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MediaSeptember 6, 2023

Ten crucial revelations from NZ on Air’s Where are the Audiences media data 2023

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The latest round of NZ On Air’s highly influential ‘Where are the Audiences?’ survey shows a definitive tipping point has been reached for the transition from traditional to digital media.

Data visualisations by Renee Jacobi of Daylight 

It’s been two years since the last full edition of Where Are the Audiences? (WATA for short), the deep audience research study conducted by Glasshouse and put out by Aotearoa’s media funder NZ On Air. That’s a long time in a rapidly evolving media landscape, but also means this is the first fresh research to arrive after the pandemic. WATA day is always a huge day in our media year, as it provides an independent test of which mediums, brands and platforms are rising and falling, and how fast. I must confess to being particularly obsessed with it, and have covered each edition since 2016. 

NZ On Air uses it to help inform the content it funds, and the strategy behind those decisions. But it’s also scrutinised by many other organisations, from advertising to communications to culture, to get a sense of the evolution of our media consumption at a population level. It’s made up of a statistically robust sample of 1,400 people, and importantly it asks about yesterday’s usage, which gives a sense of daily behaviour. 

‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’
Duncan Greive
— Founder

It’s controversial in some circles, as it consistently differs from research funded by the likes of TV and radio networks. Some of this is down to methodological differences, and there are legitimate critiques to be made of it, including the emphasis on video and audio distorting its portrayal of digital news trust and consumption. But there is nothing else like it, and the fact it has been conducted for such a long time now gives it a rare weight and meaning.

NZ On Air’s aim is to “reflect New Zealand’s cultural identity and help build social cohesion, inclusion and connection”. The WATA findings suggest that continues to get a whole lot harder, as we migrate from a small number of well-financed monocultural platforms to a plethora of niches from all over the world. However, the job of those in the media and those who interact with us is best done with as much information as possible – so with that in mind, here are 10 themes that leap out.

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1) 60 is the new 40…

The most powerful revelation from this research concerns the older half of New Zealand’s population. The median age of New Zealand is around 38, and as recently as 2021, older New Zealanders were more likely to keep up old habits. Open a newspaper over breakfast, turn the radio on during the day and watch linear TV in the evenings. That was even more strongly true for over-60s, whose habits had proven much more durable than any other demographic. 

In 2023, that changed. “For the first time, the study is showing significant declines in traditional media use among 60+ year olds,” the study says. Chillingly for our media – which remains largely funded by advertising on traditional mediums – it goes on to say that “40-59 year olds are now at the cross-over point where digital media audiences overtake traditional media.”

2) …but there are still big differences between the way young and old watch content

We also see this in total minutes consumed. Across all New Zealanders, online video (eg YouTube), subscription video on demand (or SVOD, dominated by Netflix) and TV (such as TVNZ1) are all strikingly even, at around 90 minutes apiece. This represents a big decline for TV, back from 162 in 2014, and 118 as recently as 2021. But that similarity masks differences – younger audiences are mostly on YouTube, middle-aged on Netflix and older audiences on TVNZ1. 

3) Even retirees are streaming now

For the most part, the data in WATA shows the continuation of long-established trends. Some tapering, some accelerating. But there is little truly shocking in here for those who have been reading this study for a while. There is one glaring exception to that, and it’s the adoption of on-demand viewership (services like TVNZ+ and ThreeNow), particularly by 60+ audiences. Where previously this was a fairly atypical behaviour, something just 14% of the group did on a daily basis, it’s now surged to 38% usage. 

This is actually significantly more than under-40s, part of a jump on demand from 23% to 35%, the largest rise of any digital media form. Likely related: a move away from Sky TV, which at 28% is less than half the 57% daily usage of 2014. The commentary is stark. “It’s clear in 2023 that the older generation is now adopting digital media in far greater numbers.” 

4) A powerhouse result for TVNZ 

Overall, this is a very challenging survey for traditional media, and it asks hard questions of some brands, mediums and ratings agencies (more on this further down). Yet one media company should be very proud, and that is TVNZ. In fact, by one crucial measure, it is the single most impactful media brand in New Zealand, reaching fully half of all New Zealanders each day. This is achieved despite the continued decline of linear television, and of its powerhouse TVNZ1 brand. It happens because TVNZ+ is a phenomenon, leaping from 17% to 27% daily usage – it’s the only local streamer reaching more than 10% of the country each day (ThreeNow is next on just 7%). On the downside, TVNZ2 reaches just 11% of audiences, well behind former rival Three on 17%.

One careful-what-you-wish-for caveat: TVNZ appears to have done this by converting much of its older evening audience from linear viewers to TVNZ+ users. This is a triumph, but also fraught with danger, as it currently runs far fewer ads on TVNZ+, thus making much less money per viewing hour. Until it can start to create digital income to match its linear revenues, it will continue to financially stress the organisation, even as it celebrates a very significant achievement.

5) RNZ and Whakaata Māori face profound questions 

If TVNZ will be celebrating, two other state broadcasters come away with some challenging numbers. RNZ’s radio audience slips precipitously, from 12% to 8%, in line with a fall in the radio industry’s survey. While it’s still the biggest brand in radio, its lead over ZB has vanished (it should be noted that the GfK survey has ZB with a substantial lead in mornings). Concert barely exists at 1%, and RNZ’s audiences for video and podcasting are not bright spots. It has been given $25m a year to fix some of these issues; on the evidence of this survey it has a lot of work to do.

Whakaata Māori is similarly challenged within the survey. Its television and digital audiences are 1% and 2% respectively, and given the relative youth of Māori (median age: 26), the relative resourcing of linear TV to achieve its goals needs to be questioned. There is a caveat which the data does not attempt to capture, though, and that’s the strength of brands off-platform, and Whakaata Māori has a lively and engaged TikTok presence. Still, the relative weakness of both RNZ and Whakaata Māori shows the need for meaningful media intervention or reform remains strong even after the collapse of the merger. There is also a clear case for opening TVNZ+ up to other content providers, as there is no local platform for longform video content that appears viable at this point. 

6) Radio is starting to really fade

Radio has a well-earned reputation as the cockroach of media, thanks to its inclusion as default entertainment in cars. However, the steady rise of public transport and inclusion of CarPlay and Android Auto in more modern cars mean increasing amounts of choice. The biggest impact, though, is the rise of streaming for music consumption, which is now up to 50% daily usage.  A pair of shocking statistics: almost as many people use Spotify every day (33%) as listen to radio (39%, down from 67% in 2014), and streaming music has even overtaken radio in the crucial morning segment. Even the reach of podcasts, at 17% and still rising, is starting to gain on radio, particularly for young people, where the gap is now just 5%.

Even older listeners are starting to desert the medium. This most obviously impacts its advertising revenues, but also culturally, with streaming now ahead of radio for new music discovery, especially among younger audiences (NZ on Air continues to emphasise radio play for music funding, this result says that needs to change). No individual audio brand has a double digit audience share, and only RNZ, ZB, More FM and the Breeze reach more than one in 20 New Zealanders each day.

7) How does this match up with TV and radio surveys? 

The WATA survey is a paradox – perhaps the most widely scrutinised research in New Zealand’s media, but also its most widely dismissed and disputed, in part because it differs from industry-funded research or first-party data at times. NZ On Air clearly takes it seriously, and uses it to help guide its funding decisions and audience strategy. But so do New Zealand’s media buying agencies, who use it to independently test how various brands and mediums are tracking against one another.

Ultimately, those who work within any branch of the media pay attention to surveys within their medium most closely. Most notably Nielsen’s TV and digital ratings along with GfK’s radio ratings. In some respects, the numbers match or even flatter. Think TV, an industry advocacy group, claims a 44% daily reach for TV, while WATA says it’s 50%. Either way, half of us don’t watch TV, and that number is rising. Radio talks about weekly rather than daily listeners, but its audiences look swollen compared to the WATA data. A couple of brutal numbers: the number of households who say they have access to a working TV or radio in 2014 versus 2023. For TV it has declined from 93% to 69%; for radio even more sharply, from 86% to 50%.

8) The end of primetime?

One big change since the last survey is the extent to which primetime has evolved from being dominated by live linear television to a much more even race. As mentioned before, even older viewers are streaming now – but largely as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, their linear TV viewing. This is why the 6pm bulletins combine for nearly a million viewers at times. But thereafter, increasingly older New Zealanders often switch to streaming.

Everyone else is already there, with a strikingly even distribution among SVOD (paid streaming, where Netflix remains incredibly dominant), on-demand like TVNZ+, and social video sites, mostly YouTube. It means that the traditional motherlode audiences of primetime TV just don’t last like they used to – we become a much more splintered audience, watching tens of thousands of different niche pieces of content across myriad channels. 

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9) Closed captions are now essential

Historically, captioning was unfortunately seen as something of a nice-to-have, making accessibility something only intermittently available to those New Zealanders who just can’t consume local content without it. Now, driven by auto-captioning on social media, multi-screening or sound-off viewing from younger audiences, a huge 44% of us use it daily. Fast-rising too are audio descriptions, used by 9% of audiences. This should see increased use of organisations like Able, as well as sharp use of AI tools, with adroit support from NZ On Air to help ensure as many New Zealanders as possible can consume all that we make.

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 10) Demography is suddenly less interesting

The function of this research is ultimately to help NZ On Air guide its content investments so as to serve all the different communities which make up Aotearoa in something approaching an equitable way. For most of the last 10 years, that has been incredibly difficult, as media consumption varied across ethnicity, gender and age across mediums and brands. It’s far from uncomplicated still, but now “age is the only consistently strong differentiator of media behaviour”, according to the study. This means the platforms used by Māori, Pākehā, Pan-Asian and Pacific New Zealanders are likely more similar now than they have been at any point since the pure linear era. 

That’s a positive for NZ On Air in some respects, allowing it to focus less on the “where” and more on the “what” and “who”. The big challenge that still remains, as NZ On Air chief executive Cam Harland acknowledged in our interview for my podcast The Fold yesterday, is that younger people are far more likely to use platforms curated by algorithm. Spotify, YouTube and a surging TikTok (up from 11% to 19% daily usage) are inherently difficult for it to fund content for. It’s a sign of what remains important and challenging about the WATA research, and why it will continue to be a cornerstone of – and I know this sounds lofty, but I mean it – our understanding of how we relate to one another. Worth paying attention to, right?

Follow The Fold on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’
Duncan Greive
— Founder
Keep going!
Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

MediaAugust 31, 2023

What makes a ‘New Zealand production’? A contentious movie project tests the question

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Aotearoa is desperate to make more movies. But a film called The Canyon is stalled over a dispute about whether a UK director can make a New Zealand film.

The global film industry is not in a great position right now. Despite the success of Barbenheimer, box office receipts are tracking around 25% behind 2019. The rise of streaming, social media, dominance of franchises and the golden age of television have combined to narrow film audiences. Most troubling are the combined writers and actors strikes, Hollywood’s gnarliest since at least the ’60s, which have stopped the pipe of new productions while also rendering its biggest stars unable to promote pre-existing work.

New Zealand has been deeply impacted by this confluence of unfortunate events, with some extra thrown in for good measure. Our screen production industry is heavily reliant on a steady flow of incoming production, but was disrupted while the government took its time reconfiguring our tax incentive scheme to match a more aggressive approach from other countries. This was part of what led to New Zealand losing the giant Lord of the Rings TV project to the UK in 2021.

Against this backdrop, a new feature film with a multi-million dollar budget from a first time producer and writer would seem to be exactly what the industry needs. The Canyon, written by Mt Maunganui-based Tom Furniss, was successfully sold by producer Nick Garrett to Arclight Films, which lists hits like Crash and Hotel Mumbai among its credits.

Laurence Fishburne was reportedly attached to star in The Canyon, the film at the heart of the dispute. (Image: Archi Banal)

The Canyon is squarely commercial in its intent, and a source suggested Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, John Wick) could potentially star. Vaughn Stein (who has worked with bankable talent like Margot Robbie and Simon Pegg) is attached as director. Its synopsis gives a sense of feel and genre. “A woman, struggling to find courage in her troubled marriage, fights for survival after a skydiving accident leaves her hanging from a 1,000-foot high ledge in the Grand Canyon.”

The film is rumoured to have a budget in the $10m-$15m range, financed by its presale to Arclight, along with the support offered through the government’s 40% “domestic New Zealand Screen Production Rebate”, known colloquially in the industry as the SPR (pronounced “spur”). It would create 70 jobs across its duration, according to Garrett. This is no small number at the best of times, but particularly meaningful when large numbers of industry professionals, from catering to set design, have been out of work for months.

‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’
Duncan Greive
— Founder

Hitting the wall

However, The Canyon is in considerable jeopardy. The film’s status as a “New Zealand production” has become deeply contentious, pitting its producers and those sympathetic to them against the Director’s Guild, or DEGANZ. The issue is complex, but at its core asks what qualifies as a New Zealand film, whether those who aren’t New Zealanders can helm one, and who decides.

Film is an atypical industry. It has heavy government participation and a whiff of geopolitics, with countries competing to offer the best subsidies to attract highly mobile productions to their shores. Those productions are largely created by freelancers who work on a product which often costs millions of dollars to make, but is spent in a year or less. As a result, those freelancers are often organised into guilds – or unions – representing different aspects of the industry. DEGANZ is the directors and editors’ guild, and says it exists to “ensure the creative, cultural and financial wellbeing of New Zealand directors”.

The Canyon’s director Vaughn Stein at the premiere of his 2018 film Terminal. (Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic via Getty Images)

That combination of heavy state involvement and guild participation is where The Canyon has run into trouble. While it did not receive any direct government funding, to make up its budget producer Garrett relied on the assumption that his film was a New Zealand production, and thus eligible for a rebate of as much as 40% of its budget. Eligibility is largely determined by a points system, which Garrett says he met. But because his film relied on a UK director, he also needed what is known as a Letter of Non Opposition, or LONO, from DEGANZ, to allow Stein to work here.

That hasn’t happened. DEGANZ head Tui Ruwhiu sent an email to members saying that the board had voted unanimously against providing the LONO, as The Canyon “does not, as a New Zealand film with a non-New Zealand director, meet the Guild’s purpose”. It went on to note that producers of The Canyon “had not considered or approached any New Zealand directors to direct this New Zealand film” (it’s worth noting that it’s often the case that funding is contingent upon the use of an approved director).

Ruwhiu’s email to members went on to suggest other alternative arrangements, such as making the film an official co-production with the UK. Garrett says this would compromise the deal with Arclight and needlessly reduce their rightful ownership. When it sent the letter refusing the LONO, DEGANZ threw a bomb into the film’s budget.

Given the state of the industry, some saw this as highly irresponsible. Screen industry veteran John Barnett, the producer behind Whale Rider and Sione’s Wedding, contacted The Spinoff with his concerns about the fate of the production (with which he is unaffiliated), castigating the guild for its decision. Barnett described DEGANZ’s refusal to grant the necessary LONO as a “1960s-style stunt” jeopardising precious IP, professional development and employment at a time of acute industry stress.

Barnett is not alone in raising questions. A story in industry news source ShowNews asked “is it reasonable for a guild or union to object to a foreign national working in one role, when the SPR criteria allow that to happen?” Garrett himself is similarly bemused, attributing the guild’s refusal to an inability to understand a film made without NZ Film Commission funding. “We’ve financed this film in a very specific way, and it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around that. Instead of being supported for not relying on the government for equity, we’re being screwed over.”

The guild position

While Garrett and Barnett paint a picture of a rogue union acting in the narrow interest of its members against the broader health of the industry, DEGANZ head Ruwhiu sees it very differently. He says the elevated rebate exists to foster New Zealand film and should be reserved for that purpose. According to him, the fact it’s set in the US and has a UK director shows that it is not, in fact, a New Zealand film at all. Ruwhiu’s letter to his membership relayed the Grand Canyon-set synopsis, noting acidly that it “suggested to the board that its description as a New Zealand film was tenuous”.

He also said that the guild was only approached for the LONO 11 days before Stein, the director, was set to land, giving it no time to engage with substantive negotiations with the production which might have resolved the impasse. Despite “repeated requests” for “context and additional information… little was provided”. As if to underscore the rancour, Ruwhiu went on to question other aspects of the film’s operations, including whether its US actors had received the necessary exemption from SAG-AFTRA to participate, and if Equity NZ, the guild which represents actors, had signed off on the film.

Garrett says that the answer is yes on both counts – that he has the necessary strike exemption, and that Equity NZ have been supportive throughout. To him, it’s only the director’s guild which is holding up his production, and that its opposition came as out of the blue. The Canyon is his first film as producer, and Garrett says he has been working on it for three years. He believed the LONO was essentially a formality. “The [Guild] website says that if you give them all the information they need, they issue a letter of non-objection within 24 hours.”

He now believes that this one guild is contravening the intent of the new rebate framework, despite his film qualifying for the rebate under a points system. “It’s quite clear that there’s two conflicting opinions here… it seems as though DEGANZ overrode the Film Commission on this particular issue. My big question for the industry at large is who’s actually setting the rules here?”

That is still not entirely clear. The Spinoff has asked the NZ Film Commission for clarity but it simply pointed to the points system, under which Garrett believes The Canyon qualifies.

Can The Canyon be bridged?

The story is not yet entirely over. Film Auckland, which represents the interests of the broader industry in Tāmaki Makaurau, provided some clarity, and potentially some hope, for the embattled production. Its deputy chair Alice Shearman says that while a LONO is helpful, its absence is not necessarily the end for the production, and its ability to access the full rebate.

“Immigration NZ takes [LONOs] into account when issuing these types of visas, but they are not the deciding factor,” says Shearman. “It is concerning that the media are involved at this delicate stage of the film’s financing journey and [we] hope that this is resolved without unnecessary and potentially premature sides being drawn.” She went on to say that Film Auckland “understand and support” both DEGANZ and The Canyon production, which is quite a difficult position to sustain.

Given that Stein was to land here any day now, the window to amicably resolve the deadlock is closing. As of today, the sides remain opposed, and the rhetoric pointed. “[The guild] seems to have a complete misunderstanding of how films are financed in this country,” says Garrett. “I think there needs to be a bit more education of people who don’t have their arses on the line going out and raising the money for these things.” He went on to reiterate the economic consequences should the deal funding The Canyon collapse. “This is a really commercial film, employing 70+ crew, at a time when it looks like the economy is going down the toilet.”

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    Ruwhiu and his organisation remain unrepentant in their opposition. “DEGANZ considered carefully the impact of the strike and the lack of major productions flowing into New Zealand at this time,” he says. “However to allow a non-New Zealand director to direct a New Zealand film… could potentially set a precedent whereby all New Zealand film and TV productions were able to going forward.”

    Whether the immediate needs of this production, or the guild’s vision for its membership prevail remains unresolved. In an industry short of work and with low morale, a relatively small production has suddenly assumed very high stakes.

    Correction: an earlier version of this story suggested a co-production implied a lower rebate, it does not. The Spinoff  regrets this error.

    ‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’
    Duncan Greive
    — Founder