Why Does the Airtime of a TV Show Still Matter?

[Andonagio]

Do your parents Tivo or DVR? Do your grandparents? If not you are already outnumbered 4-1 which means the vast majority of people are still watching shows when they are broadcast. This percentage will change as you age and these older folks are no longer with us. But right now and at least for the next 10-20 years while they are with us they will maintain their viewing habits.

I understand the argument, but even my grandparents have and use a recordable VCR. I would venture that by now, almost everybody with a TV has some kind of recording device attached to it. Given the proliferation of recording technologies, why would anybody still watch a show during its broadcast time?

The Economist had a quite interesting section regarding TV a few weeks ago. They, among else, wrote about this, and the biggest reason is that people like to watch TV at the same time like everyone else, as a social thing.

I never thought about broadcast time as a social force. Does anybody have a link to this article (or similar)?

I agree. Despite the vast array of technology at my disposal, I still like watching "live" broadcast, commercials and all.

Just out of curiosity, why? I get watching real-world events as they're happening (such as news and sports), but what's the appeal of watching other shows during their broadcast time?

 

[Greg Cox]

I never watch anything live. Commercials effectively do not exist for me. I skip over all of them. Good riddance to the bastards.

.

Which is exactly why DVR viewings don't count as far as the networks and advertisers are concerned.

So time slots matter to the viewers the advertisers actually care about.

 

[JiNX-01]

Airtime doesn't matter. The problem is Nielsen's failure/inability to devise a way to track online viewers, DVR and Tivo activity (not just the recording but the viewing), VCRs, if there is anyone out there still using them, iTunes sales, DVD rentals and sales -- which should be an indication of a series popularity -- and last but not least, the morons who run U.S. studios and don't credit a series for popularity overseas (which I would think would be generating income from the other 5 continents).

 

[ATimson]

The problem is Nielsen's failure/inability to devise a way to track online viewers, DVR and Tivo activity (not just the recording but the viewing), VCRs, if there is anyone out there still using them, iTunes sales, DVD rentals and sales -- which should be an indication of a series popularity -- and last but not least, the morons who run U.S. studios and don't credit a series for popularity overseas (which I would think would be generating income from the other 5 continents).

It doesn't matter that Nielsen doesn't track any of those, since advertisers don't want to pay for those eyeballs that are watching the show, and not the ads.

Popularity of the show doesn't matter; how much advertisers are willing to pay during its timeslot does.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Just out of curiosity, why? I get watching real-world events as they're happening (such as news and sports), but what's the appeal of watching other shows during their broadcast time?

My co-workers and I generally watch the same stuff (we're all the same age, we're all geeks, it's a great place to work), so we pretty much watch all the shows as they air. The next morning, we're discussing the shows from the previous nights, and everyone knows, if you miss the episode (unless we deem the excuse worthy ), we're going out of our way to discuss spoilery plot-points.

And the best and easiest way to do this is to watch it as it airs.

 

[MNM]

If I were an advertiser a "live" viewer would be worth much more to me than someone who is probably skipping all my ads.

Why? Chances are the person watching "live" isnt watching the commercials either. He'll go get a drink, he'll let his mind wander, he'll do many things, but avidly watch and take in the commericals isnt one of them.

 

[Marten]

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15980859

It's here, somewhere.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

and last but not least, the morons who run U.S. studios and don't credit a series for popularity overseas (which I would think would be generating income from the other 5 continents).

I'm sure this does get factored in, but compared with domestic ratings, it seems to be almost impossible to find foreign ratings online. So how can we know how big a factor this is, or how much it counts?

Heroes was the most pirated show in the world. If piracy is an indication of legit viewing (and for movies at least, there's a strong correlation) and foreign viewing matters, then why wasn't Heroes renewed for that reason alone? After all, the ratings weren't that much worse than for Chuck, which NBC did renew, and I've seen little indication that Chuck has anything other than a domestic following.

Chances are the person watching "live" isnt watching the commercials either.

Advertisers believe that some live viewers are watching TV - or maybe it's more accurate to say that they have no way of knowing that they aren't - because if they thought no live viewers watched their ads, the whole economic basis for TV would fall right through the floor and there would be no more TV (except for premium pay channels that get their revenues from subscriptions).

 

[Temis the Vorta]

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15980859

It's here, somewhere.

Thanks for the article. The conclusions are just the same stuff I've been saying for years now:

Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s boss, fears television will return to the wasteland. The danger is not lack of choice, as Minow found, but a surfeit of choice. So much content will be available on so many digital platforms that audiences will become too small to pay for good programmes.

Balkanization of entertainment means that you have to find ways to make the eyeballs you do reach more valuable than the eyeballs reached via mass market (traditional TV). One way is to move from advertising to subscriptions. Another way is to make up the difference selling spinoff crap to a niche/cult audience - books, calendars, commemorative plates, etc.

Online advertising is even less lucrative than TV ads. We all know that nobody clicks on ads, and a lot of people block them. The more people block them, the more annoying and desperate the ads get - a vicious cycle that results in even more ad blocking. Someday, someone may devise a form of online advertising that can make up for the loss of TV advertising, but my hunch is that it will be radically different from the forms we've already seen and been annoyed by.

Although growing choice and the profusion of platforms is indeed crushing smaller shows, it is helping the biggest ones thrive. Televised sport is stronger than ever.

Another unsurprising conclusion. Mainstream TV will continue to benefit the most mainstream of genres - police procedural, anodyne sitcoms, reality TV - and anything that needs to be viewed live, such as sports.

That doesn't address the problem that the trend is towards niche markets that want to be served by something - sci fi being just one of these niche markets - so how do you make the numbers work? Selling commemorative plates isn't going to cut it as a financial model.

The article and the video interview fail to address the real question: where is the money lost from TV ad viewing going to come from?

 

[Andonagio]

Chances are the person watching "live" isnt watching the commercials either.

Advertisers believe that some live viewers are watching TV - or maybe it's more accurate to say that they have no way of knowing that they aren't - because if they thought no live viewers watched their ads, the whole economic basis for TV would fall right through the floor and there would be no more TV (except for premium pay channels that get their revenues from subscriptions).

More to the point, advertisers believe they have a better chance of catching the attention of a live viewer than a viewer for a recorded/streamed/downloaded show. On the occasions when I do watch TV, I'll often mute the station during the commercial breaks, but the TV's still there displaying its images. Even if I go up to get a drink or use the bathroom, the TV is still hovering in the background. Advertisers put a lot of emphasis on visuals (bright colors, sex appeal, rapid editing, etc.) to try to catch your eye, even for a second or two.

 

[Snaploud]

Airtime could also matter for people with only one DVR (as you're limited to recording only two shows at once).

 

[Andonagio]

Airtime could also matter for people with only one DVR (as you're limited to recording only two shows at once).

Eh, I suppose, on the very rare occasion when there are three or more shows on at the same time that I want to see.

 

[ebusinesstutor]

I record all my favorites so I watch probably 95% of tv shows later than when they aired. So the air time is irrelevant.

Probably people like me aren't counted in the Neilson ratings.

I do skip through commercials, but sometimes I stop and look if it looks cool. I always used to stop for the Mac vs PC commercials for example.

While I understand the stations want to know the Neilson ratings so they can sell to advertisers at a higher price, if they were to count people watching it recorded and online, it might be a good indicator of what shows will eventually make money as DVD.s

In my opinion, the plug is pulled on too many shows too early. Almost all the shows that intrigued me in the last few years were canceled after only one or two seasons. Defying Gravity, Witches of Eastwick, Legend of the Seeker, Firefly, etc.

It is getting so I hate to get invested in a new show because they will just cancel it anyway. At least with a movie, they bring it to some sort of conclusion, but now I am left with huge amounts of unfinished stories.

I like what Josh Whedon did with FireFly, making the movie Serenity. I think it would be great if dropped shows were picked up by cable stations to do a miniseries finale for them.

 

[Vendikarr]

While I understand the stations want to know the Neilson ratings so they can sell to advertisers at a higher price, if they were to count people watching it recorded and online, it might be a good indicator of what shows will eventually make money as DVD.s

Neither the broadcast networks nor the advertisers care about DVD sales. The money from DVDs goes to the production company and/or the studios. In many cases these days the studio and the network are owned by the same media giant, but in many cases they are not.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I'd wager the majority of people still watch regular broadcasts on TV.

I'd say the same, although I haven't been one of them in years.

 

[23skidoo]

I never thought about broadcast time as a social force. Does anybody have a link to this article (or similar)?

Where've you been? It's been that way for decades when people would sit around as families to watch Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle and I Love Lucy. It is definitely less so today, but there are still shows that attract this sort of "social interaction". Doctor Who is definitely one of these (if you want proof, last week's episode had a very low rating, because the UK was in the midst of excellent weather, and people were out rather than watching TV at that time). I have friends who gather every Saturday night to watch DW and it's a social event of the week.

I bet there were gatherings for Lost's finale as well, as well as for the final Law & Order the other night.

Yes, as we become more insular and isolated as a culture (ZPG is on the way, folks) this sort of "communal TV watching" is going away. But it's still very much alive.

Alex