A new report has discovered a drastic fall in media consumption and highlighted how few of us place trust in mainstream media news. John Turnbull writes.
LATE LAST WEEK, embattled consulting giant Deloitte released its annual Media and Entertainment Consumer Insights report. With a sample size of 2,000 Australians, this report breaks down how Aussies are consuming media and where they choose to get their news, revealing some concerning trends for traditional publishers.
Starting with the big numbers, overall media consumption is down by 10% year on year, which represents an average of four hours and 40 minutes less media consumed each week. The main platforms that have seen declines are streaming video services, such as Netflix which has dropped by over two hours from ten hours 25 minutes to eight hours 20 minutes a week, and free-to-air TV, which has dropped by around an hour and a half.
It's interesting to note at this point that, if you put aside FTA streaming services like 9Now (also known as Broadcast Video On Demand or BVOD), the average consumption of streaming video services and free-to-air TV is equal at eight hours and 20 minutes per week.
Time spent listening to the radio, gaming and watching free video platforms like YouTube has also dropped with only two categories showing consumption increases: Podcasts and Audiobooks have seen an increase of 25 minutes a week while News and Magazines have seen an increase of 40 minutes.
Sidebar: the grouping of News and Magazines is a throwback to when consumers used to pick up copies of Cleo, Elle and Zoo alongside their daily newspapers. Quaint, but not particularly useful in 2024.
There is good and bad news for advertisers. Gen Z reports a far higher level of susceptibility to advertising than older generations, with 70% of Zoomers influenced by social media platforms, contrasted against the cynical 37% of “matures” influenced by free-to-air TV. The downside, of course, is that younger generations are far more likely to practice ad-avoiding behaviour (such as using VPNs) and have less money to spend overall.
Looking at who Australians trust, three in four of us tend to think the major news publishers are at least moderately trustworthy. Taking this into account, it’s interesting to look at the fringes — 22% of respondents think that established major news publishers are not very trustworthy, a figure which eclipses the 17% who find them very trustworthy.
While half of those surveyed find news on social media to be not very trustworthy, this doesn’t change the fact that it’s the main source of news for around 17% of Australians, skewing heavily to younger generations. This statistic is more concerning considering the prevalence of misinformation across social platforms and the recent submission to Federal Parliament from Meta that they had ‘never thought about news as a way to minimise misinformation/disinformation on our services’.
John Turnbull is a cultural consultant with over a dozen years of experience connecting with and understanding diverse Australian communities.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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