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NZ On Air’s latest audience trends: traditional media holds strong, while digital continues to grow

NZ On Air has released a report with research carried out by Glasshouse Consulting on Kiwis’ media consumption habits, finding the most rapid change is with younger audiences and that New Zealanders continue to tune in to traditional media in the largest numbers.

1,400 Kiwi New Zealanders aged 15 plus were asked about what media they consumed “yesterday” and if they had “ever used” particular media.

The research is a follow-up to a survey first carried out in 2014 by Colmar Brunton and the same methodology and questions were used for this survey, according to NZ On Air’s website.

This survey included 400 people interviewed online, as the 2013 Census showed 15 percent of households have no landline.

Unsurprisingly, it found traditional media is still dominant, but it may not be for long with the rise of online video sites like YouTube and Facebook and the New Zealand launch of SVOD services.

Online video (Facebook, YouTube) is up from 49 percent to 64 percent. Pay platform TV is down from 68 percent to 60 percent.

Linear TV has a reach of 86 percent weekly (down from 95 percent in 2014), with New Zealanders dedicating more than two and a half hours per day and listening to more than an hour and a half of broadcast radio each day.

Live radio is down in audience from 83 percent in 2014 to 78 percent, newspapers (including online) are down from 78 percent to 74 percent.

The number of people who listen to music on Spotify has taken a jump from 11 percent to 21 percent and online New Zealand radio has also risen, from 12 percent to 18 percent.

More New Zealanders now consuming music via streaming each day (33 percent) than listening to music on CDs/iPods (27 percent). In 2014, 23 percent listened via streaming and 38 percent listened to CDs/iPods.

Downloading songs or albums is the activity that the largest number of New Zealanders have ever done (30 percent), but it is the activity that the fewest do weekly (four percent) and this has not increased since 2014.

Total SVOD viewership has gone up from 12 percent in 2014 to 35 percent this year, while New Zealand SVOD (New Zealand Netflix, Lightbox) is at 26 percent (not measured in 2014).

The report cites the biggest change in media consumption since 2014 as the growth of SVOD consumption since the launch of Netflix, Lightbox and Neon in New Zealand.

In 2014, New Zealanders spent six minutes per day watching SVODs, that has now jumped significantly to 40 minutes per day and one in four New Zealanders (23 percent) tune into a New Zealand or overseas SVOD service each day.

More than one in three New Zealanders now watch SVOD content on an overseas or New Zealand based site each week, but New Zealand international radio, and the use of unauthorised platforms have shown less growth since 2014.

While NZ on demand use has grown since 2014, it’s still not as rapid as SVOD.

Nearly one in five New Zealanders use on-demand sites each day. This equates to 45 percent of this media’s total weekly reach. In 2014 these sites hit a similar 41 percent of their weekly reach each day

On-demand has the lowest frequency of use each week compared to TV, radio (on air and online), online video, SVOD, and music streaming.

Streaming, downloading or torrenting TV shows from an overseas site continues to be the most common activity, however just one in ten (11 percent) do this weekly (up from seven percent in 2014)

The biggest audience on single channels, stations or sites are TV One, YouTube, TV3, Facebook and TV2. TV One’s audience has dropped from 48 percent to 40 percent, while TV3’s has dropped from 35 percent to 31 percent.

Streamed, downloaded and torrented TV shows have risen from seven percent to 11 percent.

However, devices used to consume media and simultaneous media consumption weren’t included.

Nearly all forms of media have grown since 2014. YouTube and Facebook now reach more than six in ten New Zealanders each week, music via YouTube and Spotify reaches five in ten and two in ten New Zealanders respectively, New Zealand on-demand sits now reach four in ten New Zealanders each week and online New Zealand radio reaches nearly two in ten New Zealanders.

The research shows Aucklanders are more engaged with online media, while south islanders remaining more engaged with traditional broadcast media.

In the comment section of a radio ratings story by Public Address, Stephen Knightly pointed out that the report didn’t look at anything interactive “like apps, ebooks, interactive documentaries and games yet they look at more niche things like torrenting and webseries. It only looks at how to take linear content and distribute it in digital ways. NZ On Air’s Digital Media Fund does fund apps and the like and this report is supposed to inform their strategic review so interactive media are worryingly conspicuous by their absence.”

See the full report here.

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