell” at television networks and if TV Tonight’s first Genre Survey is anything to go by, audiences are getting riled up about local television too.
While commercial networks are relying on Reality TV in their early evening schedules, a whopping 63% of respondents indicated they are tired of the Genre at the seeming expense of others.
37% said they would switch channels if Drama was offered as an alternative, and 35% said the same of Comedy. But  46% also indicated the standard of Comedy is not tickling their funny bone.
More than 700 readers responded to the survey, gauging their interest in television Genres and whether they were satisfied by current content. No shows or networks were identified in the results, in order to elicit agnostic results.
At the other end of the scale Current Affairs is considered to be our worst-produced Genre, but viewers expressed little interest in being attracted by better content, regardless. Kids Television also did not attract much interest, perhaps reflecting the Demographic of respondents.
Promisingly, viewers said they are still watching plenty of Television.
Many are watching late into the night with 37% switching off by 10:30pm and 24% switching off by 11:30pm. A huge 86% of respondents also said they considered themselves to be the person usually in charge of the remote control at home.
73% had never participated in a television ratings survey.
While some of the results contrast wildly with OzTAM ratings results -Reality and Sport are recognised as huge audience drivers- it is important to note the survey was not scientific.
On the question of Age readers were asked to nominate a Demographic they felt best represented them -most indicated 25-54. But there was a bigger proportion of male respondents (67%) than female (33%) and they skewed towards Sydney, Melbourne and Regional Australia (grouped), in that order.
There was also division on whether it was important to see someone from their own Demographic reflected on the screen.
45% consider themselves to be “swinging viewers” bearing no loyalty to any particular network.
Please rate your interest in the following genres*:
VERY INTERESTED
Drama
Comedy
INTERESTED
Light Entertainment
Documentary
News
NEUTRAL
Observational
Current Affairs
Lifestyle
DISINTERESTED
–
VERY DISINTERESTED
Sport
Reality
Breakfast / Morning TV
Kids
Broadly speaking, how do you find the quality of these genres in Australian productions*?
EXCELLENT
–
GOOD
Drama
Documentary
News
Light Entertainment
Comedy
Sport
Reality
NO OPINION
Kids
Observational
Breakfast / Morning TV
POOR
–
TERRIBLE
Current Affairs
Which single genre needs better content from Australian productions?
Comedy 46%
Drama 23%
Current Affairs 7%
Light Entertainment 6%
Documentary 5%
News 4%
Reality 3%
Breakfast / Morning TV 2%
Sport 1%
Kids 1%
Observational 1%
Lifestyle 1%
Which genre would get you to change channels if more of it was on offer?
Drama 37%
Comedy 35%
Documentary 7%
Light Entertainment 6%
Sport 5%
Reality 4%
Lifestyle 2%
Current Affairs 2%
News 1%
Kids 0%
Observational 0%
Breakfast / Morning TV 0%
Which genre are you most tired of?
Reality 63%
Current Affairs 11%
Sport 5%
News 4%
Breakfast / Morning TV 4%
Light Entertainment 3%
Observational 3%
Lifestyle 3%
Drama 2%
Kids 1%
Comedy 0%
Documentary 0%
How important is Live television?
Some importance 41%
Very important 28%
Unimportant 17%
No opinion 8%
Very unimportant 6%
Rate your interest in international content?
Very interested 61%
Interested 34%
No opinion 3%
Disinterested 2%
Very Disinterested 0%
What are the best methods a network can use to promote their content to you*?
VERY IMPORTANT
TV
IMPORTANT
Online Advertising
Word of Mouth
Social Media
Newspapers / Magazines
Outdoor advertising
Radio
NO OPINION
–
UNIMPORTANT
–
VERY UNIMPORTANT
–
How important is it to see people on screen in your age group?
Unimportant 28%
Important 27%
No opinion 24%
Very important 13%
Very unimportant 8%
On an average weeknight what time do you usually stop watching TV?
By 10:30pm 37%
By 11:30pm 24%
After 11:30pm 18%
By 9:30 pm 17%
By 8:30pm or earlier 4%
Age
25 – 54: 36%
16 – 39: 27%
18 – 49: 26%
55+: 10%
Under 16: 1%
Gender
Male 66%
Female 34%
Location
Sydney 28%
Melbourne 26%
Regional Australia 24%
Brisbane 11%
Adelaide 5%
Perth 5%
Are you the main grocery buyer in your household?
Yes 67%
No 33%
Do you consider yourself loyal to a particular network?
No loyalty to any networks 45%
Some loyalty to one or more networks 34%
Yes very loyal to one or more networks 21%
Do you consider yourself the person usually in charge of the remote at home?
Yes 86%
No 14%
Have you ever participated in a TV ratings survey?
Never 73%
Yes in the last 5 years 13%
No but I have been asked to participate 7%
Yes more than 10 years ago 6%
Yes in the last 5-10 years 2%
* = where most responses were grouped.
27 Responses
@randwick I agree this signals the Death to Reality TV. Hooray! Home grown Comedies like Rake and The Moody’s rate better on tougher nights than any of the multi million dollar overseas formats on TEN. Australian Drama is back to the healthy slate it was in the 90’s and audiences can’t get enough of them. If the viewers love reality TV as much as the networks say they do …Riddle me this – would anyone ever remember episode 12 of a reality show like a Loser or the Amazing Race? Just sayin
I’ll admit I tried reality and one season was enough. That said I don’t care if they play it or not. Because it meant I could watch more ABC or SBS.
I like genre, costume drama, documentaries, proper current affairs and News. I’ve watched a bit of sport. I also like comedy. But unfortunately most of it these days is not to my taste. Thankfully there’s Shaun Micallef and his team.
I largely get disillusioned about contemporary drama except with an interesting character. From most countries. Although I gave up on Australian drama because it wasn’t worth the search the start time of some channels.
Plus then there’s the active aiding and abetting of ad skipping. It just puts me right off watching TV altogether. Ironically when I could ad skip which was rare. I watched the TV show ads to make sure I saw anything I wanted to watch. Based on footage or an explanation. Oh well…
For the next genre survey David, I would like to see “Drama” broken down more into actual … well … genres. I was looking for the “Sci-Fi and Fantasy” option but had to settle for “Drama”. Which means we’ll get more bogan families, cop shows, and Underbelly-like fare instead of drama I’d actually watch.
There are more viewers of contest shows and 95% of them watch the show as live.
There are less viewer for dramas, they usually have to be in M or MA rateds slots and 20-25% of viewers timeshift them (something which isn’t helped by the later and later staggered start times).
So nothing is going to change just because TV Tonight viewers are sick and tired of their favourite dramas getting pushed around by contest shows.
Don’t think anybody was suggesting it would?
My opinion on what is wrong with childrens TV…most of the cartoon shows are now computerised…lack feeling….flat..one dimmensional…..
I have lots of old videos …of like Angelina Ballerina and the Bananas (when they were real)..and kids who visit …love them…
Interesting and worthwhile article, but –
This doesn’t represent anything other than the TV Tonight audience.
Even the mere fact that someone had to visit a website and fill out a survey skews it away from mainstream Australia.
Still though, an interesting reflection on a particular demographic, and probably one that’s quite valuable for advertisers.
“No more reality TV, becoming so rigged especially this season’s MKR …”
It’s always been one of the most audience-manipulating and least about-the-premise of the reality shows.
“As for the OzTAM results, we knew they were skewed, their sample base is insufficient for the population involved.”
Yeah, no, wrong. I’ve given up explaining why the sample size is sufficient (and, as often pointed out, one of the highest in the world). People who want to claim the sample size is too small need to start backing it up with something more convincing than “well it’s obvious, innit?”.
Some knowledge of statistics would probably help there…
What would be really interesting to know would be what the “Sit down and pay attention factor” of reality is to drama.
At our house, the reailty’s – MKR, Block or sometimes biggest loser are left on as shows in the background while we do other things like prepare lunches, dinners, get the kids to bed etc. while drama I have to be sitting down, watching and doing nothing else really.
Both MKR and The Block are on too long each night and air too many nights to spend all your time watching them.
I find it hard to answer the questions re Breakfast/ Morning TV as I like to watch Today but will never watch the Morning show due to advertorials.
Also there are some reality shows that I love but others that I would never ever watch.
@Mr J – the last ABC comedy to rate over a million viewers was Summer Heights High, which incidentally was the last time I actually laughed at an ABC comedy.
“Critically acclaimed” means diddly-squat. All comedies are critically acclaimed. When was the last time you saw a comedy that wasn’t? People don’t care what the critics say – funny is funny, and none of the comedies since Summer Heights High has been funny.
The problem is that the ABC prefers the “jokeless” single camera comedy format, where hipness and trendiness takes precedence over actual comedy and jokes (witness the fawning over Please Like Me). When the ABC figures out that comedy has jokes in it, then people will start to watch Oz comedy.
What is the saying: ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’.
You look at the initial seasons of the Biggest Loser and Master Chef, they were rating the socks off, then went into a steep decline (try a cliff about 200-300ft high). It’s only a matter of time before the current crop of reality makes it to the same edge.
By the way, the reason children’s television does not have the numbers is because they are buried away on the digital channels (GO!, Eleven, 7Two, etc.), and even then around 80-85% of that is imported from offshore (Adventure Time, Ben 10 and anything from either Disney or Nickelodeon), not locally made content.
This country produces quality kids programming which gets recognized all over the world, just not in it’s homeland…
The audience is made up of millions of individuals, so how can it possibly be their fault? This is what the networks do to avoid analysing their own shortcomings. The problem is that the drama/comedy, whatever, the makers are creating is just not good enough.
Haven’t touched my tv/usb hdd recorders or remote ‘off’ button for years, as tv is one of the best sleeping tablets around, I often nod off only minutes after waiting for my favorite programs to finally start, hence my many complaints regarding the inaccuracies ‘deliberately embedded ??’ in most of the networks Promo’s/EPG’s.
But my remotes F/F buttons get a fair workout, and viewing ‘ hours saved’ or ‘not wasted’ can often reduce actual viewing time between 25% even 60%, without any remorse, much like some exec’s who show little remorse for viewers with their smart arse policies..It amazes me that so many high paying advertisers, either must never watch FTA and/or not feel the same frustrations of being jerked around as well.
The problem is not with the networks, it is with the audience. Viewers watch reality shows in droves, whereas there is no evidence that there is any hunger for comedy, ABCs comedies, no matter how critically acclaimed are all ratings flops. Makes perfect sense that the networks are going to respond by making more reality and no comedy.
The second the tables turn, and reality shows bomb and comedies rate 1.6mil every night, I’m sure the networks will gladly abandon reality and respond to the market demands. That’s not happening any time soon.
If veiwers want more comedy or drama on tv why dont they start supporting the shows the broadcasters have constantly tried to promote to please this demographic!! You cant say the networks havn’t tried.
How do you determine someone’s age group when I fall into three of the above categories?
Once the networks start serving up drama that’s less self conscious and more insightful, the pendulum will swing away from reality. The audience just wants to see empathetic characters and our drama makers don’t even know what that means.
Good survey David.
Now if we can get the LCD ( Lowest Common Denominator) to complete the survey there would probably be a vastly different result.
And it is about time that Hobart was rated in OzTam as a Capital city.
I’m sick of tired of some reality shows like SYTYCDA, The Voice, Big Brother, The X factor, Dancing with The Stars and The Biggest Loser. I’d rather focus on some TV shows like The Project, News, and Sport.
Yet the top 2 reality shows (MKR and The Block) rate around 3 million combined in the 5 capitals pretty much every night. I’d say a lot of people watch reality but don’t want to admit it, yet on the other hand they say they want to watch more comedies, but they don’t rate. The visitors of this website are an active and passionate group of TV lovers, but sadly not a reflection on what the general public think.
As the story notes the numbers are not scientific. But 700 is a good indicator to suggest that further research would elicit some interesting results. I feel these show us a significant number are just watching what is served up -it isn’t necessarily their preference and networks could get creative if they wanted to tap into new ideas.
Is possibly part of the reason why the ABC rates so well thesedays compared to the likes of TEN.
The amount of TV we watch in our house that is downloaded is about 80%, with the other 20% being PVR recording of what little Australian FTA we watch, which is mostly ABC. We do not watch any reality rubbish full stop, life is too short.
Randwick nailed it…
As for the OzTAM results, we knew they were skewed, their sample base is insufficient for the population involved. (which we’ve known for years)
Everyone says they want more drama, but when we get it people arnt tuning in, look at Secrets and Lies, and Puberty Blues isnt getting the numbers of its first season either…
No more reality TV, becoming so rigged especially this season’s MKR, no more who has the cooking ability, but who can act/cry/be arrogant/be controversial and you stay on…
Im convinced of the theory “Offer people rubbish and they turn the TV off ….. Offer them quality and they will stay”…. Im still convinced that this is why FTA has a declining audience – just like the “death to disco” movement in the 70’s … I’d like to see a “death to reality television” movement now …….