In times of despair and national events, Australia’s general public tend to fall back on traditional media as a source to educate themselves.
With the federal election right around the corner, the voting public is looking to inform themselves before they head to the polls to cast their vote.
According to data from Zenith’s ‘Imagine’ panel, 44 per cent of the voting population tend to turn to free to air commercial TV channels including Seven, Nine and 10. This stands in contrast to social media, with 37 per cent of the population heading to social media to learn about the election.
The Great Debate on Nine had around 1.1 million viewers. These types of figures demonstrate why political parties still invest heavily into TV.
Comparatively, the other two debates Australia Votes 2025: ABC News Leaders Debate received just over one million total viewers and 7News’ The Final Showdown: Leaders’ debate had just under a million total viewers, demonstrating the reach traditional media has.
“In an era of increasing domestic and global uncertainty made worse by the growing disinformation spread across social media, Nine’s legacy as a trusted and independent source of news has never been more important. Australians have always come to us for quality journalism and reporting of the facts,” a Nine spokesperson told B&T.
“We are seeing that demand across our streaming, broadcasting, publishing and audio brands right now as Australians grapple with big issues such as who should be our next Prime Minister or to understand the global ripple effects of a Trump Presidency.”
Free-to-air TV—whether commercial or not—remains the preferred channel for older generations to receive their political news. Some 52 per cent of Gen X and 65 per cent of Boomers choosing free-to-air commercial channels while 38 per cent of Gen Xers and 50 per cent of Boomers choose non-commercial FTA.
However, this election may prove to be something of an inflection point for Australian politics. This will be the first time that Gen Z (18-29) and Millennials (30-44) outnumber their older predecessors at the poll. But despite the perception that these demographics rely heavily on social media for news, Zenith CEO Jason Tonelli told B&T there were some surprises in the data.
“One of the surprises (in the data) was millennials and online newspapers. You expect these numbers for Gen X and Boomers, but even 29 per cent of Gen Z are going there,” said Tonelli.
“It’s super-interesting because I think they are fact-checking and saying, ‘I’m going to go research that’. They’re really wanting to inform themselves.”
Despite those gains for traditional media, many had speculated that the federal election might prove to be something of a breakout season for podcasts in Australia—mirroring the medium’s importance in the US election earlier this year.
Just as former Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, and re-elected President Donald Trump appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, the leaders of the two main Australian parties took a similar approach.
Current Prime Minister and leader of the Labor party, Anthony Albanese guest starred on Abbie Chatfield’s It’s A Lot podcast. Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton took to YouTube to be interviewed by Australian diver Sam Fricker.
Data from Zenith panel, refuted the ‘podcast election’, with only 13 per cent of Australia’s population between the ages of 18-74 deeming podcasts a crucial source to engage voters.
“Podcasts aren’t that high. The big expectation was that it was going to be the ‘podcast election’, and we are not there yet as a nation,” added Tonelli.
