Gold Logie winner Larry Emdur’s acceptance speech may have unwittingly put another nail in the coffin of Australia’s free-to-air television industry he’s loved for 40 years.

Referring to himself as television’s “most axed man”, the Seven network’s breakfast host Emdur also shared the viewing habits of his two adult children, Jye, 30, and Tia, 25.

“They haven’t watched free-to-air TV in about 15 years.”

And they’re not alone, as large numbers of viewers are abandoning the traditional networks and paying to watch – or binge – TV series and films.

The reasons are numerous … and complex.

A Queensland University of Technology report found drama content on the three competing commercial networks “was on the ropes”,  advertising revenue is also falling (down 11 per cent year on year) and job losses across the east coast have hit hard this year.

QUT’s Anna Potter has said there was a” big question too about whether Australia can support three television (commercial) broadcasters”, and media analyst Peter Cox delivered a dire warning to Media Watch last month.

“I think they’re in a death spiral.”

How we watch and listen to content was laid out in last year’s Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report, revealing we are indeed watching more subscription streaming services (both paid and free) and less FTA television, namely Seven, Nine, Ten, the ABC and SBS.

Incredibly, people aged between 18 and 24 watched just 30 minutes of FTA in one week.

In the same survey, in the previous seven days to June last year, on average we watched just 5.6 hours of FTA.

It was reflected at this year’s 64th Logie awards, where shows from Netflix, Prime Video, Stan, Binge, Disney+ and Paramount+ made up exactly 25 per cent of nominees.

Netflix’s Boy Swallows Universe bagged five Logies to become this year’s most recognised program, and the ABC celebrated with Utopia winning three awards including best scripted comedy.

Nine did win a travel show, Ten celebrated its MasterChef cooking show (Andy Allen accepted the award via video link) and best entertainment program went to Seven’s The Voice Australia.

But the landscape has irreversibly changed.

“TV used to be a communal activity undertaken by families crowded around a television set in the living room. It is now more individualised with people more often watching alone, on their own devices and being able to choose content served by hyper-targeted algorithms,” explains RMIT senior lecturer in marketing, Amanda Spry.

“Habits such as on-demand watching, binge watching and beige watching have been stoked by subscription services,” she tells The New Daily.

“The FTA networks are not as well positioned to satisfy these new audience habits and preferences as they emerge from decades of doing things very differently than streaming services.”

“We have generations of audiences now for whom watching television with advertising is not the norm.”

The FOMO complex

Stephen Gaunson, RMIT’s associate professor of Media and Communications, offers a glimmer of hope, saying the FTAs “will remain relevant and vital for live events such as news, sports and reality TV”.

But the issue for drama is twofold, he tells TND.

“Audiences have become increasingly impatient to watch dramas at designated times on the TV schedule, instead preferring to stream shows from an FTA app,” Gaunson said.

“The other issue is funding now being prioritised on live events including news and sports.

“There is not the budget to funding several original dramas anymore, with networks preferring to source popular international TV dramas instead.”

Subscription, he says, “gives viewers the freedom to source shows at their own leisure including when they are in transit, such as public transport or holidays”.

And there is the “FOMO complex”, with viewers surfing across multiple services “in order to remain part of the social media conversation”.

Spry adds that streamers are reshaping the culture of how we consume content, employing tactics like dropping entire seasons of series in one hit.

Easy to watch. No ads.

The ‘switch-off’ date

Tim Burrowes, publisher of the media and marketing newsletter Unmade, forecast a sad TV prediction.

“One of the patterns we see is that watching traditional TV is skewing older and older,” he told the ABC.

“So, it would seem quite unlikely that, say, somebody moves into a new home, particularly if they’re younger, they probably will never bother to connect their TV to the aerial.

“Now, that doesn’t mean that they ignore free-to-air television altogether because, of course, it can be live-streamed now as well.

“And also, there’s that on-demand component. All the free-to-air networks have their players as well.

“But the way that people are absorbing their television is absolutely changing.

“So, by 2030 we’ll have either switched off the transmitters or we’ll know the switch-off date by then.”