Television

We really really like you, ABC   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Nov 7, 2007, 20:21

According to the ABC, Australians seem to be going off commercial TV.

Every year the ABC Commission's what it quaintly calls its "Appreciation Survey" to find out what Australians think of our national broadcaster.

Generally it’s a high opinion, but every poll throws up quirks and the latest, conducted in June by Newspoll with 1903 people surveyed, had some bad news for the ABC's commercial rivals.

Now some doubters, especially in the Nine, Ten and Seven, might argue that the ABC is engaging in a bit of special interest pleading in highlighting these results.

It isn't, and the commercial broadcasters should ask the ABC for more details because the news is not good for them.

It seems that a majority of Australians now don't like what they see on commercial TV: some 54%, if the ABC's poll is right.

And, no matter what the ABC might argue, it does have some credibility this year in particular for giving viewers what they want: it’s the best performed of all the five free to air networks, lifting its audience share in prime time by more than 10%.

That gives them more standing if the commercial networks want to take a poke at the results of the survey.

Even if the networks bag the results, the number of times they conduct and release this sort of polling of ordinary Australians is very, very rare.

In fact some would argue in commercial TV land that they are better off not asking viewers what they think because the answers might be unpalatable.

And they say the answer is in the ratings every night with more people watching the commercial networks than the ABC, which is true.

But why then is the ABC the best performing TV Network this year when overall viewing of TV (free to air and Pay) is down?

The FTA audience is off by around 5% in the main prime time zone of 6 pm to 10.30 pm, so perhaps the commercials should talk to the ABC.

The ABC's 2007 annual report says in part in discussing the results of its Appreciation Survey:

"One of the most striking changes this year relates to commercial television, with the number who feel it does a poor job of providing appealing content increasing from 47% to 54%, and a similar decline in the number who feel it is doing a good job.

"There has also been a smaller increase in negative perceptions about ABC Television on this dimension (up from 15% to 19%).

"It is quite conceivable that the two are related, with the larger negative shift in feelings about commercial television flowing on to perceptions about ABC Television—reflecting a greater dissatisfaction with the quantity of appealing content provided by the medium per se.

"For both commercial and ABC Television, this shift in sentiment is quite broadly based demographically. Importantly though, for ABC Television the change is small, as noted above, and the vast majority of the community continues to believe ABC Television does a good job of providing quality content of relevance to them,"

Well the ABC would make the latter comment. But the result is intriguing. It's a pity there was no elaboration. It would have made for very interesting reading.

The heavy use of repeats, especially by Ten and Nine, the odd timing for starting and finishing of programs (Seven and Nine especially), the quick changing of programs at the last minute (Nine and to a lesser extent Seven and Ten) and the use in program promos at the end of shows, have been frustrating for viewers this year.

The ABC says the Appreciation Survey provide an overview of community attitudes about the ABC and allow the Corporation to assess the value placed on its services by the Australian public and the delivery of its Charter obligations. They have been conducted in 1998 and 1999 and in 2002 through to 2006.

"The year-on-year results for this dimension show the only statistically significant change to be an increase in the number of non-users of ABC Television and/or Radio who do not feel the ABC and its services are valuable (up from 13% to 21%).

"This change may be related to a small increase in negative sentiment about the amount of appealing programming on ABC Television. Nonetheless, the non-ABC-user group is a comparatively small segment in the community, and the current level of negative opinion about the ABC’s value is not significantly different from levels found in earlier years (2002 and 2005)."

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