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Bondi
Beach, Sydney, Australia
Websites
Bondi
Beach (Wikipedia)
Bondi
Beach is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding
suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Bondi
Beach is located 7 kilometres (4 miles) east of the
Sydney central business district, in the local government
area of Waverley Council, in the Eastern Suburbs.
In the 2021 Australian census it had a population
of 11,513 residents. Its postcode is 2026. Bondi,
North Bondi and Bondi Junction are neighbouring suburbs.
Bondi Beach is one of the most visited tourist sites
in Australia, and the location of two hit TV series
Bondi Rescue and Bondi Vet. (Wikipedia)
How
Bondi Rescue became a YouTube and social media money
spinner
(In
Case You Missed It)
May
31, 2025
By
Sam Buckingham-Jones
It
started nearly 20 years ago with a simple premise:
entertain and educate television viewers by showing
the incredibly tanned professional lifeguards at Bondi
Beach going about their regular work each day.
After
18 seasons on air, though, Bondi Rescue has been going
through an unorthodox renaissance. Its average audience
in 2007, in TV’s heyday, was 1.2 million. It
was a quarter of that last year. But that decline
is not as big a deal as it might once have been –
Bondi Rescue has generated millions of dollars finding
new viewers on social media and online platforms.
The
show, created by production company CJZ, is a digital
success story. Over the past five years or so, it
has grown to 1.2 billion video views and 2.8 million
subscribers on YouTube. It has 1.7 million TikTok
followers, 1.2 million subscribers on Snapchat and
277,000 followers on Instagram.
“We
dabbled in the whole YouTube thing, but back then
there wasn’t much return,” CJZ chief executive
Matt Campbell says. “All of a sudden, it started
to change.”
The
shift began in 2019, when CJZ hired a company called
Totem to manage the rights to the show. Totem, which
describes itself as a digital-first media studio,
began to slice and clip Bondi Rescue episodes into
different bits that would work online. Why put entire
episodes on YouTube when a three-minute clip would
attract millions of viewers (and ads)?
“When
it was getting to a point where digital might overtake
linear, we gave it all to Totem,” Campbell says.
“They’re re-clipping with our authority.
They can’t just put anything up – it has
to be vetted. But they’re the ones that look
at the algorithms.”
Traditional
broadcasters like the Seven, Nine and Ten networks
have been under enormous pressure since the arrival
of powerful international competitors in streaming
(such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video), social media
(Facebook, Instagram and TikTok) and YouTube.
Totem
founder and chief executive Steve Crombie says networks
should be embracing these platforms, rather than fighting
them. If the goal of making TV shows is to make as
much money as possible, then Crombie says networks
and production companies are leaving money on the
table.
“Every
single network in this country has an IP [intellectual
property] that we could exploit and scale aggressively
to create a global leadership position in that particular
area,” Crombie says.
“[Bondi
Rescue] definitely proved that older IP, when remade
for new platforms, can generate nine-figure value
over time. Credit to Network Ten and CJZ, it’s
their show. We took that legacy and scaled it globally.
We’ve created like 3000 or 4000 videos in total
around Bondi Rescue.”
Totem
recently acquired the rights to distribute The Try
Guys, an American YouTube channel, and aims to monetise
its content as much as it can.
“By
exploiting these shows correctly, in a social environment,
or an environment outside linear, there are lots of
shows like that across Australian networks that we
can do the same thing with,” Crombie says.
“It’s
not just the ad revenue on these platforms. It’s
also what else you can do. We did a deal with Samsung
in the US, it was lucrative. We did a deal with Amazon
Freevee in the US, and then we did deals in Germany,
in the UK, in Canada, and more.”
It
is a model being tested overseas and contemplated
locally. British broadcaster Channel 4 signed a deal
with YouTube in 2022, agreeing to upload and commercialise
1000 hours of entire shows in return for reaching
new viewers. In December last year, its rival, ITV,
did the same. Global production company Banijay has
created a YouTube-only version of MasterChef in Brazil.
Embracing
digital platforms comes with risk, however. YouTube
has grown into the dark horse of TV and is watched
more each month in the US than Netflix. Putting entire
shows on the platform risks strengthening a dangerous
competitor.
Media
data and analytics firm Ampere Analysis says there
are a lot of people who say they watch YouTube but
no free-to-air TV. According to its regular consumer
survey, 50 per cent of Australians watch YouTube on
a monthly basis but do not watch SBS (either through
the aerial or its online app). For the Nine Network,
that figure is 36 per cent. It is 38 per cent for
the Seven Network.
“Broadcasters
tend to earn a smaller share of revenue on these platforms
compared to when content is consumed on their own
services,” Ampere analyst Ed Ludlow says.
“A
single piece of content on YouTube will need to accumulate
multiple times the number of views to achieve the
same level of revenue for the broadcaster that it
would via their own platform.”
But
some of those clips are already being uploaded to
YouTube without permission, he added. “Popular
clips from TV shows and sporting events are frequently
uploaded on unauthorised channels that will collect
the associated ad revenue, especially if the official
channels refuse to upload,” he said. (AFR)
Full
article and coverage via subscription to The Australian
Financial Review
Link
Media
Man
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Bondi
Beach, Sydney, Australia
Bondi
Rescue, by Conrad Walters, reviewer - 25th February
2008
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Bondi
Beach based advertising, media and publicity opportunities
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