NZ on Air spends more than $80m on local programmes for TV. It also funds radio, New Zealand music and some digital media. A new research report* shows that TV and radio are still our most important media. The research asked 1400 people what media they had used the day before. 83% watched TV for an average of 2.5 hours, 67% listened to radio for nearly 2 hours, 52% read a newspaper, either in print or online, 23% streamed music, 18% watched Youtube videos and 9% watched TV Ondemand. Most people started the day by reading the paper and listening to the radio but at 6pm they turned on the TV. The most popular TV channels were TV1 with 48%, TV3 35%, TV2 27%, Prime 15% and Sky Sports 14%. (Many people watched more than one channel.) Radio New Zealand National, The Edge, ZM and Newstalk ZB all had about 10% listening to them.
Younger people, aged 15 to 24, watched TV although not as much as the average person. The percentage was 76% (compared to an average of 83%). However, 66% watched videos online and 58% streamed music through Spotify.
Maori and Pacific Islanders have a higher percentage of younger people who also used online videos and watched TV Ondemand.
TV captions were popular with Pacific Islanders (25% used captions) and Asians (27%). 62% of Asians also watched online videos and online TV like Netflix and Hulu. This is partly because of the language problem but also because more Asians have access to many different devices: smartphone, tablet, and Smart TVs. They probably also watched videos in their own language.
To read the report go to NZ On Air.
* Colmar-Brunton research report