‘It's looking pretty grim': What's the future of TV news in Australia?
In one of The Project 's final episodes last week, comedian Sam Taunton donned a black suit and top hat: 'I'm wearing it from the time when free-to-air was at its peak: 1912, I believe,' he joked.
But how grim is the outlook really? I spoke to five people aged 40 and under, who work inside and outside traditional news media, to find out.
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What's your impression of the Australian TV news landscape right now?
Jan Fran, journalist and presenter who is launching independent company Ette Media: TV news and current affairs just can't seem to hold audiences in the way it used to. It's fragmenting. The fact is that a significant proportion of Australians just don't do appointment television, and the majority are getting their news from social media all day, every day. So why would they sit down and watch the news for an hour on television? It doesn't really make sense any more to the way that we live. That said, there are still quite a few people who watch the TV news bulletins. But I'd be interested in knowing the demographics of that audience.
Leo Puglisi, teenage journalist and founder of 6 News, which operates on YouTube: There are plenty of news shows like A Current Affair that clearly have a very loyal audience. People laugh about it, but they do a good job keeping that. It's more my grandparents' demographic, though.
It's a real shame to lose so many non-traditional news programs, especially when they're not being replaced with other news content. It really reflects that anything different is going online at this point. The audiences for these shows are just not on TV.
Konrad Benjamin, AKA Punter's Politics, a high school teacher turned content creator and politics podcaster: It's looking pretty grim. As younger people have stopped watching broadcast TV, it looks like they gave up on trying to cater for us. The modern-day version of The Chaser's War on Everything is now just on TikTok.
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Brooke Boney, Today 's former news and entertainment reporter: There are a lot of incredible people who work very hard on these shows to bring us the very best, and it's sad to see those jobs go. I also think TV news is so under-resourced, so it makes it really hard for the people who remain to do the best job they can. People are having to do more than they ever had with less than they ever had.
Chris Kohler, 9News finance editor, presenter and popular social media creator: It still feels like the powerhouse of TV, for me, is well-researched news and current affairs. I mean, The Project is gone, but Channel 10 is bringing in something new with a slightly different flavour to it. There's been a lot of change lately, but TV has always been in an atmosphere of constant change. I think the quality of the output is still incredibly high.
The most recent research from the Australian Communications and Media Authority suggests only about a quarter of younger Australians (18-34) are watching news on free-to-air. Why do you think that is? Can anything be done to turn it around?
Brooke Boney: I'm not surprised by that statistic at all. We've all got news in the palm of our hand whenever we want it. But I think it's a bit of a copout for us to say it's just about that. Young people can open TikTok or Instagram or YouTube and hear from people who they think sound more like them and look more like them. I would hope that people continue to watch news, but can we reverse these trends? Who knows? In moments of crisis, I only want to watch live news. You can't get that immediacy – and accuracy – from Reels or TikTok.
Konrad Benjamin: I think there's still a good 20 years until the TV generation disappear. But that just leaves an ever-shrinking piece of the pie. Legacy media needs to go back to the drawing board about what is it they do. They've got the biggest competitive advantage against someone like me: they have money and full teams of people. They can produce the same kinds of content that I can with better journalism and better graphics.
Leo Puglisi: Young people are going to continue moving online. In my age group, 17-18, it's all Instagram and TikTok (but mostly still from reputable sources). I don't think when these people turn 25, they'll become free-to-air watchers, so TV outlets will have to move with them and adapt.
Some outlets are putting segments online, and they're doing well. 7News Spotlight does very good numbers on YouTube. Even things like Sky News – their online numbers are insane. A lot of those viewers aren't Australians, but it would still bring in revenue through YouTube. That's the model a lot of other outlets might start looking to. At this point, you've got to put digital first. You can't wait until six o'clock.
Jan Fran: Honestly, I'd like to see a news and current affairs show that exists outside the scaffolding of the mainstream media. In the US, there are some that are fairly massive on YouTube, and they're sustainable, and they're scalable, and they're consistent because they can pull an audience. That hasn't been tried and tested in the same to the same degree in Australia. I'd like to see something like that, or maybe, have someone explore the idea of what a news and current affairs show – be it nightly or weekly – looks like on a streaming service.
Chris Kohler: It's like that Mark Twain quote, 'the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated'. I started in newspapers 15 years ago, and people were saying then this is all going down the gurgler, no one will be picking up the newspaper in two or three years. But I think it's not really a zero-sum game any more: there's an insatiable appetite for content, whether it's on the phone, the TV or picking up a newspaper.
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I mean, Channel Nine* will tell you that its total TV audience for the 6pm bulletin is up 11.5 per cent year-on-year [data supplied by the network showed similar rises in viewers aged 16-39, but it's worth noting that demographic represents just 10.8 per cent of the total audience].
Who knows what it'll all look like five, 10 or 20 years? Right now, I think there's still optimism.
What kind of news is the most engaging for young Australians today? What should we be making more of?
Jan Fran: People connect with other people on the internet much more than what they do on television. There's a certain style of presentation on television that, in my view, is quite antiquated: you know, the 'news voice', the way that they dress, the 'reporter hands'. I don't find that particularly engaging any more.
Chris Kohler: The first threshold to walk through is, 'Is this authentic?' I always think journalists are at their best when they're being an individual as well as a carrier of news. We still need to have a line drawn between opinion, analysis and news, but it doesn't mean you can't do multiple things in multiple different settings.
I was trying stuff on social media for a really long time, and about two years ago I just decided that I could be a bit sillier about it. I printed out a piece of paper that said, 'Philip Lowe', sticky taped it to my chest, wrote 'interest rates' on the blinds and lifted the blind while dancing to Pump Up the Jam. To my genuine surprise, it got a lot more views than anything I'd done in the past.
Konrad Benjamin: I'm drawn to stories that give context. I never liked the whole 30-second news approach of 'here's what happened'. Like, 'the US bombed Iran'. OK. But tell me why it's important: why is the US involved, how did they get into it? New formats – YouTube and online media – have come and plugged that gap and legacy media companies have to reformat what they're doing. The ABC has pivoted a bit: Matt Bevan does If You're Listening, a YouTube channel and podcast. That's the change we're looking for: 10-15 minute context-driven work. The format is YouTube first.
According to the ACMA research, almost half of those between 18-24 say social media is now their main source of news. What are the pros and cons of that shift?
Konrad Benjamin: Diluting the power of corporations like major news networks over the Australian narrative is a good thing. But I think there's very low levels of media literacy across the board from most regular people. People are looking for authenticity, and I think their shorthand for authenticity is someone who speaks and talks like them. The problem with that is that there's a bunch of people who know nothing speaking very confidently about something on YouTube. I never really wanted to be in that space, but I can, at the very least, point out my sources and what I think is good verified journalism. With the rise of AI, the new conversation in media is all about trust. People will be looking for markers of trust. That's the future currency, and that's an advantage legacy media have over people like me.
Leo Puglisi: A big con is the rise of AI. It's getting ridiculous trying to figure out what's real and what's not. And because of that, there's a rising level of distrust. The other thing is short-form content, as entertaining as it can be, risks not being able to tell the full story.
Brooke Boney: The pros are that they're getting news at all. Any way we can get people engaged in the stories that affect them is important and worthwhile. Obviously, the cons are that there's less journalistic rigour. People can consume a lot of information that hasn't been fact-checked. It's a huge concern.
Jan Fran: While I'm happy to see spaces exist outside the mainstream media, sometimes I do worry about how you do journalism natively on social media. It takes time and money and expertise, and these things are not particularly rewarded on social media. So what you have is a morphing of journalism into commentary, and they're two very, very different things.
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If good public interest investigative news and current affairs disappears from TV, is there scaffolding enough outside the mainstream media to still preserve it? I think that remains to be seen.
If we accept that news consumption is shifting to social media, how can Australian TV networks ensure they stay relevant to a new generation?
Brooke Boney: I think we've always had an issue with the diversity of not only newsrooms, but presenters as well. I saw a post on Instagram the other day from journalist Mawunyo Gbogbo criticising the lack of diversity in Ten's new show and the broader news landscape – I reflect the sentiment and lament that we're still asking for representation.
If you're a young person from Western Sydney or the northern suburbs of Melbourne or even in the country, are you really going to want to turn on the TV and see that? Would you watch a Reel from someone who can't relate to you or have the same experiences or even understand what you need to hear? I don't know. We've still got a lot of work to do when it comes to reflecting audiences back to them.
Jan Fran: The simple answer would be, well, news and television networks should start switching to digital. And yeah, certainly that is a strategy. But then you don't own the platforms that you publish on, and you're beholden to their rules and regulations and their whims and their algorithms. It's a huge risk, and I can understand a lot of TV networks not wanting to do that. But I think you have no choice but to meet people where they are.
Chris Kohler: If I had the answer to this question, I'd be neck deep in trying to do it. But I think it's exciting there's a lot of thought going into what the next wave looks like.
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In another bold move, 10 News+ will be broadcast on Spotify, as well as on YouTube and 10Play, in what Ten says is a 'world first for commercial TV news'. It is an everything, everywhere all at once approach. And it's also a sharp U-turn from The Project, which mixed news reporting with light entertainment and comedy. 'People just want their news straight up,' says Brace. 'There's been, I think, a drift in recent years towards opinion or sensationalism, and in some media even, I think bias. And people kind of leant into that for a while and enjoyed the change, but now people are fed up with it. 'They don't want to be told what to think or how to think. They just want their information and then they can make up their own minds. People are smart. They don't need to be told what to think.' So what does that mean in practice? 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In 2020, she won a Walkley Award for her coverage of the protests outside the White House, where she was hit with a baton by police. 'You can't cover these things from a bureau or even from a block back,' says Brace. 'Because what is happening to these people is happening on the front line, and you have to be standing there, and you have to sit with your own eyes so you can actually stand up on camera or in Congress, as I had to, and say what happened wasn't right. Sometimes it's your job to say, 'I saw that and that wasn't OK.'' Hitchcock, meanwhile, got his start in the office of the now defunct current affairs show Today Tonight when he was 18 years old. 'I was answering the phones and filling the biscuit barrel,' he says. 'But within six months, I was a researcher, and within another three months after that, I was a producer at 18. It was fast, but from there I've done almost every job – researcher, producer, editor, reporter, correspondent, all sorts.' Like Brace, he's has the kind of globe-trotting news career that makes great TV – reporting from the frontlines of Syria and Iraq, covering the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines – but it's the quieter story of Sharn McNeill, who was only 30 when she was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, that he names as one of his favourites. 'It always makes me teary whenever I even describe it to anybody,' he says. 'That's one of those stories of human endurance and positivity that always stays with me.' With so long in business, do either of them see a difference in how news is reported or consumed today? Loading 'I don't see a change in the stories of people interested in, just in the way they consume it and the speed in which they consume it,' says Hitchcock. 'Those big stories used to happen and [you] used to be able to chew on it for a whole week. Now it could be the most immense story that you've ever seen, and three days later, we're on to something else.' Brace, meanwhile, thinks people are more overwhelmed than ever before by the 'sheer amount of information out there' and this is what leads to the rise in misinformation. 'It's just selective reporting when you blatantly just tell one side of a story,' says Brace. 'That side is not untrue, but it's dangerous to do that, I think. I bump into people in real life regularly who say, 'Did you hear this?' And I'll say, 'But did you hear this?' And it's not that I'm on one side or the other. I just get really annoyed when they have no idea that that's only half the story.' The US, famously, is home to Fox News, which proudly wears its bias on its sleeve. Do either of them think there is that type of biased reporting in Australia? 'We have more of it than we used to,' says Brace. 'I genuinely think that perhaps 10 years ago, we had a really balanced media with very little tolerance for bias. I remember maybe around the Kevin Rudd kind of time – because I'm very politically focused – there started to be some headlines and some things said, and I'd be like, 'Hm, that's interesting reporting.' I just feel like it's grown over the years, where we now have certain outlets that you just know they're one side or the other. And I really don't like that.' Loading Of course, it's not just bias or misinformation that modern broadcast news has to deal with. The fickle beast that is ratings will probably have more of an effect on 10 News+'s future than any story they choose to do. A dramatic drop in ratings was one of the reasons given for The Project's axing, so what happens when, say, four weeks from now, 10 News+ isn't clicking and it's suggested they start chasing more sensational local stories? 'It'll be a collective decision, the stories that we chase for the day,' says Hitchock. 'So that'll be Dan Sutton, who's the executive producer, and Martin White, who's the vice president [of news on Ten]. Those two will be keeping a keen eye on the show, and then Amelia and I, of course, will have heavy input as well. 'But I don't think it'll change the mission statement or the program. Will it change if the ratings are not as expected? I don't know, but I don't think so, because the show has been pitched as a certain way, and we're filling a national show. It can't be hyper local. The answer wouldn't be to go back to hyper local stories, the answer would be just better stories.' And what if it's suggested a comedian would make a perfect addition to the desk? 'We are very funny,' says Brace, laughing. 'No one's realised that Denham and I are hilarious. So we should be fine.'
