Television New Zealand has been toppled as operating the most popular broadcasting platform by Youtube, but is weathering the digital disruption better than most local providers.

Google-owned Youtube is the most popular site, station or channel in the NZ On Air-commissioned survey, ‘Where Are The Audiences? 2020’, overtaking TVNZ’s powerhouse TVNZ 1 channel which attracted 44 percent of those surveyed.

Netflix and Facebook video came in third equal at 36 percent, while Three was well down at a 23 percent share. State-owned Radio NZ was on 11 percent and NZME’s Newstalk ZB attracted 9 percent.

Traditional broadcasters have been under pressure as increasingly fast and more-widespread internet services enabled the proliferation of streaming web-based services.

That’s come to a head this year, with digital audiences set to overtake traditional media in 2021, according to NZ On Air’s survey of 1,511 people.

“It’s been a tough year all round, and this research brings home what a fight local content makers and platforms have on their hands,” NZ On Air chief executive Cameron Harland said in a statement.

No let up

The survey is grim reading for Sky Network Television, which controlled premium entertainment and sporting broadcasting rights through the first decade of the new millennium.

That dominance was eroded by new online platforms, with just 36 percent using the pay TV operator’s platforms in 2020, compared to 58 percent in 2014.

Sky audiences spent an average 78 minutes on the platform in 2020 down from 92 minutes in the 2018 survey. The report noted that might be due to the lack of live sports through the pandemic when the survey was held.

But it also meant time spent watching TV fell for the first time since NZ On Air started commissioning the survey, falling to 137 minutes from 156 minutes.

TVNZ wasn’t immune, and while TVNZ 1 has managed to restrict its declining audience – it’s down from 48 percent in 2014 – its commercially-focused TVNZ 2 channel only grabbed a 14 percent share, almost halving from the 27 percent recorded in 2014.

Plugging in

Still, the state-owned TV network has made inroads with its online offering, with TVNZ On Demand grabbing a 21 percent share, up from 13 percent in 2018 and three times the 7 percent audience it had in 2014.

3Now only attracts 5 percent, and is largely unchanged since 2014, while the merger of Sky’s Neon and Spark NZ’s Lightbox is also about 5 percent.

And it isn’t just in shifting its audience online where TVNZ excelled. The state-owned broadcaster was easily the most-trusted news source through the covid-19 lockdown at 28 percent as well as the most widely-used source at 47 percent.

Stuff was the second-most used source at 26 percent, though audience trust was only 4 percent, while the NZ Herald attracted a 22 percent audience, and also achieved a 4 percent level of trust.

Three News grabbed a 20 percent audience, with a 5 percent trust, while Radio NZ’s audience was 12 percent with a 4 percent trust.

The government’s official covid-19 website had an 18 percent audience with an 8 percent level of trust.