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ABC TV to Live stream from December

ABC will begin Live Streaming of its primary channel from December.

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ABC will Live stream its primary channel from December.

It will join the already-streaming ABC News 24.

ABC Director of Television Richard Finlayson told the Screen Forever Conference in Melbourne yesterday the unique reach of services like iview were increasing.

“The growth in connected TVs, the Freeview Plus product, fresh content offers and an industry now fully engaged in the digital challenge, gives me hope we can hold our position,” he said.

“And we must. Indeed we must be happy to allow, over time, on-demand to eat broadcast.

“Because if we don’t do it ourselves, someone else will gladly do it for us.”

The ABC have been negotiating an new Terms of Trade with Screen Producers Australia.

The agreement provides for greater flexibility in showing content across platforms, live streaming of content, an extended catch up window, and additional broadcast runs in return for a shorter licence period with producers.

The streaming of ABC’s primary channel is expected to clone the Sydney primary channel. An ABC spokesperson told TV Tonight testing and negotiations were still underway, with a launch date yet to be confirmed. It isn’t yet clear if ABC2 and ABC3 will be available at launch.

Meanwhile Richard Finlayson also took aim at the actors union MEAA yesterday, over The Australian Television Repeats and Residuals Agreement.

“Think about this. While Friends, Seinfield and Hogans Heroes are almost as ubiquitous as the Kardashians – where are the Australian classic shows?” he said.

“The ABC has not relicensed an Australian drama or comedy for over a decade. No Kath and Kim; no Seachange; certainly no Norman Gunston. ATRRA residuals make this impossible. It costs multiple times more to re-licence a second run of a local scripted Australian story than it does to acquire an international show.

“MEAA is not only behaving like King Canoot, standing against the digital tide, but ultimately depriving their members of income. And they are certainly depriving Australian audiences of Australian content.

“We have no choice but to be agile. Australian actors, producers, broadcasters….we are all in this together.”

The ABC spokesperson also told TV Tonight a switch of its primary channel to High Definition is planned for the second half of 2016.

19 Responses

  1. Converting ABC1 to HD and Streaming it live – so where’s the money coming from? News24 was made HD because they couldn’t afford to buy HD programs. They b/cast a test pattern called “rage” almost every night. The chances that 60% of primetime will be first-run programs is getting slimmer. I can’t
    see them dropping their satellite service to rural areas simply because it’s now available on the internet or via mobile phone. Ad breaks on the ABC?

  2. But iView is terrible quality, it seriously looks like I am watching a video in 360p.

    Also, they said that they were making an Xbox One app for mid-2015, but now they’re all quiet and said “next year”, I don’t know if I trust the iView team at all.

    Unless they can commit to a decent quality broadcast, I don’t see this being popular. I have used the 24 live-stream from time to time and it’s awful.

    1. Dont know what you are viewing on….I stream ABCNews24 most of the day….and also watch a lot of Iview….mostly on my large flat screen Samsung monitor on PC…but I also have a small android pad in the bedroom…both fine for me.

    2. I agree that the quality of abc iview is lower than others particularly on a larger screen. The lower quality is particularly noticeable when watching through the iview on fetch on tv.

      If they are going to effort to make an xbox app why don’t they make it universal so it can run on all windows devices.

  3. Primary channel in HD mid 2016!! well we now know what priority the ABC puts on that project!! I think their hands will be forced by the commericials when they change over

      1. I decided to send some feedback to the iview team in relation to an apple tv app and got this email last night.

        “Many thanks for your email. We hope to have this service available to Apple TV in the near future. We can’t share a timeframe as of yet but once it has been confirmed we will release this information under ‘announcements’ on iview and on our social media platforms.

        Thanks for letting us know that this is of interest and value to you.

        Kind Regards,

        iview Moderator”

        so hopefully it’s not to far away.

    1. Hot off the presses today: Gartner says “Windows Phone Market Share Falls Below 2 Percent”, down from 3% a year ago.

      I’d imagine the chances of a seeing an iView app for Windows phone just got slightly smaller…

      1. Yeah I read that too. I’m pretty sure my posts are falling on deaf ears.

        I really miss a 3rd party abc iview app called myview. It was a really nicely put together app and the developer performed regular bug fixes. (unlike tenplay which hasn’t been working for a few months and no bug fixes in site). According to whirlpool forums the developer was told to take the app down by the abc. Unfortunately the abc hasn’t filled the gap with an official app.

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