ITWire

In terms of the number of hours available, locally-produced content represents 58% of the offerings of Australian catch-up TV services, according to research performed by Screen Australia. But it's a different story when it comes to the number of titles, where only 38% are Australian.

The Screen Australia report explains this in terms of the large back catalogue of certain local programs such as McLeod's Daughters and Sea Patrol, and the practice of 'stacking' or keeping all episodes of local series available online until a few weeks after the series has ended. That said, more than 50% of titles are available for no more than 14 days after transmission.

The report also notes the different strategies employed by the services. (All figures refer to the research period of four weeks beginning February 13, 2012.)

The ABC's iView service offers predominantly recently broadcast content, with just 3% of titles and 2% of hours coming from back catalogue or exclusive content. The practice of stacking makes it a true catch-up service in the sense that it is possible to watch all the episodes of a series you didn't watch from the outset. Unlike the other services, iView offers a substantial amount of children's and preschool content.

SBS On Demand also offers mostly recently broadcast shows - the regular inclusion of feature films is a unique feature - plus a back catalogue primarily featuring local content.

Plus7's current lineup is mostly primetime Australian and US drama and reality series, with a large back catalogue (79% of available hours) including shows that are over 35 years old, plus some US shows that have never been shown on Australian free-to-air TV.

NineMSN Video is described as "the most limited offering". 92% of the hours available are from the back catalogue of local productions.

Watch TV from Network Ten provides a fairly generous 71 titles and 251 hours of content, including archives of local content (eg, Masterchef) and episodes from classic TV series.

While the report [PDF]notes that catch-up TV is primarily being watched on computers rather than alternatives such as smart TVs and Blu-ray players, tablets, smartphones and games consoles, it doesn't provide any figures. In addition, it is silent on the matter of many shows not being available on devices such as smart TVs and Blu-ray players.

However, statistics compiled by Screen Australia from various sources assert that smart TVs represent almost one-third of sales in 2012, that one-third of Sony smart TVs are connected to the Internet, and 25% of tablet owners use them to watch TV. And the number of Australians that use catch-up TV services now exceeds the number that use "unofficial" sources of TV content such as BitTorrent file sharing.