September 8, 2025 • 47 mins
By replacing linear, scheduled programming with huge libraries of on-demand content, have the business models and power structures of traditional tv been toppled for good?
To help us see the full picture, we’re joined by Amanda Lotz, an award-winning author, professor and research leader at Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre.
https://www.amazon.com.au/stores/Amanda-D.-Lotz/author/B001JSDEIW
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adlotz/
https://bsky.app/profile/drtvlotz.bsky.social
00:00 The Evolution of Television and Media Studies
03:02 Impact of the Internet on Traditional TV
05:34 The Post-Network Era Explained
08:12 Changing Audience Behaviours and Viewing Habits
10:34 The Role of Technology in Viewing Experiences
13:21 The Inevitability of On-Demand Viewing
15:45 Netflix's Influence on Streaming Services
18:14 The Australian Broadcasting Landscape
20:41 Metrics of Success in a Fragmented Market
25:02 Understanding Netflix's Viewing Patterns
27:17 Traditional Broadcasters vs. Streaming Disruption
30:59 The New Golden Age of Television
33:22 Local Content Quotas in Australia
37:05 The Future of Traditional Broadcasting
42:50 The Evolution of Video Consumption
Let us know what else you’d like us to look into, or just say hello at https://www.ruinedbytheinternet.com/
internet, broadcast television, streaming services, viewing habits, audience engagement, television business models, media consumption, digital media, content creation, future of television
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking has the
Internet ruined broadcast television by replacing linear
scheduled programming with huge libraries of on demand content?
Have the business models and power structures of traditional
TV being toppled for good? To help us see the full picture,
we're joined by Amanda Lotz, an award winning author, professor
(00:21):
and research leader at Queensland University of
Technology's Digital Media Research Centre.
Amanda, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the
show. I'm very pleased to be here.
Thanks so much for having me. Before we get into it, can you
tell us a bit about the work that you do and how you came to
this area of expertise? I began studying television.
(00:45):
I was described myself, I guess back then as a as a media
scholar. I still do.
I trained in the late to or late90s and my object moved on me,
so I was based in the US at thattime.
I'm American. I've been in Australia since
2019. Everything about how the
industry worked in the US started to change right around
(01:06):
2000 when I started in the field.
And I figured out pretty quicklythat one of the consequences of
the business changing was that the stories were changing.
Like so when you change the way the machine works in terms of
the business of television, you could change what kind of shows
got made. And that was pretty interesting
(01:27):
to me. And so that really set off on a
journey that I didn't expect to be quite so long.
But the distribution model in terms of the arrival of the
Internet and the business model in terms of being able to have
subscriber funded or consumer funded video television, both of
those are pretty significant changes.
(01:48):
And so I've been tracing the relationship between how that
changes both the work worlds of those who who work in the
industry, as well as trying to understand what they can make.
All because I'm interested in the relationship of those
stories in the daily life of of people around the world.
And we still spend a tonne of time watching stories and shows
(02:11):
and videos, depending on what you want to call them.
And so that's my origin story. Yeah, cool.
And you mentioned there, you know, it's been obviously a lot
of change through that time, as we all know that the
introduction of the Internet hasoffered that on demand viewing.
How else did it make the traditional approach to TV
obsolete for modern audiences? I think the, the place I'd like
(02:31):
to start is sort of what the Internet, and I'm doing my
little air quotes here for listeners, what the Internet
means for me instead. That's sort of it's a key object
here in your title. The Internet in this
conversation is a distribution technology.
It's a way of getting video fromone place to another.
So we had previous distribution technologies, broadcasting and
(02:52):
then cable and satellite more orless in different places.
Australia is a little unusual inthe degree to which it had very
low take up of cable and no satellite.
So different technologies, different distribution
technologies can do different things and the fancy university
word for that is affordances. So the affordances of
(03:13):
broadcasting as broadcasting began for radio in the early
last century, it was, it was a world changing technology in
much the same way that the Internet has been more recently.
But broadcasting as a technology, it can do one, it
can send a signal from one. So let's say from 9 network out
to many. That's the origin of of
(03:34):
broadcast in the word, right? So it can do one to many over
the air. So you know that all you really
need is an antenna or a set withan antenna in there to be able
to get that signal. And that technology again, sort
of media economics word is non excludable.
So I if I'm nine network and I'msending out my signal, I can't
(03:55):
stop anyone from getting it. And that kind of requires
certain business models and it prevents other business models.
But you know that was for decades normal.
That's just how it was. Cable came along in satellite
and largely replicated a lot of the affordances of broadcasting
in terms of those two were initially one to many
(04:15):
technologies, but they were excludable.
So you had to you, it didn't go out to everyone, it only went
out to those who paid. And so you could limit and that
change the business a bit and and those features what the
technology can do sort of led the business to work in certain
ways. So because of broadcasting and
the capacity limits in terms of how many signals could be
(04:38):
available at a certain time, we had a lot of scarcity.
So there were few operating and you had this organisation around
a schedule or what you called linear, right?
Well, what makes Internet distribution then so different
is that Internet distribution, whether it's your mobile phone
or it's a wire based NBN line, let's say it does not have those
(04:59):
one to many requirements. It can be many to many or you
know what we've already called sort of on demand.
It's what makes it possible to not have a schedule, to have a
library, to let different peoplewatch things, different times to
start and stop. And and that, that's, if you
think back to how television used to be like, that's a real
game changer. And I would argue that audiences
(05:21):
couldn't even imagine, I think until quite late.
We we didn't even realise how limited we were in what we could
watch and how we could watch it until all of a sudden we had
these experiences. Speaking of game changers, your
book The Television Will Be Revolutionised came out in 2007.
Having been a leading voice on the future of TV for so many
(05:43):
years now, what surprised you the most about how it's all
played out since then? Probably how long the change has
taken. Oh really?
Yeah. So the the 1st edition came out
in 07, which was just, I just missed Netflix and because of
had it necessitated a second edition, which I did in 2014.
(06:06):
And even at that point of streaming was pretty early
stages. And so I think when you do the
kind of work that I do in terms of like understanding, OK, the
business model works like this, the technology can do this and
then you try to understand what should happen.
We could see where we are now easily 20 years ago.
(06:28):
And so the fact that it has taken 20 years to get there, I
guess that has been the most surprising to me.
Right, yeah. And look, that would be
something interesting to kind ofget into as we go through this,
whether that rate of change may increase as as we move forward.
But you popularised the concept of the post network era.
(06:49):
Can you briefly explain how that's defined for audiences?
Yeah. So I'm trying to think it
doesn't apply the the periodization doesn't apply as
well in the Australian context. But it was a way of
acknowledging that even though we still had television, we were
talking about television and howit was changing in the early
2000s. It was a periodization to
(07:10):
recognise that the industry and the experience of television had
changed before. So in the US the network era
runs upfront, runs from the beginning of television in the
50s up until kind of the mid 80sand then in in, and this is the
part that doesn't really happen.In Australia from the mid 80s to
(07:30):
the early 2000s, we sort of havewhat what I call the multi
channel transition. And this was the period of time
in which cable became adopted and Americans began to access
far more channels. So by the end of the 80s, over
half of Americans had cable. And just just as a point of
(07:52):
reference, Australia barely everhit above 30% and Australians
didn't start to get cable until the late 90s.
Yeah, that's what that's what I was just just thinking.
I can remember the first few people I ever knew had it, like
their parents had it in the house and it's like, wow, look
at all these charts. And that would have been late
90s. I think it was.
I think it was Foxtel or or something like that.
(08:13):
Would have been that. And so those early in the US,
those early systems were smaller.
They may have only been about 20-30 channels, but still that
era and that kind of that process of people adopting it
broke up the the scarcity in a way that really doesn't happen
to in Australia until 2009 with the multi channels.
And so, so the post network era in the US, it was sort of, well,
(08:39):
I thought we were sort of more at the beginning of it when I
originally wrote in, in, in 2007.
But you know, it, it, it certainly has taken a while to
come into form. And it's sort of just that
acknowledgement that the environment for accessing video
isn't limited just to what at that point had been, you know,
hundreds of cable channels, but also this arrival of this on
(09:01):
demand space that has continued to evolve steadily.
But I, I do think we're, if you were to ask me where I think we
are now, it doesn't feel like the sand beneath my feet is
shifting every year in the way that it did for a really long
time. Like I think we, we've kind,
we're starting to, to stabilise.We'll still have a lot of
(09:21):
change. I think we have a lot of
services that are probably not going to make it.
But I think everyone can see thethe shape of probably where
we're heading in the next 10 years in a way that was not the
case for quite a while. And do you think that there you
know the reason it may have taken so long was, was due to
development not happening as fast as as possible or was it
(09:43):
push back and and stalling say maybe from those traditional
broadcasters? Yeah, it's somewhat different
things in different places. It's not a coincidence that UK
and Australia had, you know, what is it I player in at the
BBC and I view here before therewas any on demand service in the
US. And that was the power of the
(10:06):
companies at that point in the US that owned the US cable
providers became the Internet providers and most of them also
owned one of the big content studios.
And, and so they were protectingbusinesses there because of all
of that intellectual property. And they were very concerned
(10:27):
about what had happened with music happening in video in
terms of, of, of piracy and, andready access.
And so the established industry managed to stall things, I think
pretty effectively for quite some time.
The other thing too, that sort of makes a difference market by
market was the national approachto Internet availability and
pricing, right? And so because video required
(10:49):
better compression and Internet speeds, that too sort of changed
the, the time scale in, in, in different places.
And then the technologies of reception, right?
Like I think we can't underestimate so 2007 as the
year that the smartphones come out in 2010 tablets in terms of
(11:09):
people with some money having access to devices that really
help them begin to engage with screens in a very different way.
Yeah, and, and, and that engaging with screens, you know,
in the concept of television, one of the things I've, I've
thought about with this is whether the, you know, the
Internet and, and tech has changed the experience of, of
(11:31):
watching TV. You know, like even I can
remember Once Upon a time kind of in that linear programming
ATV or a movie. It was an event, you know, like
that was what you would kind of gather around for, like be at my
house at 8:30. I don't know, they're playing
Jaws on Channel 7 or something tonight.
And then it feels like now, as we've moved along and
(11:51):
everything's so readily available when you want to, you
can kind of curate the experience that you're enjoying
by adding television into the background in that format.
So rather than being the centrepiece, it's almost an
accessory to an event. Is that something that you you
would say has generally happened, or is TV still as big
as your card as it once was in various forms?
(12:14):
I think it varies a lot by age group, you know, So the the
thing I have teenagers and and the thing that's fascinating to
me is the way that they walk through the house, often with
their headphones on, but playingshows, which might be, let's say
(12:34):
the 19th time through Gilmore Girls on Netflix, or it might be
the side men on YouTube and a series of other videos that have
all been queued up. But they, you know, they come
in, they make their lunch and and they move through the house.
You know, that's all I would call all that television in in
the way that, you know, I probably had a radio on when I
was that age. But I think what's also
(12:56):
important is there's been, I think an assumption that that's
the only way anyone's watching and that also from some of the
work that we've been doing talking to viewers isn't true.
It's still the case that more than half of time Australians
spend watching movies in the home, they're watching with
someone else. And almost half the time that
(13:17):
they're watching scripted series, they're with someone
else. And so the screens, the on
demand, the way that it interacts with, you know, sort
of the human condition is reallyvaried and we do see a lot of
old patterns continuing. I guess I think the takeaway
that I'd have is that it provides people with much more
(13:39):
flexibility. You know, so I would look back
at that, you know, moment that you reference and remember like,
oh, we can't get home in time towatch and such, or, oh, I have
homework that night or, you know, like the way in which
audiences were beholden to the schedule.
And so I think probably the biggest change, and you know, if
(14:02):
you talk to young people, they just cannot even fathom
scheduling their life around everything that they would watch
in a way that was just normal for folks in their 40s and 5th
and older. Yeah, totally.
And I think that finding something to suit whatever your
current state or need might be, it's something that you've
(14:22):
spoken out about previously, youknow, in the different types of
audience motives. Would you say that on demand
viewing was inevitable as a solution to that?
I don't think inevitable becauseone of the things that's really
surprising and when I think about that kind of those moments
of transition from the mid 90s to, you know, really, let's say
(14:42):
2015 audiences, we didn't know what we were missing, right?
Like there was no push from on the viewer side really for these
technologies. And you know, like, I think back
to the American experience of, of Netflix rolling out Netflix
was for a really long time just a way to get videos by mail.
And that was its its first core business.
(15:04):
And the extent to which the company really had to market and
convince people that what it provided was was something
different and better. And and part of that was that
digital video recorders had beenpretty significantly adopted in
the US because the cable companies kind of gave them to
(15:25):
you. So to people were doing a fair
bit of time shifting already andthey had all those channels and
said there was, I think, a real tension between whether a
streaming service could actuallybe worthwhile.
The the vibe for a long time in the US was that this Netflix
thing wasn't going to happen. Yeah, right.
(15:46):
It really was a negotiation between, you know, that service
and it's not coincidental that it was Netflix, right?
Netflix was didn't have wasn't still earning tonnes and tonnes
of money in the old way. So it was invested in change and
it was invested in bringing something new to viewers.
And they have responded. Netflix is, is such a good
(16:07):
example. I, I remember, you know, the
first time I, I heard that it what used to be something
delivered to your letterbox. I I was blown away at what
seemed like a much more incremental change from, you
know, say Blockbuster and video shops to the kind of the world
of streaming. But would you say if Netflix was
that leader when they started toinvest into streaming, would you
(16:28):
say that either that, or was it something else?
That was the kind of particular moment when the digital world's
impact on breaking that broadcast TV stranglehold became
kind of undeniable. You know, I think I'm going to
keep, I'm going to move back andforth here between the national
context and then they are prettydifferent.
But I think in Australia, reallythe, the key moment in the story
(16:50):
was 2009 and the launch of the multi channels, because it, it,
it's at that point that the business model of those linear
broadcasters kind of takes the hit that they won't come back
from. And, and to be fair, if, if we
look at their revenue, they werein decline from the early 2000s.
So I think kind of the the coming realisation and threat of
(17:14):
that end of that magic scarcity that they had for so long.
And then the reality, which was even though they were able to
own or licence effectively the multi channels as well.
So 9 went to, you know, 9 go andGem and all those, you know,
they went from the cost of programming 1 channel to the
cost of programming 3 or 4. And they had to have known that
(17:37):
this was going to happen. But the reality is there was no
new advertising money. So their costs increase, but
there's no new revenue. There isn't magic new money.
And that really began the destabilisation.
And so you see then from 2009, if you look at something like
the hours of, of drama that they're producing, it starts to
(18:00):
decline. They're starting to buy more
stuff overseas. And that's a lot of what's on
the the other channels. And so I think in the US, you
or, and then in Australia, you have what you can get on
broadcast television eroding andat an earlier point than maybe
you do in some other places. And that that effectively then
just, you know, like because Australia and so few Australians
(18:25):
had adopted cable, which which Ikind of understand as it wasn't
a great option, right? It was pretty expensive and you
didn't get a lot for it, so you know that it made sense.
And this is what happens when wedon't have competition.
You had a market though, that was so hungry for more choice.
And you know, that's how I explained that there's a fair
(18:45):
bit of unauthorised accessing ofNetflix before it's officially
here. There's a pretty big pirate
culture in Australia. And in the early Internet
environment, all of that makes sense because people weren't
having free access to the kinds of content that they were
interested in. And so Australians runs to the
(19:06):
streaming services. I haven't looked at the numbers
in the last year or so, but I want to say from 2020, Australia
was the most subscribed country to Netflix by population.
Oh really? And, and, and I think that it,
it speaks to the lack of choice in the marketplace and that
(19:26):
relatively, yes, it's, it's a thing you have to pay for, but
so many other markets were paying so much already.
In the US, you had 90% of households paying at least 100
USA month for cable back from, you know, kind of the 90s.
(19:47):
And so that too kind of shaped how the sector developed. the US
is figuring out there was a ridiculous amount of money
available in the market because of of those conditions.
There was much less money available in the marketplace
here because you were really overwhelmingly dependent on
advertising. Yeah.
And obviously there's been a huge kind of qualitative hit as
(20:10):
those advertising dollars have run to whether it's be VOD or,
or even something, you know, like YouTube advertising.
But do you think that Netflix may have been taken up so
successfully in Australia because our networks here just
could not afford to kind of bid on any of the content from,
(20:30):
let's say, the American industry, which you'd be a
behemoth? When I first got here I, I kept
asking how do you have 3 broadcasters?
When I realised that there were like less than 30 million
households, right. So the US is 10, had 10 times
the number of households and fora really long time had only
(20:51):
three broadcast networks. I think this is, you're right,
it's all kind of simple economics.
There probably shouldn't have ever been a third broadcast
network in Australia. It's probably the case now that
Australians would be much betterserved if there were only one,
and one that would have enough have access to enough
advertising dollars to really beable to to put together a
(21:13):
stronger offering. Yeah, right.
That's, that's so interesting tohear because Eve, I remember,
you know, I grew up in, in Victoria, I was like 7910ABC SBS
and and that felt so small, likeso limiting.
So it's interesting to hear thatthree, the commercial ones was
(21:34):
excessive for what our population was probably like, I
don't know, 20 million less or something back then.
In terms of, you know, those those commercial networks that
we just mentioned, they're kind of pushing now into setting up
their own B VOD stations to try and capture some of that user
behaviour. Now.
(21:54):
Do you think these are merely kind of life support for these
networks or, you know, will there be a way that they could
eventually capitalise on that and and stay competitive?
Probably not. Humans right now just have so
much choice. And even the BVOD options
aren't, you know, it's, it's thestuff that's already on.
(22:16):
So it's a convenience option. And then it's a a bunch of
really old cheap content. Yeah.
Yeah, look, that's, that's exactly it.
And it made me think of, you know, sometimes I'm I'll be
making lunch if I'm working fromhome and I might have like the
TV on in the living room and I see what's going on during the
day and I'm just thinking, this is absolute brain rot stuff.
(22:39):
Oh my God, how have they kind ofbeen reduced to this?
And then as you said, when I do look at the Bivod stuff and the
big hits on, there is something like Married at First Sight or
like a, a terrible local remake of, of an international success
story. I'm just, I just can't imagine
how the local industry is surviving, or maybe it isn't.
(23:01):
In the past when we referred to something as a hit, what kind of
metrics were we talking about with that?
And as audiences and platforms have just fragmented further and
further and further, has this accepted hit metric reduced and
fragmented as audience have or is it still kind of kept where
(23:21):
it was? Yeah, that that's one of my
favourite questions things to talk about, right.
So like a hit I think we can regard as something that is the
most watched, right? Like so like Netflix every day
they have their these are the top ten titles in Australia and
something has to be the most watched.
(23:41):
Like it's just math. And I think especially for those
of us who lived through the before, it's very easy for our
brains to believe that being number one on Netflix is similar
to like being number one on Australian television in, in a,
in a week in 1990. And, and numerically it's just
(24:03):
not. And, and part of this is that
we, the way that hits on streaming are, are, are
quantified is an entirely different number, right?
So you've got sort of two thingshappening.
You have almost all the time you're getting a global number.
(24:24):
So that's kind of hard to compare to the past.
And then the other thing that you have is it's a cumulative
number, right? So you know, it's, it's this
week's viewers plus next week's viewers.
And and so you know, like 15,000,000 people have watched a
thing and the way that audience data was gathered in the pre
(24:45):
digital time, we don't have anything to kind of reasonably
compare. I like what I would love to have
is in, let's say on on one day in the year 2000, how many
people around the globe watched an episode of Friends, right?
And that that's the number that we need to be comparing with,
(25:07):
you know, how many people have watched the stranger Things.
And so so no, we are not at all talking about the same numbers.
And and that really does lead usto misunderstand a bit what's
going on. And then and the other thing
that I've been trying to pull apart, given what Netflix does
(25:28):
and doesn't make public, there are roughly 5000 titles in any
given Netflix library. We're getting data about the top
ten. If we look at some of the
additional data that they've been giving us, you know, sort
of like their whole library oversix months, it's global data
which is limiting. But looking at that, it seems
(25:51):
that that top 10 might be accounting for just like 2 or 3%
of viewing. Right.
So most of the viewing on Netflix isn't the things that
are getting pushed in our face, clearly, because Netflix has
very good retention rates relative to other streamers and
relative to these kind of businesses.
Historically, people's people legitimately like the service.
(26:14):
They pay money and they keep paying money so people are
happy. Netflix can see what people are
watching that makes them happy. They are letting the rest of us
kind of exist in this world in which we think hits are really
important. But I I I'm sceptical.
You know, it makes total sense that obviously Netflix would be
driven by an algorithm which enhances the service for any
(26:36):
given user to potentially be served stuff that they like.
But that point there around these are the top 10 Netflix
shows. That's something I'll keep in
mind next time looking through that that library with something
to watch and it's telling me this is the best thing today.
I'll I'll be a bit more sceptical about it On the topic
of Netflix. And you say that was the kind of
(26:56):
the big disruptor looking back to, you know, when they were
delivering, say, DVDs to your mailbox or whatever it was
before they introduced the streaming platform.
What would you say that the biggest mistake traditional
broadcasters made in underestimating or reacting too
slowly to, you know, this new technology?
(27:17):
Oh, I try to have sympathy because I think we have to
remember the the constraints that these decisions are, are
made in, right. I know this period of time
better in the US than here. And the sector was making
extraordinary high amounts of money.
Like it's really just been in the last few years, years that
(27:38):
cable subscriptions, the just the last month the US had fallen
to 50% of homes having cable. And that's really where all of
the money was. And as long as that money was
coming in, it was so in their interest to just continue to 1
executive described it, ride thedinosaur down.
(28:00):
So I think if we look at a company like Disney, we we see
probably one of the more graceful transitions.
I still don't think we see the Disney plus service having a
strategy that is characteristic of an on demand service in the
same way that I think Netflix most days.
(28:21):
I think Netflix actually has a strategy that aligns.
So that's all to say that I think the mistakes were very
were largely understandable and that you probably had a lot of
well, especially men of a certain age who thought that
they could get out of here before it would affect them,
right? You know, retire before the
business falls apart. And so, you know, I think you
(28:42):
also then have to look at that the, the stock market and the
investor class for being willingto, to not reward the companies
that were willing to take the longer bet, right.
There's just so much pressure on, you know, quarterly
performance that it was hard to have a five year strategy when
you need to have a five year strategy.
(29:03):
So I, I think those are the reasons why it just, nobody
moved fast enough or recognise that the business was going to
be quite different. I guess the thing that I've been
writing about lately, no one talked about and no one's still
talking about the way that scarcity made the business what
(29:25):
it was. And like, so there was this
invisible thing that accounted for how profitable the sector
was and the, the strategies. Like nobody knew like we can do
this because they have no choice.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. But that was true.
And so we thought that people love television because so many
people watched it. But the truth is people watched
(29:46):
a lot of things just 'cause it was on, because they had no
other choice. And we know that now because
things came along largely from outside of the sector.
You know, I think Netflix and YouTube are probably the the two
pigs. You give them choice and they're
out of here, right? They, they have found things
that connect to their interests or their sensibilities or give
(30:09):
them what they want at the moment that they want it.
And so understanding that a world in which you can't rely on
scarcity to push a consumer intoa certain place, nobody has, I
think, really recognised the difference in the strategy
needed in that environment. Yeah, right.
That dinosaur and those are brilliant.
(30:32):
I love that. But those changes in in the
television business you mentioned in your book, we now
disrupt this broadcast that it'sled to a new golden age of TV.
And I don't think there's many streaming service watches out
there at the moment that wouldn't think there's so much
great stuff. It's just kind of which
platforms you actually want to be subscribed to at any given
(30:52):
moment. Can you briefly explain how the
new golden age of TV has happened and and what's come out
of it? You know, I think that age
really brought to you by the American consumer.
Yeah. It was really the decade and a
half to two decades of Americanspaying just unconscionable cable
(31:17):
bills that provided the kind of revenue that the studios needed
to start to experiment with somenew shows.
And I think a lot of that happened more on cable than it
has for the streaming services. And what happens when we move
into the streaming services is it starts to get really
difficult to see the patterns orto see the whole view.
(31:40):
And so you do have, because you have these really contradictory
stories in an on demand world. You have Adam Sandler movies and
wrestling at the same time. You have clearly what are
efforts to win Oscar awards and sort of tiny art movies or
(32:01):
series. And so that I think has been a
real challenge for people to wrap their heads around that
Netflix can simultaneously be all of those things because not
everyone is watching any of those four things, right?
Whereas in, in in that linear era, you really, it was a time
of having a brand, you had a certain kind of show on your
(32:23):
channel and people came to you because they came to expect that
was what they would offer. And I think what, what I found
when I arrived was that a lot ofAustralians associate that
content with Netflix because although it had originated from
American cable networks, when itcame to Australia, a lot of it
came via Netflix. And so I think they're depending
(32:45):
where you're located in the globe, you may have may think of
those shows as being streaming shows, but many of those titles
would have been cable shows in the US.
Yeah, and and I guess networks had this kind of star power that
they could use to to draw on andobviously the same through all
forms of entertainment. But one thing I did want to
speak to you around as well was we know in Australia there's
(33:08):
local content quotas, A, and it's still relevant B, what is
going on with those and see how would these compete with these
international platforms not bound by these rules?
Right, right. So the actual policy of local
content quotas is pretty silly in this environment.
(33:32):
But that doesn't mean that the policy goals can't be achieved.
They just need to be achieved ina different way, right?
So quotas worked on a schedule because broadcasters like each
and every minute of each and every day matters to them a lot,
right? Because it's scarcity.
Not with a library like you say,Netflix, you have to have 10%,
like, oh, right, I mean, that's going to cost us.
(33:54):
We have to licence it, but it's just going to sit there and
nobody's ever going to watch it and it's fine, right?
So a library doesn't really dealwith quote as well.
The conversation in Australia inrecent years has been, well, not
a quota exactly. Let's say that the services have
to, if they make, let's say $10 million a year off of Australian
(34:15):
subscribers, they'd have to spend a certain amount of that
making shows in Australia. OK, That at least functionally
could work. Then we need to know though,
what is the purpose of that policy?
Is the purpose of that policy tomake jobs for Australians or is
the purpose of that policy to have shows about Australia,
(34:36):
which historically the reason why we have content quotas was
to make shows about Australians.And so, you know, those things
could be possible if, you know, it's sort of tuned the right
way. But this question of of national
content is when we've been looking at in a lot of our
research and it's tricky if 60 some percent of Australians are
(34:59):
willing to pay monthly for Netflix and they know darn well
that that isn't going to get them much, if any Australian
content. Like it's like 1% of the
library, right? Like people are choosing to
spend their money on a thing that doesn't have Australian
content. That's that's significant.
Decent indicator. Yeah.
But that doesn't mean that they don't want it, right?
(35:21):
And so, like, I think the middleground here is taking advantage
of the mechanisms that exist that sort of maybe make more
sense to make sure those cultural stories are available.
One of the big problems with Netflix or Stan all those those
others are you do have to pay for them, right?
And so, you know, we should not be putting our cultural policy
(35:44):
behind pay walls. So we have the ABC and SBS and
those seem to be entities that probably would have access to
more Australians or Australians would have more ready access to
if we were concerned that there are Australian stories made
available. I just think that there are
policy lovers that make more sense in this context.
(36:07):
Part of why they worked so well for so long was that the
commercial broadcasters were making so much money and it
really wasn't too much to ask ofthem.
And again, Australian broadcasters, their whole point
of being was to attract the attention of Australians, the
streamers. You know, even Netflix with 67%
(36:28):
of Australians, it's still like 3% of their, you know, market.
So yeah, in order for policy to work well, you kind of have to
line up all the pieces in a way that, you know, makes sense.
At least policies more effectivethat way.
And so the world has just changed quite a bit from the era
in which those content quotas could work.
That that makes total sense. And and my next question that
(36:49):
would have come out of there wasaround what that would all mean
for, you know, these broad audience broadcasters like the
ABC and SBS. Is there anything that they
could do? Could they kind of plug into
these streamers to, I don't know, leverage relationships or
get features? I'm not sure how it works.
Yeah, no, it's, it's interesting.
We, I don't have as much data perhaps as as they do at this
(37:11):
point, but it's interesting to watch sort of the experiments
over time because right now there are quite a few original
ABC shows that are now availableon Netflix.
And I'll be honest, if I'm goingto watch something, it's
probably going to be through Netflix just because the
interface is so much easier and it's going to be more likely to
surface a thing that it knows that I'm interested in.
(37:32):
You know, it would be interesting to know whether more
or you know, what relatively arethe number of people who are
watching a thing, Australian specifically who are watching,
let's say Fisk on Netflix versusFisk on iview and ABC linear
like so there's there's interesting things to learn
there. ABC and SBS are in really
different positions. SBS relative to our interviews
(37:52):
and surveys, Australians are pretty happy with SBS and I
think part part of that is SBS is doing a specific thing right.
It's not trying to be everythingto everyone.
It has they, especially SBS online, it's curated in a way
that people know what to expect.Obviously not everyone's going
there, but it's identifiable to viewers as you know, they know
(38:16):
what they can get there and it'sdifferent from what they can get
anywhere else. In large part I think trying to
programme at the ABC has got to be maybe the hardest job in the
country. Yeah, look, I, I was just
thinking it could be an indicator that they're doing
actually the right job, because if you've got everybody saying
that the ABC is doing it wrong by them, maybe the ABC's got the
(38:36):
balance right. I, I don't know.
But there's been a lot of changes in, in what we call
television over the last 20 years.
In another 20 years do you thinktraditional TV broadcasting will
exist at all or will everything be replaced by say an Internet
and and technology only viewing landscape or something else?
(39:00):
I think to some degree that's going to be up to the government
and policy. We tend to take a lot of cues
from the UK, which may or may not be a good thing relative to
the size and makeup of our countries.
They're a bit different. But the UK is very aggressively
moving away from broadcasting asa distribution technology and
there's trying to study and figure out how to do that in a
(39:21):
way that it's not harmful. And I think there's some
conversation here about that as well.
I'm not deep in those the data of those conversations to
understand why my own sort of less super expert in this
particular area sense is that given especially the nature of
Australia's terrain and the difficulty that we've had with
(39:44):
Internet signals in a lot of places that, you know, rushing
into shutting off broadcasting may not have have as much value
as it might in other places. I think maintaining a national
broadcaster and perhaps one commercial broadcaster free to
air and, and if they want to also, you know, distribute
(40:06):
online, then fair be. But sort of the idea that we
should take what exists right now as Australian television and
reproduce it via Internet distribution.
I I don't see a lot of evidence that that's what audiences want,
but I think that, you know. You know, having those sort of
backup technologies, it is, you know, that we have those
moments. Most of us live lives that are
(40:28):
pretty full and it's sort of hard to get us to, you know,
show up at a certain time anymore.
But, you know, having those kindof contingencies doesn't seem
like a a bad thing. And I think, you know, coming
back to what is the job of the ABC, the ABC's job shouldn't be
to be everything to everyone, right?
But I think they could much moreclearly announce themselves as
(40:52):
we're the place for Australian content.
We're the place for, I mean, they're very well known for
their news. But to identify what is their
point of distinction that you kind of can't get if you're in
Australia, it's hard to get fromanywhere else.
If you want to connect to your community, we've got something
for you and really sort of not try to meet everyone's very
(41:15):
particular special need because they just can't.
But to to to figure out what is the thing that's really
important at a societal level. Double down on it so that people
know that that's the thing that they can go to and and that's
the that could be valuable over broadcast in the long run.
Yeah, absolutely. Defining a much stronger
identity, what it stands for could be a really good option
(41:37):
because as you you touched on a couple of minutes ago, just
turning off broadcast would probably be a mistake because we
know that broadcast is the thingthat still has that ability to
create those cultural moments that everybody can kind of just
just rally behind. Now, whether it's AFL grand
final, I don't know, people watch Melbourne Cup day like all
sorts of things. But you know, the most recent
(41:58):
one that I can think of that kind of captured everybody was
the Matildas in the World Cup. Like nobody thought those
numbers would be possible. Again, you know, the national
team, I think part of it is, is the commercial model is trying
to recreate that on a constant basis with many different
things, recognising that that people do like coming together
(42:18):
and sharing in moments like that.
But those those aren't the everyday.
And so you can't try to have a business model based on that
anymore. No, totally.
Hopefully they they stick aroundbecause we do need those shared
moments for everybody, especially as streaming and
digital gets so much more fragmented.
But just to finish up, where do you think the the idea of
(42:40):
television goes from here? And will the technology and, and
streaming based stuff that we'vebeen talking about inevitably be
able to deliver completely unique customised content for
every viewer at speed and scale?Like perhaps you go on the
Internet and you're served up adverts that are based on your
browsing. Like, will we potentially get to
(43:00):
a point where you're watching a film and knows everything you
like and it's kind of populated with that?
I've started using the word video a lot more, or at least
that's what I've been thinking about or when I talk to
Australians about what they're doing.
And, and part of that is to alsoinclude social media feeds,
which we haven't talked a lot about, but I'd say are very
(43:25):
important to the day. It's a big video, part of most
People's Daily lives. Last year, Meta revealed in an
earnings call that 60% of time spent on Facebook and Insta was
watching video. And you add that too.
We know really high levels of TikTok use and then YouTube and
(43:48):
when I've in, in the interviews that we've been doing, I'd say
especially sort of the 25 to 40 year old range.
What being on social media is for a lot of people at this
point is short videos related totheir interests.
We've been calling it a personalmedia stream and you, you talk
to them and you know, some people it's just like all
motorbikes. Like I, I love motorbikes.
(44:11):
I have all these videos about motorbikes.
It's coming in my feed. For some, it's often these
really different interests, likeI like crafts and history and
netball. And so like when you then think
about the, the, the crush of life and work and family, right?
And you get like 10 minutes of leisure at the end of the day,
(44:33):
you pull out that feed and and it is kind of delivering, you
know, you know, things that are interesting to you.
I think the important thing to understand is that those people
still like movies, they still like series, but what we see are
individuals kind of negotiating time and life and, and, and, you
(44:55):
know, the pressure of time I think is a really big one.
And so that that feed is kind ofreplacing what would have been
for me 20 years ago. All right, I got the dishes
done. The kids are taking care of it.
I'm gonna see what's on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So if you got, you know, less than an hour, you know, maybe
you do just swipe your way through.
And then on Friday, you watch 3 episodes of that really great
(45:16):
new show on Netflix or whatever.Right.
And so the, the patterns are, are shifting, you know, As for
like, I don't, I don't think we're that atomized, right?
You know, I, I, I don't think weneed individualised videos which
surely AI would make for us, butI do.
I think the technologies that wehave now are helping us to
(45:39):
maximise our leisure time and tobe able to find the very narrow
interest in whatever craft or sport and have other people who
are talking about it and who areknowing about it in a way that
was impossible before the Internet.
And it seems like as you've justsaid there, it allows us to
(46:02):
greatly increase the efficiency of getting into that, that
leisure that we want as opposed to, I don't know, hoping for the
best on that point. Do you think that the concept of
television is just a hangover from the actual, you know, box
of the past? Because you said something there
around whether you call it videoor even just kind of watching it
(46:23):
feels like a much broader catch all.
So I'll be interested to see howthat plays out as we move
forward. Thanks so much for that.
Amanda, What's on the horizon for you and where can people
follow what you're up to? Ah, the horizon is I'm at the
beginning of a four year projectaimed at understanding how
Australians use media now. And so I'm asking very, very
basic questions. Just tell me about what you do
(46:46):
and and trying to to understand you know the subgroups maybe now
that exist. I am easy to find in many
places, probably LinkedIn and blue sky the most where I am
either AD lots on LinkedIn or actually on my website
amandalotts.com kind of get you anything you would want so.
Brilliant. Amanda, thank you so much.
(47:07):
My pleasure, thanks for having me.
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking has the
Internet ruined broadcast television by replacing linear
scheduled programming with huge libraries of on demand content?
Have the business models and power structures of traditional
TV being toppled for good? To help us see the full picture,
we're joined by Amanda Lotz, an award winning author, professor
(00:21):
and research leader at Queensland University of
Technology's Digital Media Research Centre.
Amanda, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the
show. I'm very pleased to be here.
Thanks so much for having me. Before we get into it, can you
tell us a bit about the work that you do and how you came to
this area of expertise? I began studying television.
(00:45):
I was described myself, I guess back then as a as a media
scholar. I still do.
I trained in the late to or late90s and my object moved on me,
so I was based in the US at thattime.
I'm American. I've been in Australia since
2019. Everything about how the
industry worked in the US started to change right around
(01:06):
2000 when I started in the field.
And I figured out pretty quicklythat one of the consequences of
the business changing was that the stories were changing.
Like so when you change the way the machine works in terms of
the business of television, you could change what kind of shows
got made. And that was pretty interesting
(01:27):
to me. And so that really set off on a
journey that I didn't expect to be quite so long.
But the distribution model in terms of the arrival of the
Internet and the business model in terms of being able to have
subscriber funded or consumer funded video television, both of
those are pretty significant changes.
(01:48):
And so I've been tracing the relationship between how that
changes both the work worlds of those who who work in the
industry, as well as trying to understand what they can make.
All because I'm interested in the relationship of those
stories in the daily life of of people around the world.
And we still spend a tonne of time watching stories and shows
(02:11):
and videos, depending on what you want to call them.
And so that's my origin story. Yeah, cool.
And you mentioned there, you know, it's been obviously a lot
of change through that time, as we all know that the
introduction of the Internet hasoffered that on demand viewing.
How else did it make the traditional approach to TV
obsolete for modern audiences? I think the, the place I'd like
(02:31):
to start is sort of what the Internet, and I'm doing my
little air quotes here for listeners, what the Internet
means for me instead. That's sort of it's a key object
here in your title. The Internet in this
conversation is a distribution technology.
It's a way of getting video fromone place to another.
So we had previous distribution technologies, broadcasting and
(02:52):
then cable and satellite more orless in different places.
Australia is a little unusual inthe degree to which it had very
low take up of cable and no satellite.
So different technologies, different distribution
technologies can do different things and the fancy university
word for that is affordances. So the affordances of
(03:13):
broadcasting as broadcasting began for radio in the early
last century, it was, it was a world changing technology in
much the same way that the Internet has been more recently.
But broadcasting as a technology, it can do one, it
can send a signal from one. So let's say from 9 network out
to many. That's the origin of of
(03:34):
broadcast in the word, right? So it can do one to many over
the air. So you know that all you really
need is an antenna or a set withan antenna in there to be able
to get that signal. And that technology again, sort
of media economics word is non excludable.
So I if I'm nine network and I'msending out my signal, I can't
(03:55):
stop anyone from getting it. And that kind of requires
certain business models and it prevents other business models.
But you know that was for decades normal.
That's just how it was. Cable came along in satellite
and largely replicated a lot of the affordances of broadcasting
in terms of those two were initially one to many
(04:15):
technologies, but they were excludable.
So you had to you, it didn't go out to everyone, it only went
out to those who paid. And so you could limit and that
change the business a bit and and those features what the
technology can do sort of led the business to work in certain
ways. So because of broadcasting and
the capacity limits in terms of how many signals could be
(04:38):
available at a certain time, we had a lot of scarcity.
So there were few operating and you had this organisation around
a schedule or what you called linear, right?
Well, what makes Internet distribution then so different
is that Internet distribution, whether it's your mobile phone
or it's a wire based NBN line, let's say it does not have those
(04:59):
one to many requirements. It can be many to many or you
know what we've already called sort of on demand.
It's what makes it possible to not have a schedule, to have a
library, to let different peoplewatch things, different times to
start and stop. And and that, that's, if you
think back to how television used to be like, that's a real
game changer. And I would argue that audiences
(05:21):
couldn't even imagine, I think until quite late.
We we didn't even realise how limited we were in what we could
watch and how we could watch it until all of a sudden we had
these experiences. Speaking of game changers, your
book The Television Will Be Revolutionised came out in 2007.
Having been a leading voice on the future of TV for so many
(05:43):
years now, what surprised you the most about how it's all
played out since then? Probably how long the change has
taken. Oh really?
Yeah. So the the 1st edition came out
in 07, which was just, I just missed Netflix and because of
had it necessitated a second edition, which I did in 2014.
(06:06):
And even at that point of streaming was pretty early
stages. And so I think when you do the
kind of work that I do in terms of like understanding, OK, the
business model works like this, the technology can do this and
then you try to understand what should happen.
We could see where we are now easily 20 years ago.
(06:28):
And so the fact that it has taken 20 years to get there, I
guess that has been the most surprising to me.
Right, yeah. And look, that would be
something interesting to kind ofget into as we go through this,
whether that rate of change may increase as as we move forward.
But you popularised the concept of the post network era.
(06:49):
Can you briefly explain how that's defined for audiences?
Yeah. So I'm trying to think it
doesn't apply the the periodization doesn't apply as
well in the Australian context. But it was a way of
acknowledging that even though we still had television, we were
talking about television and howit was changing in the early
2000s. It was a periodization to
(07:10):
recognise that the industry and the experience of television had
changed before. So in the US the network era
runs upfront, runs from the beginning of television in the
50s up until kind of the mid 80sand then in in, and this is the
part that doesn't really happen.In Australia from the mid 80s to
(07:30):
the early 2000s, we sort of havewhat what I call the multi
channel transition. And this was the period of time
in which cable became adopted and Americans began to access
far more channels. So by the end of the 80s, over
half of Americans had cable. And just just as a point of
(07:52):
reference, Australia barely everhit above 30% and Australians
didn't start to get cable until the late 90s.
Yeah, that's what that's what I was just just thinking.
I can remember the first few people I ever knew had it, like
their parents had it in the house and it's like, wow, look
at all these charts. And that would have been late
90s. I think it was.
I think it was Foxtel or or something like that.
(08:13):
Would have been that. And so those early in the US,
those early systems were smaller.
They may have only been about 20-30 channels, but still that
era and that kind of that process of people adopting it
broke up the the scarcity in a way that really doesn't happen
to in Australia until 2009 with the multi channels.
And so, so the post network era in the US, it was sort of, well,
(08:39):
I thought we were sort of more at the beginning of it when I
originally wrote in, in, in 2007.
But you know, it, it, it certainly has taken a while to
come into form. And it's sort of just that
acknowledgement that the environment for accessing video
isn't limited just to what at that point had been, you know,
hundreds of cable channels, but also this arrival of this on
(09:01):
demand space that has continued to evolve steadily.
But I, I do think we're, if you were to ask me where I think we
are now, it doesn't feel like the sand beneath my feet is
shifting every year in the way that it did for a really long
time. Like I think we, we've kind,
we're starting to, to stabilise.We'll still have a lot of
(09:21):
change. I think we have a lot of
services that are probably not going to make it.
But I think everyone can see thethe shape of probably where
we're heading in the next 10 years in a way that was not the
case for quite a while. And do you think that there you
know the reason it may have taken so long was, was due to
development not happening as fast as as possible or was it
(09:43):
push back and and stalling say maybe from those traditional
broadcasters? Yeah, it's somewhat different
things in different places. It's not a coincidence that UK
and Australia had, you know, what is it I player in at the
BBC and I view here before therewas any on demand service in the
US. And that was the power of the
(10:06):
companies at that point in the US that owned the US cable
providers became the Internet providers and most of them also
owned one of the big content studios.
And, and so they were protectingbusinesses there because of all
of that intellectual property. And they were very concerned
(10:27):
about what had happened with music happening in video in
terms of, of, of piracy and, andready access.
And so the established industry managed to stall things, I think
pretty effectively for quite some time.
The other thing too, that sort of makes a difference market by
market was the national approachto Internet availability and
pricing, right? And so because video required
(10:49):
better compression and Internet speeds, that too sort of changed
the, the time scale in, in, in different places.
And then the technologies of reception, right?
Like I think we can't underestimate so 2007 as the
year that the smartphones come out in 2010 tablets in terms of
(11:09):
people with some money having access to devices that really
help them begin to engage with screens in a very different way.
Yeah, and, and, and that engaging with screens, you know,
in the concept of television, one of the things I've, I've
thought about with this is whether the, you know, the
Internet and, and tech has changed the experience of, of
(11:31):
watching TV. You know, like even I can
remember Once Upon a time kind of in that linear programming
ATV or a movie. It was an event, you know, like
that was what you would kind of gather around for, like be at my
house at 8:30. I don't know, they're playing
Jaws on Channel 7 or something tonight.
And then it feels like now, as we've moved along and
(11:51):
everything's so readily available when you want to, you
can kind of curate the experience that you're enjoying
by adding television into the background in that format.
So rather than being the centrepiece, it's almost an
accessory to an event. Is that something that you you
would say has generally happened, or is TV still as big
as your card as it once was in various forms?
(12:14):
I think it varies a lot by age group, you know, So the the
thing I have teenagers and and the thing that's fascinating to
me is the way that they walk through the house, often with
their headphones on, but playingshows, which might be, let's say
(12:34):
the 19th time through Gilmore Girls on Netflix, or it might be
the side men on YouTube and a series of other videos that have
all been queued up. But they, you know, they come
in, they make their lunch and and they move through the house.
You know, that's all I would call all that television in in
the way that, you know, I probably had a radio on when I
was that age. But I think what's also
(12:56):
important is there's been, I think an assumption that that's
the only way anyone's watching and that also from some of the
work that we've been doing talking to viewers isn't true.
It's still the case that more than half of time Australians
spend watching movies in the home, they're watching with
someone else. And almost half the time that
(13:17):
they're watching scripted series, they're with someone
else. And so the screens, the on
demand, the way that it interacts with, you know, sort
of the human condition is reallyvaried and we do see a lot of
old patterns continuing. I guess I think the takeaway
that I'd have is that it provides people with much more
(13:39):
flexibility. You know, so I would look back
at that, you know, moment that you reference and remember like,
oh, we can't get home in time towatch and such, or, oh, I have
homework that night or, you know, like the way in which
audiences were beholden to the schedule.
And so I think probably the biggest change, and you know, if
(14:02):
you talk to young people, they just cannot even fathom
scheduling their life around everything that they would watch
in a way that was just normal for folks in their 40s and 5th
and older. Yeah, totally.
And I think that finding something to suit whatever your
current state or need might be, it's something that you've
(14:22):
spoken out about previously, youknow, in the different types of
audience motives. Would you say that on demand
viewing was inevitable as a solution to that?
I don't think inevitable becauseone of the things that's really
surprising and when I think about that kind of those moments
of transition from the mid 90s to, you know, really, let's say
(14:42):
2015 audiences, we didn't know what we were missing, right?
Like there was no push from on the viewer side really for these
technologies. And you know, like, I think back
to the American experience of, of Netflix rolling out Netflix
was for a really long time just a way to get videos by mail.
And that was its its first core business.
(15:04):
And the extent to which the company really had to market and
convince people that what it provided was was something
different and better. And and part of that was that
digital video recorders had beenpretty significantly adopted in
the US because the cable companies kind of gave them to
(15:25):
you. So to people were doing a fair
bit of time shifting already andthey had all those channels and
said there was, I think, a real tension between whether a
streaming service could actuallybe worthwhile.
The the vibe for a long time in the US was that this Netflix
thing wasn't going to happen. Yeah, right.
(15:46):
It really was a negotiation between, you know, that service
and it's not coincidental that it was Netflix, right?
Netflix was didn't have wasn't still earning tonnes and tonnes
of money in the old way. So it was invested in change and
it was invested in bringing something new to viewers.
And they have responded. Netflix is, is such a good
(16:07):
example. I, I remember, you know, the
first time I, I heard that it what used to be something
delivered to your letterbox. I I was blown away at what
seemed like a much more incremental change from, you
know, say Blockbuster and video shops to the kind of the world
of streaming. But would you say if Netflix was
that leader when they started toinvest into streaming, would you
(16:28):
say that either that, or was it something else?
That was the kind of particular moment when the digital world's
impact on breaking that broadcast TV stranglehold became
kind of undeniable. You know, I think I'm going to
keep, I'm going to move back andforth here between the national
context and then they are prettydifferent.
But I think in Australia, reallythe, the key moment in the story
(16:50):
was 2009 and the launch of the multi channels, because it, it,
it's at that point that the business model of those linear
broadcasters kind of takes the hit that they won't come back
from. And, and to be fair, if, if we
look at their revenue, they werein decline from the early 2000s.
So I think kind of the the coming realisation and threat of
(17:14):
that end of that magic scarcity that they had for so long.
And then the reality, which was even though they were able to
own or licence effectively the multi channels as well.
So 9 went to, you know, 9 go andGem and all those, you know,
they went from the cost of programming 1 channel to the
cost of programming 3 or 4. And they had to have known that
(17:37):
this was going to happen. But the reality is there was no
new advertising money. So their costs increase, but
there's no new revenue. There isn't magic new money.
And that really began the destabilisation.
And so you see then from 2009, if you look at something like
the hours of, of drama that they're producing, it starts to
(18:00):
decline. They're starting to buy more
stuff overseas. And that's a lot of what's on
the the other channels. And so I think in the US, you
or, and then in Australia, you have what you can get on
broadcast television eroding andat an earlier point than maybe
you do in some other places. And that that effectively then
just, you know, like because Australia and so few Australians
(18:25):
had adopted cable, which which Ikind of understand as it wasn't
a great option, right? It was pretty expensive and you
didn't get a lot for it, so you know that it made sense.
And this is what happens when wedon't have competition.
You had a market though, that was so hungry for more choice.
And you know, that's how I explained that there's a fair
(18:45):
bit of unauthorised accessing ofNetflix before it's officially
here. There's a pretty big pirate
culture in Australia. And in the early Internet
environment, all of that makes sense because people weren't
having free access to the kinds of content that they were
interested in. And so Australians runs to the
(19:06):
streaming services. I haven't looked at the numbers
in the last year or so, but I want to say from 2020, Australia
was the most subscribed country to Netflix by population.
Oh really? And, and, and I think that it,
it speaks to the lack of choice in the marketplace and that
(19:26):
relatively, yes, it's, it's a thing you have to pay for, but
so many other markets were paying so much already.
In the US, you had 90% of households paying at least 100
USA month for cable back from, you know, kind of the 90s.
(19:47):
And so that too kind of shaped how the sector developed. the US
is figuring out there was a ridiculous amount of money
available in the market because of of those conditions.
There was much less money available in the marketplace
here because you were really overwhelmingly dependent on
advertising. Yeah.
And obviously there's been a huge kind of qualitative hit as
(20:10):
those advertising dollars have run to whether it's be VOD or,
or even something, you know, like YouTube advertising.
But do you think that Netflix may have been taken up so
successfully in Australia because our networks here just
could not afford to kind of bid on any of the content from,
(20:30):
let's say, the American industry, which you'd be a
behemoth? When I first got here I, I kept
asking how do you have 3 broadcasters?
When I realised that there were like less than 30 million
households, right. So the US is 10, had 10 times
the number of households and fora really long time had only
(20:51):
three broadcast networks. I think this is, you're right,
it's all kind of simple economics.
There probably shouldn't have ever been a third broadcast
network in Australia. It's probably the case now that
Australians would be much betterserved if there were only one,
and one that would have enough have access to enough
advertising dollars to really beable to to put together a
(21:13):
stronger offering. Yeah, right.
That's, that's so interesting tohear because Eve, I remember,
you know, I grew up in, in Victoria, I was like 7910ABC SBS
and and that felt so small, likeso limiting.
So it's interesting to hear thatthree, the commercial ones was
(21:34):
excessive for what our population was probably like, I
don't know, 20 million less or something back then.
In terms of, you know, those those commercial networks that
we just mentioned, they're kind of pushing now into setting up
their own B VOD stations to try and capture some of that user
behaviour. Now.
(21:54):
Do you think these are merely kind of life support for these
networks or, you know, will there be a way that they could
eventually capitalise on that and and stay competitive?
Probably not. Humans right now just have so
much choice. And even the BVOD options
aren't, you know, it's, it's thestuff that's already on.
(22:16):
So it's a convenience option. And then it's a a bunch of
really old cheap content. Yeah.
Yeah, look, that's, that's exactly it.
And it made me think of, you know, sometimes I'm I'll be
making lunch if I'm working fromhome and I might have like the
TV on in the living room and I see what's going on during the
day and I'm just thinking, this is absolute brain rot stuff.
(22:39):
Oh my God, how have they kind ofbeen reduced to this?
And then as you said, when I do look at the Bivod stuff and the
big hits on, there is something like Married at First Sight or
like a, a terrible local remake of, of an international success
story. I'm just, I just can't imagine
how the local industry is surviving, or maybe it isn't.
(23:01):
In the past when we referred to something as a hit, what kind of
metrics were we talking about with that?
And as audiences and platforms have just fragmented further and
further and further, has this accepted hit metric reduced and
fragmented as audience have or is it still kind of kept where
(23:21):
it was? Yeah, that that's one of my
favourite questions things to talk about, right.
So like a hit I think we can regard as something that is the
most watched, right? Like so like Netflix every day
they have their these are the top ten titles in Australia and
something has to be the most watched.
(23:41):
Like it's just math. And I think especially for those
of us who lived through the before, it's very easy for our
brains to believe that being number one on Netflix is similar
to like being number one on Australian television in, in a,
in a week in 1990. And, and numerically it's just
(24:03):
not. And, and part of this is that
we, the way that hits on streaming are, are, are
quantified is an entirely different number, right?
So you've got sort of two thingshappening.
You have almost all the time you're getting a global number.
(24:24):
So that's kind of hard to compare to the past.
And then the other thing that you have is it's a cumulative
number, right? So you know, it's, it's this
week's viewers plus next week's viewers.
And and so you know, like 15,000,000 people have watched a
thing and the way that audience data was gathered in the pre
(24:45):
digital time, we don't have anything to kind of reasonably
compare. I like what I would love to have
is in, let's say on on one day in the year 2000, how many
people around the globe watched an episode of Friends, right?
And that that's the number that we need to be comparing with,
(25:07):
you know, how many people have watched the stranger Things.
And so so no, we are not at all talking about the same numbers.
And and that really does lead usto misunderstand a bit what's
going on. And then and the other thing
that I've been trying to pull apart, given what Netflix does
(25:28):
and doesn't make public, there are roughly 5000 titles in any
given Netflix library. We're getting data about the top
ten. If we look at some of the
additional data that they've been giving us, you know, sort
of like their whole library oversix months, it's global data
which is limiting. But looking at that, it seems
(25:51):
that that top 10 might be accounting for just like 2 or 3%
of viewing. Right.
So most of the viewing on Netflix isn't the things that
are getting pushed in our face, clearly, because Netflix has
very good retention rates relative to other streamers and
relative to these kind of businesses.
Historically, people's people legitimately like the service.
(26:14):
They pay money and they keep paying money so people are
happy. Netflix can see what people are
watching that makes them happy. They are letting the rest of us
kind of exist in this world in which we think hits are really
important. But I I I'm sceptical.
You know, it makes total sense that obviously Netflix would be
driven by an algorithm which enhances the service for any
(26:36):
given user to potentially be served stuff that they like.
But that point there around these are the top 10 Netflix
shows. That's something I'll keep in
mind next time looking through that that library with something
to watch and it's telling me this is the best thing today.
I'll I'll be a bit more sceptical about it On the topic
of Netflix. And you say that was the kind of
(26:56):
the big disruptor looking back to, you know, when they were
delivering, say, DVDs to your mailbox or whatever it was
before they introduced the streaming platform.
What would you say that the biggest mistake traditional
broadcasters made in underestimating or reacting too
slowly to, you know, this new technology?
(27:17):
Oh, I try to have sympathy because I think we have to
remember the the constraints that these decisions are, are
made in, right. I know this period of time
better in the US than here. And the sector was making
extraordinary high amounts of money.
Like it's really just been in the last few years, years that
(27:38):
cable subscriptions, the just the last month the US had fallen
to 50% of homes having cable. And that's really where all of
the money was. And as long as that money was
coming in, it was so in their interest to just continue to 1
executive described it, ride thedinosaur down.
(28:00):
So I think if we look at a company like Disney, we we see
probably one of the more graceful transitions.
I still don't think we see the Disney plus service having a
strategy that is characteristic of an on demand service in the
same way that I think Netflix most days.
(28:21):
I think Netflix actually has a strategy that aligns.
So that's all to say that I think the mistakes were very
were largely understandable and that you probably had a lot of
well, especially men of a certain age who thought that
they could get out of here before it would affect them,
right? You know, retire before the
business falls apart. And so, you know, I think you
(28:42):
also then have to look at that the, the stock market and the
investor class for being willingto, to not reward the companies
that were willing to take the longer bet, right.
There's just so much pressure on, you know, quarterly
performance that it was hard to have a five year strategy when
you need to have a five year strategy.
(29:03):
So I, I think those are the reasons why it just, nobody
moved fast enough or recognise that the business was going to
be quite different. I guess the thing that I've been
writing about lately, no one talked about and no one's still
talking about the way that scarcity made the business what
(29:25):
it was. And like, so there was this
invisible thing that accounted for how profitable the sector
was and the, the strategies. Like nobody knew like we can do
this because they have no choice.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. But that was true.
And so we thought that people love television because so many
people watched it. But the truth is people watched
(29:46):
a lot of things just 'cause it was on, because they had no
other choice. And we know that now because
things came along largely from outside of the sector.
You know, I think Netflix and YouTube are probably the the two
pigs. You give them choice and they're
out of here, right? They, they have found things
that connect to their interests or their sensibilities or give
(30:09):
them what they want at the moment that they want it.
And so understanding that a world in which you can't rely on
scarcity to push a consumer intoa certain place, nobody has, I
think, really recognised the difference in the strategy
needed in that environment. Yeah, right.
That dinosaur and those are brilliant.
(30:32):
I love that. But those changes in in the
television business you mentioned in your book, we now
disrupt this broadcast that it'sled to a new golden age of TV.
And I don't think there's many streaming service watches out
there at the moment that wouldn't think there's so much
great stuff. It's just kind of which
platforms you actually want to be subscribed to at any given
(30:52):
moment. Can you briefly explain how the
new golden age of TV has happened and and what's come out
of it? You know, I think that age
really brought to you by the American consumer.
Yeah. It was really the decade and a
half to two decades of Americanspaying just unconscionable cable
(31:17):
bills that provided the kind of revenue that the studios needed
to start to experiment with somenew shows.
And I think a lot of that happened more on cable than it
has for the streaming services. And what happens when we move
into the streaming services is it starts to get really
difficult to see the patterns orto see the whole view.
(31:40):
And so you do have, because you have these really contradictory
stories in an on demand world. You have Adam Sandler movies and
wrestling at the same time. You have clearly what are
efforts to win Oscar awards and sort of tiny art movies or
(32:01):
series. And so that I think has been a
real challenge for people to wrap their heads around that
Netflix can simultaneously be all of those things because not
everyone is watching any of those four things, right?
Whereas in, in in that linear era, you really, it was a time
of having a brand, you had a certain kind of show on your
(32:23):
channel and people came to you because they came to expect that
was what they would offer. And I think what, what I found
when I arrived was that a lot ofAustralians associate that
content with Netflix because although it had originated from
American cable networks, when itcame to Australia, a lot of it
came via Netflix. And so I think they're depending
(32:45):
where you're located in the globe, you may have may think of
those shows as being streaming shows, but many of those titles
would have been cable shows in the US.
Yeah, and and I guess networks had this kind of star power that
they could use to to draw on andobviously the same through all
forms of entertainment. But one thing I did want to
speak to you around as well was we know in Australia there's
(33:08):
local content quotas, A, and it's still relevant B, what is
going on with those and see how would these compete with these
international platforms not bound by these rules?
Right, right. So the actual policy of local
content quotas is pretty silly in this environment.
(33:32):
But that doesn't mean that the policy goals can't be achieved.
They just need to be achieved ina different way, right?
So quotas worked on a schedule because broadcasters like each
and every minute of each and every day matters to them a lot,
right? Because it's scarcity.
Not with a library like you say,Netflix, you have to have 10%,
like, oh, right, I mean, that's going to cost us.
(33:54):
We have to licence it, but it's just going to sit there and
nobody's ever going to watch it and it's fine, right?
So a library doesn't really dealwith quote as well.
The conversation in Australia inrecent years has been, well, not
a quota exactly. Let's say that the services have
to, if they make, let's say $10 million a year off of Australian
(34:15):
subscribers, they'd have to spend a certain amount of that
making shows in Australia. OK, That at least functionally
could work. Then we need to know though,
what is the purpose of that policy?
Is the purpose of that policy tomake jobs for Australians or is
the purpose of that policy to have shows about Australia,
(34:36):
which historically the reason why we have content quotas was
to make shows about Australians.And so, you know, those things
could be possible if, you know, it's sort of tuned the right
way. But this question of of national
content is when we've been looking at in a lot of our
research and it's tricky if 60 some percent of Australians are
(34:59):
willing to pay monthly for Netflix and they know darn well
that that isn't going to get them much, if any Australian
content. Like it's like 1% of the
library, right? Like people are choosing to
spend their money on a thing that doesn't have Australian
content. That's that's significant.
Decent indicator. Yeah.
But that doesn't mean that they don't want it, right?
(35:21):
And so, like, I think the middleground here is taking advantage
of the mechanisms that exist that sort of maybe make more
sense to make sure those cultural stories are available.
One of the big problems with Netflix or Stan all those those
others are you do have to pay for them, right?
And so, you know, we should not be putting our cultural policy
(35:44):
behind pay walls. So we have the ABC and SBS and
those seem to be entities that probably would have access to
more Australians or Australians would have more ready access to
if we were concerned that there are Australian stories made
available. I just think that there are
policy lovers that make more sense in this context.
(36:07):
Part of why they worked so well for so long was that the
commercial broadcasters were making so much money and it
really wasn't too much to ask ofthem.
And again, Australian broadcasters, their whole point
of being was to attract the attention of Australians, the
streamers. You know, even Netflix with 67%
(36:28):
of Australians, it's still like 3% of their, you know, market.
So yeah, in order for policy to work well, you kind of have to
line up all the pieces in a way that, you know, makes sense.
At least policies more effectivethat way.
And so the world has just changed quite a bit from the era
in which those content quotas could work.
That that makes total sense. And and my next question that
(36:49):
would have come out of there wasaround what that would all mean
for, you know, these broad audience broadcasters like the
ABC and SBS. Is there anything that they
could do? Could they kind of plug into
these streamers to, I don't know, leverage relationships or
get features? I'm not sure how it works.
Yeah, no, it's, it's interesting.
We, I don't have as much data perhaps as as they do at this
(37:11):
point, but it's interesting to watch sort of the experiments
over time because right now there are quite a few original
ABC shows that are now availableon Netflix.
And I'll be honest, if I'm goingto watch something, it's
probably going to be through Netflix just because the
interface is so much easier and it's going to be more likely to
surface a thing that it knows that I'm interested in.
(37:32):
You know, it would be interesting to know whether more
or you know, what relatively arethe number of people who are
watching a thing, Australian specifically who are watching,
let's say Fisk on Netflix versusFisk on iview and ABC linear
like so there's there's interesting things to learn
there. ABC and SBS are in really
different positions. SBS relative to our interviews
(37:52):
and surveys, Australians are pretty happy with SBS and I
think part part of that is SBS is doing a specific thing right.
It's not trying to be everythingto everyone.
It has they, especially SBS online, it's curated in a way
that people know what to expect.Obviously not everyone's going
there, but it's identifiable to viewers as you know, they know
(38:16):
what they can get there and it'sdifferent from what they can get
anywhere else. In large part I think trying to
programme at the ABC has got to be maybe the hardest job in the
country. Yeah, look, I, I was just
thinking it could be an indicator that they're doing
actually the right job, because if you've got everybody saying
that the ABC is doing it wrong by them, maybe the ABC's got the
(38:36):
balance right. I, I don't know.
But there's been a lot of changes in, in what we call
television over the last 20 years.
In another 20 years do you thinktraditional TV broadcasting will
exist at all or will everything be replaced by say an Internet
and and technology only viewing landscape or something else?
(39:00):
I think to some degree that's going to be up to the government
and policy. We tend to take a lot of cues
from the UK, which may or may not be a good thing relative to
the size and makeup of our countries.
They're a bit different. But the UK is very aggressively
moving away from broadcasting asa distribution technology and
there's trying to study and figure out how to do that in a
(39:21):
way that it's not harmful. And I think there's some
conversation here about that as well.
I'm not deep in those the data of those conversations to
understand why my own sort of less super expert in this
particular area sense is that given especially the nature of
Australia's terrain and the difficulty that we've had with
(39:44):
Internet signals in a lot of places that, you know, rushing
into shutting off broadcasting may not have have as much value
as it might in other places. I think maintaining a national
broadcaster and perhaps one commercial broadcaster free to
air and, and if they want to also, you know, distribute
(40:06):
online, then fair be. But sort of the idea that we
should take what exists right now as Australian television and
reproduce it via Internet distribution.
I I don't see a lot of evidence that that's what audiences want,
but I think that, you know. You know, having those sort of
backup technologies, it is, you know, that we have those
moments. Most of us live lives that are
(40:28):
pretty full and it's sort of hard to get us to, you know,
show up at a certain time anymore.
But, you know, having those kindof contingencies doesn't seem
like a a bad thing. And I think, you know, coming
back to what is the job of the ABC, the ABC's job shouldn't be
to be everything to everyone, right?
But I think they could much moreclearly announce themselves as
(40:52):
we're the place for Australian content.
We're the place for, I mean, they're very well known for
their news. But to identify what is their
point of distinction that you kind of can't get if you're in
Australia, it's hard to get fromanywhere else.
If you want to connect to your community, we've got something
for you and really sort of not try to meet everyone's very
(41:15):
particular special need because they just can't.
But to to to figure out what is the thing that's really
important at a societal level. Double down on it so that people
know that that's the thing that they can go to and and that's
the that could be valuable over broadcast in the long run.
Yeah, absolutely. Defining a much stronger
identity, what it stands for could be a really good option
(41:37):
because as you you touched on a couple of minutes ago, just
turning off broadcast would probably be a mistake because we
know that broadcast is the thingthat still has that ability to
create those cultural moments that everybody can kind of just
just rally behind. Now, whether it's AFL grand
final, I don't know, people watch Melbourne Cup day like all
sorts of things. But you know, the most recent
(41:58):
one that I can think of that kind of captured everybody was
the Matildas in the World Cup. Like nobody thought those
numbers would be possible. Again, you know, the national
team, I think part of it is, is the commercial model is trying
to recreate that on a constant basis with many different
things, recognising that that people do like coming together
(42:18):
and sharing in moments like that.
But those those aren't the everyday.
And so you can't try to have a business model based on that
anymore. No, totally.
Hopefully they they stick aroundbecause we do need those shared
moments for everybody, especially as streaming and
digital gets so much more fragmented.
But just to finish up, where do you think the the idea of
(42:40):
television goes from here? And will the technology and, and
streaming based stuff that we'vebeen talking about inevitably be
able to deliver completely unique customised content for
every viewer at speed and scale?Like perhaps you go on the
Internet and you're served up adverts that are based on your
browsing. Like, will we potentially get to
(43:00):
a point where you're watching a film and knows everything you
like and it's kind of populated with that?
I've started using the word video a lot more, or at least
that's what I've been thinking about or when I talk to
Australians about what they're doing.
And, and part of that is to alsoinclude social media feeds,
which we haven't talked a lot about, but I'd say are very
(43:25):
important to the day. It's a big video, part of most
People's Daily lives. Last year, Meta revealed in an
earnings call that 60% of time spent on Facebook and Insta was
watching video. And you add that too.
We know really high levels of TikTok use and then YouTube and
(43:48):
when I've in, in the interviews that we've been doing, I'd say
especially sort of the 25 to 40 year old range.
What being on social media is for a lot of people at this
point is short videos related totheir interests.
We've been calling it a personalmedia stream and you, you talk
to them and you know, some people it's just like all
motorbikes. Like I, I love motorbikes.
(44:11):
I have all these videos about motorbikes.
It's coming in my feed. For some, it's often these
really different interests, likeI like crafts and history and
netball. And so like when you then think
about the, the, the crush of life and work and family, right?
And you get like 10 minutes of leisure at the end of the day,
(44:33):
you pull out that feed and and it is kind of delivering, you
know, you know, things that are interesting to you.
I think the important thing to understand is that those people
still like movies, they still like series, but what we see are
individuals kind of negotiating time and life and, and, and, you
(44:55):
know, the pressure of time I think is a really big one.
And so that that feed is kind ofreplacing what would have been
for me 20 years ago. All right, I got the dishes
done. The kids are taking care of it.
I'm gonna see what's on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So if you got, you know, less than an hour, you know, maybe
you do just swipe your way through.
And then on Friday, you watch 3 episodes of that really great
(45:16):
new show on Netflix or whatever.Right.
And so the, the patterns are, are shifting, you know, As for
like, I don't, I don't think we're that atomized, right?
You know, I, I, I don't think weneed individualised videos which
surely AI would make for us, butI do.
I think the technologies that wehave now are helping us to
(45:39):
maximise our leisure time and tobe able to find the very narrow
interest in whatever craft or sport and have other people who
are talking about it and who areknowing about it in a way that
was impossible before the Internet.
And it seems like as you've justsaid there, it allows us to
(46:02):
greatly increase the efficiency of getting into that, that
leisure that we want as opposed to, I don't know, hoping for the
best on that point. Do you think that the concept of
television is just a hangover from the actual, you know, box
of the past? Because you said something there
around whether you call it videoor even just kind of watching it
(46:23):
feels like a much broader catch all.
So I'll be interested to see howthat plays out as we move
forward. Thanks so much for that.
Amanda, What's on the horizon for you and where can people
follow what you're up to? Ah, the horizon is I'm at the
beginning of a four year projectaimed at understanding how
Australians use media now. And so I'm asking very, very
basic questions. Just tell me about what you do
(46:46):
and and trying to to understand you know the subgroups maybe now
that exist. I am easy to find in many
places, probably LinkedIn and blue sky the most where I am
either AD lots on LinkedIn or actually on my website
amandalotts.com kind of get you anything you would want so.
Brilliant. Amanda, thank you so much.
(47:07):
My pleasure, thanks for having me.
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
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