Practically nobody is watching live TV over the internet in Australia

With terrible new brands like tenplay, ABC iView, 9Now, 7Plus and SBS OnDemand it’s clear that free-to-air networks, currently benefitting from traditional TV distribution, want to survive well into the 21st century.

Yet new data from Australian TV ratings group OzTAM has shown that practically nobody is streaming live TV in Australia.

Here are some of the top-rated live streams from the first ‘live stream’ report:

The highest rated ABC stream from January 29 to February 4 was ABC News Breakfast with just 3000 stream starts. On Seven 360,000 people started an Australian Open stream, which is pretty impressive, while Nine’s top show was Married At First Sight with just 16,000 stream starts.

On Ten 3000 people tried to stream I’m A Celebrity, coming live from Africa, while on the SBS 11,000 tried to watch an EPL match live.

Compared to over-the-air broadcasts these numbers are generally pretty flat. Sport is popular but at the end of the day only a handful of people have tried to watch linear TV from an internet connected screen.

You can see the full OzTAM report here, with even more conservative ‘VPM’ figures looking at an average online audience for each show: