Kids Programming

Ratings for children’s television station Nickelodeon have recently taken a dive.

 According to a study by Bernstein Research this could be due in large part to content being available on Netflix. They found that children are more likely to re-watch shows they've already seen and are not as strongly enticed by new content as adults are. Furthermore, they found that parents are encouraging their children to use netflix in order to keep them busy. You can read more about this here, here, here, and here.

Despite this, Nickelodeon has renewed its Netflix contract and have denied that this is an issue. Australia creates a large amount of Children’s television content so it’s important that this content is protected. The way different sections of the market respond to online streaming services will be an interesting thing to look at. Perhaps, in the future we will need multiple regulations which apply to different television markets and audiences.

The Catch-Up Effect

Say you've just discovered the intricacies of the meth dealing - science teaching, Walter White in Breaking Bad or the chain smoking, whiskey charm of Don Draper in Mad Men,  you've stumbled across either in a channel flick and the second season is halfway through on your television.

In the days of old you would trundle down to the DVD store and pick up any of the available copies of the previous season...that's if you even made it off the couch, let alone out the front door, before your attention came hurtling back to the latest offering from Harold Bishop and Ramsay St. 

HURRAH! No more! Over the past few years the web savvy and legally 'unconscious' generations have turned to torrenting and online streaming to catch up to shows that would have previously passed them by. The era of the once-off 8pm sit down for the latest installment of Underbelly has been swept away by the knowledge that we can now watch our favorite shows on our time. 

So what is a network to do? 

They rely on guarantees to advertisers that a certain audience share will be met, and thus justify the cost of air time for their product. You would think that with power moving increasingly to the consumer to decide what to watch and when to watch it, such guarantees could become a thing of the past. 

Well it's not all bad news, in fact, services such as Netflix and Hulu which have emerged as the big players in what I would call the beginning of the post-torrent era (with paid low-cost subscription rates), have actually benefited the regular TV ratings of cult shows such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

How? 

The recent Bernstein Report on Netflix has termed the phenomenon, 'the catch-up effect' as viewers see later episodes of shows on TV they 'catch up' to the current episode by legally streaming them one after the other through these paid services, bringing them up to date. Alternatively, avid fans can re-watch episodes right up until the newest season premiere on prime time TV,  this effectively secures an audience for the premiere screenings of shows across the stations and as the Bernstein Report maintains, is a definite ratings win for networks. 

What will be interesting to see is how networks will adapt to such a change in Australia. It's likely they will release previous seasons through legal online streaming services much the same way as they have in the US. 

We might even be lucky enough to catch up on all 27 seasons of Neighbours before the next season premieres next year. 

Content Restrictions

On Australian television there are restrictions which govern the amount of time which must be allocated to local content. Between 6am and midnight 55% of content on television must be Australian. This is put into place to ensure that the industry is able to survive and continue.

Canada is in a similar situation to Australia in regard to broadcast television. Like us, they produce a high amount of children’s content (open to page i). They, like Australia also have a smaller industry and population than the United States. Without protection they would likely be overrun by the larger, and not culturally distant American television industry.

So far, Canada are not placing restrictions on streaming services because they have so far found it not to be detrimental to their local industry. An investigation by Canadia Radio Television and Telocommunications Commission (CRTC) found that people who live in homes with Netflix do not watch less local content than those without. However it is still early days for the online streaming service who only got a hold of the Canadian market in 2008. The CRTC have pledged to closely monitor the impact of these services on the Canadian broadcast environment over time, and adjust the laws if they feel that online streaming services are harmful to the industry.

So how will the local industry be affected if streaming services become increasingly popular in Australia? Will it be helped or hindered? Should new guidelines be devised to include streaming services?

More importantly, how would you go about placing restrictions on a service without time limitations like television? It seems there are a lot of dilemmas to explore here and we are only beginning to scrape the surface of what might eventually be a whole new way of looking at local broadcast industries.