For years, the most comprehensive survey of Kiwis’ media habits has shown local media losing ground to offshore invaders. This year it says we’re ‘settling down’ and local media may be ‘stabilising’. Is the tide really turning back to New Zealand’s under-pressure outlets, and going out on the likes of Netflix and TikTok?
Photo: RNZ Mediawatch
“Young people get their news and entertainment from YouTube, TikTok and Instagram - not Stuff the Herald and RNZ. Young people thought locally made content was cringe and not high-quality enough. But a lot of the time, young people didn't know it even existed," daily podcast The Detail reported last year just after NZ On Air released research on the media habits of New Zealanders aged 15-24.
“The most popular local media platform - TVNZ - came in at a distant eighth, behind YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix, TikTok and Snapchat. Those big technology platforms... own the attention of young New Zealanders," Spinoff founder Duncan Grieve told The Detail.
The prospect of the existing audience thinning out and being replaced by a younger generation that doesn’t know they exist was confronting for local media.
But while young people may be the future, they’re only a part of the present-day audience NZ On Air has surveyed every year for the past decade.
Those ‘Where are the Audiences?’ (WATA) surveys have also painted a picture of the declining reach of established homegrown media - and offshore-owned online platforms eating more of the New Zealand media’s lunch year after year.
Hear Mediawatch report on these issues in this week's show here
Three years ago NZ On Air found offshore invader Netflix was used by 40 percent of Kiwis - up from just 14 percent five years earlier.
Last year the survey found almost two out of three people aged 40-59 were using YouTube, and over 60s were going online at record rate too.
What’s the latest?
New Zealand’s media bigwigs must have braced for another blast of data continuing confirming the megatrend of their outlets ceding yet more of the attention economy to offshore online digital platforms.
But the headline this year‘s survey was that New Zealanders’ media behaviour was ‘settling down’.
“The year-on-year growth of global media platform audiences in New Zealand appears to be slowing - while the decline for local platforms may be stabilising,” said NZ On Air.
Netflix’s use has declined this year from 42 percent to 38 percent and fewer of us are paying for subscription video-on-demand across the board.
Sixty percent of us still watch New Zealand TV channels regularly for an average of three-and-a-half hours a day, either live-to-air on-demand.
And even after controversially killing Newshub, Warner Bros Discovery’s ThreeNow app got a big jump in popularity after the owners made significant and overdue improvements last year.
Listening to the radio has lifted a little after several years in decline; 46 percent of us listen to radio stations - including their online services - even though half of us stream music each day as well.
And podcast listening is up too, reaching 18 percent of New Zealanders each day.
“Local media strikes back” declared The Spinoff. Are local media really pushing back the offshore onslaught?
Photo: 123RF
This year’s WATA survey was - again - conducted by Glasshouse Consulting, which surveyed 1408 people aged over 15 throughout the country from 10 April to 13 May. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 2.6 percent.
“The most striking finding is that we are still engaging with local [media] despite the fact that we are moving more to global and digital,” Glasshouse media insights specialist Amanda Wisnewski told Mediawatch.
“That's encouraging for the local broadcasters, particularly around ‘time spent’. That's a classic measure of engagement.
“Netflix has had quite a significant decline [after] the crackdown on sharing passwords, for example. But those global platforms are still very high reaching numbers for those younger audiences.
“There's some little changes that suggest they may be trying other things. Going to audio podcasts, for example, which have shown very high growth for that young audience. Maybe there's niche platforms that the young audiences are moving towards? Maybe they are consciously trying to have less screen time? This is all just speculation though.
“Radio certainly has shown some resilience and it's just as competitive as it always was. For the local broadcasters, it's all about content. We’ve seen an increase for broadcasters' video-on-demand for the 15-to-39s year on year.”
“I think it's encouraging. As long as the broadcasters continue to... invest in their digital platforms, that should be helpful. Radio, perhaps should just keep on doing what they're doing... and news isn't dead yet.”
RNZ was overtaken by Newstalk ZB for national audience reach for the first time in this survey.
“It's probably indicating that there has been a decline for RNZ but [these are] relatively small numbers and we won't know for sure until another study next year.”
Plateau? Or blip?
Photo: 123rf
As much as local media bosses would like to think the appeal of global online media platforms has peaked, This just one survey of 1400 people. Is it wishful thinking to see this as a turning of the tide for under-pressure local media?
“You've got to keep in mind that Netflix only came into New Zealand in 2015 and their growth in this market has been phenomenal. But you know, it does show that the growth has leveled off, certainly for those [subscription video-on-demand] players in the market,” TVNZ’s executive editor of news Phil O’Sullivan told Mediawatch.
“Our hope at TVNZ is that, you know, some of those advertisers are going to choose local over global platforms, and perhaps some of the revenue will return [to] TVNZ+. We're putting more effort from a news perspective into that space as well.
“That's where the audiences are going. But we still have to service those big TV audiences who are still watching linear TV while at the same time pivoting towards what we're doing in the digital space. It's a tricky dance that we're doing, but we're up for it.”
“It's a big call from one survey result,” RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson told Mediawatch. “But if you take a step back and you think about the overall sustainability of a plurality of local media and local content... that's not going to be assured without a lot of work by a lot of people.
“It would be complacent for us just to think the challenge is over.”