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ABC flags more flexibility as viewing drifts from scheduled TV

"It's important that we don't become fixed in delivering a particular program at a particular hour," says Michelle Guthrie.

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ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie says the broadcaster needs to be more flexible in offering its content on multiple platforms and not be so tied to traditional scheduled broadcasts.

Asked yesterday at the Senate Estimates hearing, the new ABC boss was asked about the impact Netflix has had on audiences.

“It hasn’t affected iview or ABC Online but it has affected all commercial television stations across the board and it has affected ABC and I’m sure SBS. Particular demographics have turned to Netflix and other catch-up services,” she said.

“I often in speeches talk about my focus group of 2 who are my 14 year old and 20 year old and I make the point that they don’t watch scheduled television. That doesn’t meant they’re not interested in video programming -they are, just on a different platform.”

Guthrie said it was important for ABC to be available on other platforms where viewers are found.

“iview has picked up a lot of viewership but increasingly so has Netflix. We’ve recently had a deal with Netflix where they’ve taken 200 hours of our ABC content. So it’s important to think of ourselves as not requiring viewers to come to us, but to increasingly go where the viewers are, and that will be over multiple platforms including Netflix and others,” she said.

“It’s important that we don’t become fixed in delivering a particular program at a particular hour and requiring people to come to us.

“Increasingly we need to have those programs on our main ABC TV channel but also on iview, binge-watching or a catch-up basis.

“A program like Barracuda for example, which was a great program, I found that I watched the first one on scheduled television and then watched the catch-up service for the rest.”

Changing patterns were not only tied to younger viewers.

“It’s not even a specific demographic issue. We’re finding a number of our older audience is really seeing iview, podcasting and news digital services as a massive tool to increase their flexibility and engage with ABC content,” she said.

10 Responses

  1. Who cares about Netflix’s impact to the The ABC??? The ABC is the only channel that doesn’t and shouldn’t need to compete with it’s competitors because it’s the only channel that receives a handout of $1 billion from the Australian taxpayer.

    1. Is Michelle suggesting that the ABC should head in the same direction as SBS and just relay a bunch of US channels? It is a public network not a commercial one.

      As for people tuning out it has a lot to do with the extreme bias culture many of their staff have. More than ever the ABC is becoming a media platform for the extreme left with no enforcement to ensure that the network delivers balanced and fair reporting.

      Who after a hard day of work is going to tune in to ABC when all they offer is report after report suggesting that all Australians are mongrels with no heart. ABC should drop the negativity or at least balance the “doom and gloom” with positive inspirational stories about the good Australians do locally and aboard.

  2. Netflix is HD for just about everyone, and some people even have 4k available.

    iview is 360p maximum resolution. I know which one I’d rather watch on a 50″+ living room TV.

    If you are not going to increase the resolution of iview then license everything to netflix or stan as soon as it airs please

    1. Also: I realise there is a “high quality video” project on PS4’s but that only increases the resolution from 360p to 576p which is still unacceptable to most people with good eyesight.

      1. I know that’s the position of many people on TV & video forums & blogs – but personal observation, including of many people I would expect to care about such things, convinces me that it’s not a position shared by anywhere near a majority of the general public.

        There’s an awful lot of people out there happily watching iView, old VHS recordings, YouTube, & … let’s say “other low-res sources” … on 50″+ screens (& even often stretched to fit widescreen :horror:!)

        That said, I too find iView to be annoyingly soft due to both resolution and other encoder settings (e.g. temporal & spatial softening to reduce bitrate / minimise artifacts).

        1. Hah. Just said on the article about ABC and SBS not merging that I would be happy if SBS OnDemand replaced iView. It’s only 1500kbps but it’s rock solid for me and superior to the vaseline-lensed quality of iView.

    2. “some people even have 4k available”. I also believe some people actually have available an internet connection that can watch SD without constant buffering. Here in the residences of NSW’s third largest city we are still waiting for something referred to in their TV advert as “the NBN network” (thought the “N” actually stands for “network” so why the superfluous use of “network” Dave), so don’t know that “HD for just about everyone” is anywhere near accurate.

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