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Community TV hits back against Turnbull’s ratings argument

Broadcasters says claims of just 6,000 viewers overlooks the monthly Reach of Community TV.

2014-09-13_0126An angry Community Television sector says it has not heard from Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, despite his claims the government will work with them to move online by the end of 2015.

The first they heard of the decision was via a transcript on the Minister’s website on Wednesday.

Yesterday the Minister’s website published a statement and FAQs on the decision to cease spectrum to community TV broadcasters, despite them asking for a 3 year transition.

“While I acknowledge there are concerns within the CTV sector about this announcement, average prime time audiences of CTV are low with only 6000 viewers across all five capitals and some services have as few as 1000. Given the small number of services and audiences, their capacity to serve a wide range of different community interest groups is limited,” Malcolm Turnbull claimed.

But the Australian Community Television Alliance has hit back at the figures, noting that the television ratings system is geared at commercial broadcasters and advertisers. It defends that CTV ‘reach’ of unique viewers is 3 million a month.

Here is their statement in full:

In a statement on his website today Malcolm Turnbull justifies his recent shock decision to axe community television services by quoting some audience statistics that throws into question whether the sector deserves a place on the spectrum.

As with all use of statistics, it is easy to cherry pick the numbers that best support the outcome you are looking to achieve. No one should be surprised that a politician might use this approach in the face of what is proving to be a universally condemned decision.

“Average Audience” describes exactly that – the average number of viewers that watched a particular station over a period of time as viewers tune in and out. “Average Audience” is the currency of television advertising trading. It is unsurprising that community television has a low “average audience” due to the niche and eclectic nature of the program and the fact that stations do not operate primarily to attract strong “average” audiences in the same way the massively resourced national broadcasters do. Community TV audiences watch the program that is of interest to them and then switch off.

A more appropriate measure of the scale of active interest in community television is “Reach”.

Reach describes the total number of “unique” individuals who tune in and watch the station over the same period. Melbourne community television station C31 reaches 450,000 – 500,000 viewers every scheduled week – demonstrating the scale of interest and relevance of the programs we broadcast. Nationally community television is watched by over 3 million Australians every month.

By quoting community television audience as an “average” Turnbull seeks to diminish the quantum of interest in community television in the face of the overwhelming public backlash against his decision.

As a comparison Community Television currently out-rates our equivalent special interest broadcaster NITV on both “average audience” and “reach”. We view NITV as an integral and important part of our media landscape and like Community TV should not be evaluated purely on a ratings analysis.

We also note that the Minister indicates he will be working with the sector to “consider the most appropriate transition strategy” for community television. We are yet to have any communication from the Minister or the department about this decision. The sector learned of this announcement via a transcript on his personal website on Wednesday.

http://i.committocommunitytv.org.au/

27 Responses

  1. “average prime time audiences of CTV are low with only 6000 viewers across all five capitals and some services have as few as 1000”

    Interesting to note this, especially in light of recent reports that OzTam deliberately avoid giving their ratings boxes to viewers that don’t tend to watch the commercial networks.

    It seems that OzTam have no desire to record ratings for anything but the commercial networks, and yet any ratings that are recorded for CTV are seen by Turnbull and the LNP as being relevant.
    I’m sure we’ll be hearing similar statements from Turnbull regarding ABC and SBS’s ratings and “value for money” in future too.

    This is rotten to the core, and stinks.

  2. Johnny1p5 – You have that incorrect, the 695-820 MHz that have been cleared for LTE are the ones that should be channels 52-73. Not the UHF 520-694, they are part of the TV Broadcast ones you listed VHF 174-230 MHz as (ie: VHF 174-230 MHz is 6-12 and UHF 520-694 is 28-51).

    Though having read that link, it does seem you’re right in that Com TV can’t be sold off to the Telcos. I also note that from channels 0-6 and 12-28 the bandwidth is free so there is scope to expand for HD by all networks and put another channel in if the Government want that without affecting Com TV (unless those bands are for aircraft, taxis or other communications of course).

  3. @maaclr: I’ll agree with you when we see Seven, Nine, Ten, ABC, SBS and Foxtel all “move with the times” and be compelled to make the same switch. Until then I think we will have to agree to disagree.

  4. What a sad indictment on society where we’re happy to ditch a TV outlet that spruiks diversity and may actually teach us something.. even if we just happen to watch it for 15 mins whilst flicking channels.. so that we may instead get the chance to finally watch Big Brother or Border Security in high def.

  5. More spectrum will not go to the Telcos for wireless internt that spectrum has already been freed up, that is what the Digital TV Restack was all about (the recent retune).

    The digital dividend band UHF 695-820 MHz (with a 9 MHz guard band) has been cleared for new LTE Towers, while the band from UHF 520-694 (channels 52-73) MHz and VHF 174-230 MHz has been cleared for use for TV Broadcasts (channels 6-51).

    As LTE operates in the UHF TV band they cannot put it in at where the Community TV Channels are now as it will interfere with other channels. As the restack has been divided in to 5 blocks and some areas have relays in the vicinity of where the Community channels are (for instance Marysville, Healesville, Warburton, Selby, Upwey in Vic have a relay on output channels 34-39).

    There is good info here: online.laceys.tv/blogs/news/6880185-re-stack-incoming on how the TV…

  6. Internet TV…….I watch the very occasional show on catch up. But I would never watch a whole channel via the web, unless they can get their compression rates correct and, this is the big one I did not have to pay for my monthly download or whatever it is limit.

    Community radio is the fastest growing sector in radio, it only because the Govt wants to make more money to fix their unpopular budget, by selling off the spectrum. Why not put Community TV on the digital platform…..oh no…the FTA people would kick up a stink, and that is no good for abbott and Co.

    Free to Air TV and we have things like Aspire, and Gold etc but we cant have community TV. Makes me very angry and really it may be the model of the future but not right now and not in 15 months time. Turnbull & Co I thought had sense…just goes to show you can be wrong.

  7. @Andrew because they have to move with the times. In today’s digital age the model makes no sense whatsoever. They are essentially a business and a business needs to make money, if they can’t online then they will need to adapt or die like any other business. Anyone can start a youtube channel and serve their niche. Anyone can search for and watch programming related to their niche. Anyone can stream live events. We don’t need a particular niche broadcast to all of a city in the hope someone may want to watch it. And in regards to Rove saying he got his start in community tv, well let’s count the number of people who have got their start on community tv compared to youtube, many more have come from youtube plus some of them are millionaires. All you need is a laptop and some creativity… no community tv required.

  8. @ Stan…its the democratically elected Abbott govt….reimes only occur in mad left dominated countries like North Korea.

    As for public spending on “defence” I think this is wrong and should be renamed “military spending” as I would like to see a more expansionist role for our military in the region. I would advocate a much firmer attacking capacity including the development of first strike nuclear weapons along with state-of-the-art conventional weapons.

    Now I have to go……to check if my role as an advisor to David Johnston has been approved…ha ha

  9. @PJC
    Broadcasting NITV nationally has been a failure. It has no point in capital cities where streamed content would be watched more. It may have place on satellite for remote areas.

    It won’t be axed though because of politics.

  10. It’s not a good comparison because it was relatively recently that NITV has become widely available through free-to-air television. Looking at the ratings data, it seems that on some days, NITV receives a similar audience share to ABC3. It has a growing audience share. I think CTV, such as Channel 31 have been around for many years and is only available in the larger cities.

  11. CTV isn’t “transitioning” to online! They’re already online. It’s just more spin coming from Turnbull’s office. The Abbott regime is simply killing them off.

    I wonder what “Jezza” & his ilk have to say about increased public expenditure going to the much bigger & bloated Defence Department? Nothing, of course! Because they are LNP darlings, unlike CTV & public broadcasting.

  12. I believe 15 months is enough time for community tv to transition online, whether they will be successful in monetising content and making money is another thing. I doubt it very much. They simply won’t have a big enough audience to generate revenue to make it viable. That and the fact advertising rates are so low online if they even get advertisers. The government has made the correct decision on this one as it’s an old model which may have made sense 20 years ago but today we have a thing called youtube.

  13. @BigJMathews: “..a way that Malcolm Turnbull wants to get rid of the fat at the same time as paying down debt accumulated under Labor.”

    There goes any respect your argument deserves.

    @Pertinax: I’m rather biased here (coming from community media), but community TV shouldn’t be judged based on ratings, as with community radio.

  14. Well Malcolm Turnbull has every right to shut down the CTV from using digital terristrial broadcasting spectrum to open it up to allow the major Free To Air broadcasters to put there main channels in Full High Definition as well as potentially more spectrum to Telcos. This is also a way that Malcolm Turnbull wants to get rid of the fat at the same time as paying down debt accumulated under Labor. I say do what ever helps the economy.

  15. Community TV audiences watch the program that is of interest to them and then switch off.

    Strange, I was under the impression that people did that for every channel, not just the Community stations.

  16. @ AlexDavid…’the future’ is the operative wording….not 15 months away…that is ‘now’….many people do not have internet access still…or want it….and of those that do…many are not tech savvy…and have difficulty doing the basics on a computer….
    I know this just from the various layers of the circle of my life.

  17. @ Andrew
    “there has been no consultation, no planning, no market research & no cost analysis in how this transition is to be managed and it’s all expected to be done and dusted in 15 months with no govt support or strategy”……this sounds like a partial script from Utopia and we all know how little they achieve.
    Folk have to move with the times and swiftly. 3mil is a total misuse of stats. If CommTv belives in itself, then they have to rise to the challenge and stop whinging….in my view of course

  18. @Pertinax.. using that same argument, then NITV should go next. The CTV lobby are right to point out that it too only appeals to a very small, if not smaller, minority. Why waste such valuable spectrum on NITV when the government can re purpose its spectrum too for things like wireless internet.. that way supporting their argument against spending on the NBN too.

    This announcement is the death knell of CTV. There’s no other way to look at it. And for Turnbull and others to say otherwise is just an insult to intelligence. Surely a better approach would’ve been to migrate CTV under SBS, like NITV, rather than kill it completely.

    More and more, this government continues to show that unless you can pay your own way or can make significant donations to Team Abbott, there’s no place for you in Team Abbott’s Australia.

  19. @AlexDavid: I think everyone knows that IPTV is the long term future. The Community TV sector accepts that. What nobody accepts is that there has been no consultation, no planning, no market research & no cost analysis in how this transition is to be managed and it’s all expected to be done and dusted in 15 months with no govt support or strategy apart from telling the sector “the internet is nothing new”.

    The transition from B&W to colour TV took years for govt and industry to map out. Analogue to digital TV took over a decade to complete. Even SBS was allowed 5 years to simulcast on VHF/UHF before it had to make the full move to UHF. But Community TV is expected to make a full transition from FTA to online in the space of 15 months.

  20. And the majority of that reach is people who are flicking around and watch it for a few minutes. The rating system ads those up and averages them and the figure is 1-6000 compared to 3,000,000 plus watching other channels. It is not a broadcasting service is a broad narrow-casting service which makes no sense and better can be done producing local content for the net.

    Why should billions of dollars worth of spectrum that has better uses be wasted on one service no one is watching, compared to all the multitude other services on the net they are competing against on the net?

    As for notification the Dept. will send them a letter. The fact that it made it onto a website and into the newscycle much quicker just makes the point.

  21. I reckon community TV should allowed to broadcast across the state they reside in. Why limit these guys to the metro market only?? If their audience is so low what’s the problem broadening their base???

  22. Save Community TV, I like to watch TVS when all the other network channels have nothing interesting on.
    The Schlocky Horror Picture Show that screens on Fridays at 10.30pm, plays some good B-grade horror and science fiction films, also this channel gives admitters the chance to produce and act in something they created i.e. Rove started here, hosting The Loft Live.

  23. I’m going to get shot down in flames with saying this…but….

    Internet TV is where things will be in the future and the numbers are showing that in the US market, so perhaps it’s a little early given that Australia tends to be following suit more slowly and Internet TV is more of a second screen than a primary screen here, unlike in other markets where the trends are changing more towards Internet TV as a standard screen.

    I know when I was at university studying TV producing, they were saying to us to forget about traditional television and focus more on creating content and distributing it online. Citing people like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Kevin Spacey, among others who have all said that the industry is moving to a different path online, and audience demand is growing for on demand online content. Heck, even Steven Moffatt said in an off the cuff interview with…

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