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What readers are saying about Australian TV

Viewers are hoping for more Risk taken by networks in 2024.

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Readers want to see more Risks taken by Free to Air, with less Reality and more Drama.

These are the key takeouts from reader comments in TV Tonight Awards voting.

Every year, readers are encouraged to leave their comments on Australian Television, in an open comments section.

This year they found time for the positive, the negative, and with some constructive ideas for the industry to take on board.

The Good

  • We had a good year this year.
  • Much more local content. It is better than it used to be.
  • It’s awesome.
  • A fairly interesting year of TV. Be interesting to see what next year will bring.
  • Aussie TV in the last year have stepped up a notch with new shows and new hosts, not the usual suspects.
  • Great to see more diversity in Australian TV and such high quality productions especially (and surprisingly from Amazon). My favourites for the year were Bad Behaviour, Class of 07, Deadloch, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and Love Me S2. Also interesting that ABC chose to air three stories about male grief in one year albeit aimed at different age groups with In Limbo, The Messenger and Crazy Fun Park.
  • Great to see the return of Thank God You’re Here and so much Working Dog content. I think TV takes itself a bit too seriously these days and the opportunity for variety, comedy and alternative shows exists.
  • I mostly like comedy panel and entertainment shows on AU tv, I don’t really watch much else, sometimes game shows and if there’s any really good ones I sometimes watch entertainment but that’s about it.
  • Some excellent stuff.
  • SBS on Demand is a absolute godsend for catching up on amazing series not seen elsewhere.
  • Generally great content. Something for all.

The Bad

  • Boring and risk-averse.
  • Network TV is dying a slow and painful death.
  • The repetition of ads for new shows coming in 2 months time puts me off watching the show when it does eventually air, especially if it’s exactly the same ad.
  • Shit like a new love version of Big Brother… actually any show that cast wannabe “influencers”… stop giving them oxygen!
  • The trend towards delaying shows on paid streaming is dangerous and ridiculous. Pushing people back to illegal downloading.
  • Sick of the tired old shows and faces on the ABC. No credibility left, from me.
  • Commercial tv generally lacking in originality and interesting programmes. Public broadcasters have much better programming such as documentaries and much better drama eg The Newsreader and Fisk.

More Drama, Less Reality

  • Ditch the reality and bring back the drama.
  • Same as usual. A continuing over saturation of reality shows and news bulletins, lack of drama or comedy or documentary.
  • The more the Australian FTA networks rely on reality, the more they dig their own grave. They need to get rid of the stripped reality programming and start spending on original Australian content and maybe consider airing it in the bingeable way Channel 5 did with Heat or the BBC did with Marriage.
  • Less Reality and more Quality Australian drama like RFDS, a country practice, Wentworth.
  • Enough of the reality tv tripe – I would love to see some decent drama on Free to Air! Not listening to the audience.
  • We need to have more home-grown dramas and support.
  • Too much cheap to churn out dating crap.
  • Terrible that free to air TV have abandoned producing new scripted series.
  • Still disappointing that there is less Aussie Drama and the quality exists but we only see 6- 8 episodes and then have to wait a year or 2 for the next season.

Constructive Criticism

  • Reality TV shows need to return to live broadcasts. We do not need to have pre-recorded endings anymore.
  • We need our Australian dramas to have more than 8 episodes a season. I miss the good old days of Blue Heelers & Mcleod’s Daughters with 40 episodes a year.
  • I want to see networks take some risks. Actual risks. Something that changed the tv landscape forever or makes people talk about how they tried.
  • Stop rehashing old formats and be more creative with the new tv offerings.
  • Would great to be see more live or near-live programming across all genres and networks. Get rid of shows that are shot a year in advance with anternate endings for the winner. Get back to basics with franchise reality and see what was being done back in season 1 that made it so popular in the first place.
  • I hope the Networks discover their dare again, it seems like a race to the bottom of the safest programming at the moment. No guts no glory. With budgets being slashed across the industry but networks still wanting the same high-quality content, something has to give/change. I’m looking forward to 2024/25 being more exciting than the last few years.
  • Desperately need a late night talk show or Rove Live type of show back on our screens. Streaming is doing well eg The Clearing, Deadloch.
  • Channels 9 & 10 should put shows that have aired on Stan & Paramount+ on their free to air channel after they have been on Stan & Paramount +. Not everyone can afford to get every streaming service.
  • Different genres like sci fi or horror shows would be great.
  • People should be more lenient on Australian creators. We have far less of the resources and time of our US counterparts. We do a lot with a little and I wish people knew how hard, how long and how difficult the entire process is from scripting to production to post.

Voting in the TV Tonight Awards closes tomorrow. Results will be published next week.

Take the survey here!

11 Responses

  1. Agree for the most part.
    My opinion…
    – Promos need to stop looking like movie trailers.
    – More drama committed to balance out the ratio to reality, even trying a homegrown sitcom or 2
    – Lineups need to be promoted again as not everyone reads the EPG or TV Guide to check (little like the ‘Tuesdays on 9’ promos that used to be teased)
    – Presentation package on 9 needs a Revamp as same music and theme is getting tiresome after nearly 10 years

    9’s presentation package needs a major refresh

  3. I do like some Aussie reality Tv shows like Aus Survivor and MasterChef. I don’t like any dating reality tv shows. We need to see less of these.

  4. Most of the comments I don’t agree with except for the ones about having less reality crap and more local dramas. And I certainly don’t agree with the comment about tv networks dying a slow death. I think some of the streaming services are dying a slow death like Amazon Prime.

  5. Denmark, with 6m people, became successful by by copying the US writer/producers in teams with a show runner and creative control of the entire process at a well funded public broadcaster that made and owned it’s own shows. They made uniquely Scandinavian TV that succeeded first in Germany and England, which gave them a profile and led to world wide sales foreign TV. We start with the Government legislating that Networks produce TV worth a certain number of points worth of TV or spend a certain percentage of their budget, and who can show sport. Production is contacted out to local branches od foreign owned and controlled TV producers, who are heavily subsided by tax exemptions and money from arts bureaucracies. They create and own the IP. Australian writers are mostly freelancers who are couriered a brief and paid when a script is returned, and their involvement ends their. Viewer are treated with complete disrespect. Our TV is way it is because we choose to do it this way.

  6. I think probably the key issue, at least for the commercial broadcasters, is audience fragmentation from proliferation of channels and the reduction in advertising revenue which ensues, plus competition from other sources (eg TikTok, YouTube, subscription television, etc).

    Ultimately, reality shows are comparatively cheap to produce relative to new drama, so if a show fails it’s much easier for a network to cut its losses and commence work on another format. Reality TV also often tends to be popular with younger viewers who appeal to advertisers.

    There are some parallels everywhere. Even here in the UK, ratings for the once unassailable soaps are in freefall (Coronation Street now averages only 4 million viewers an episode, which at its peak regularly drew 20 million), and increasingly the talk is of a move to streaming platforms for these shows,.

    Fortunately, there is still some investment in original UK drama however as such programming sells well overseas.

    1. I like reality shows too but not all of them. I like Survivor, Amazing Race, I’m a celebrity, Dancing with the stars & MasterChef. But agree reality shows aren’t going anywhere. They are cheap to make & rate their socks off. So for all the haters they are here to stay. I also liked Family food fight, The Hot Plate & Snackmasters & was sad when they got axed.

  8. I agree with the comedy panel comments. One of the few shows on Australian free-to-air that is must see TV for me is The Cheap Seats. I avoid The Project and The Last Leg as they’re too political and stuck-up. I do like shows, like Mock The Week.

    Shows like Big Brother have strayed from their roots, then they wonder why the ratings aren’t as good anymore, even though viewers gave the feedback even beforehand. The networks seem to pre-record to have control over the narrative. I don’t think that’s the way to go about it.

  9. More risk usually means less reward so you can see why networks pick their battles. Blow Up, a second season of Traitors, The Messenger, Limbo etc were all risky so I don’t think networks not taking risks is the problem. The viewers deliver the ratings and only have themselves to blame for what’s on offer. I am starting to slowly accept commercial tv will never go back to the way it was when we did have 40 eps a year of shows like McLeod’s Daughters and Blue Heelers. Streaming seems to have more Australian drama but just with shorter seasons so instead of a 40 ep drama on Seven all year you get all that content split up into smaller chunks like 10, 4, 6 episode series on a service like Stan so it all prob mostly works out the same.

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