Too much TV choice a turn-off for viewers

Australians are said to be feeling overwhelmed by the amount of streaming services, catch-up and pay TV available to them.

A senior vice-president of the newly merged ViacomCBS says Australians feel overwhelmed by the amount of streaming services, catch-up and pay TV available to them with studios and local players more likely to continue to collaborate as a result.

Research conducted by ViacomCBS — the owner of Network 10 in Australia — has found that while “people use TV to reduce stress … the amount of content available today is overwhelming”.

The research found 85 per cent of Australians surveyed wished they could access all their TV through one service. Christian Kurz, ViacomCBS’s Global Consumer Insights chief, said TV lovers in Australia and globally crave a simpler experience.

“People are overwhelmed with the amount of ways they get to those different pieces of content,” Mr Kurz said.

“It’s just gotten a lot more complex. It used to be, press that button and if you don’t like it you go up or down. That was really all the choices you ever had and there are just so many more choices now.

“Consumers (in Australia) just like anywhere else are just getting used to having all of that choice.”

Mr Kurz said consumers feel overwhelmed because the average household has a TV connected to the internet, a streaming box, a set-top box from Foxtel, and a smartphone, tablet and computer too.

“All of these enable you to watch TV, but not all in the same way. On top of that, there are the catch-up players of ABC, SBS, 7, 9 and 10, free services like YouTube and Vevo, and all of those allow you to watch stuff,” he said.

“All this taken together leads to that feeling of … consumers longing for a simpler world.”

Foxtel (majority owned by News Corp, publisher of The Australian) has entered into several aggregation deals with rivals like Netflix and ABC iView that would allow their programming to be integrated into Foxtel’s platform.

This allows both Foxtel and rival streamers to have their content accessed from one place, cutting down search times and integrating related content. More agreements are likely to follow with other “over-the-top streamers”, which could include the likes Disney + that has withdrawn its content from Foxtel and Stan.

Despite speculation of more streamers entering the market, Mr Kurz said studios and local market players are likely to continue to collaborate, as with Foxtel and HBO in Australia. But he said whether or not tech giants like Google would play is yet to be seen.

“In an ideal world as a consumer I want one service and everything is in there. How realistic that is from a business perspective is a different question,” he said.

With streaming services such as Netflix, Stan, Disney+, Kayo Sports, Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ each offering unique content, Mr Kurz said when consumers can’t find new programs quickly they fall back on old favourites.

“I think discoverability is going to get really tricky and what we see starting to happen is that people don’t care about the new stuff because ‘I just want to find a familiar thing’,” he said. “And that’s going to be a challenge, because we are all making new content. Maybe even making too much.”

According to Roy Morgan data, in December last year more than 14.5 million Australians had access to a paid TV or streaming service.