Posted on 10/15/2019 10:41:07 AM PDT by EdnaMode
Broadcast-TV ratings may again be on the decline — as they have been since… well, for a while! — but that does not mean ABC, CBS et al are about to close up shop and leave your Zenith with nothing but test patterns. And here is the important reason why.
Money.
“But,” you argue, “ratings are down! You typed it right up above! I see it with my own eyes!”
And the short retort to that is: Remember what your high school economics teacher told you about supply and demand….
The longer answer, for those interested enough to stick around:
As recently reported by Ad Age, only four broadcast-TV programs this fall — Sunday Night Football, Thursday Night Football, This Is Us and The Masked Singer — are commanding $200,000 or more per 30-second spot. Yet as recently as four years ago, 10 shows belonged to that elite club.
Notable declines during that four-year stretch include Empire, which during its blockbuster freshman run charged $500K for a 30-second spot but now gets just $170K, while How to Get Away With Murder went from $250K during its buzzy second season to now under $100K.
(Excerpt) Read more at tvline.com ...
The good news about broadcast TV is that it’s as crappy as pay TV, but at least it’s free. That there are independent broadcast channels that show some classic TV and film is broadcast tv’s redeeming feature.
Mostly, I will watch local TV for weather, traffic and bar shooting evets.
Times change and technology changes
Audiences for broadcast TV are eroding.
Audiences for terrestrial radio are eroding
Readership of printed newspapers and magazines are eroding.
In the world of TV, aren’t the major broadcast networks heavily invested in cable channels? I think they have diversified away from just being broadcast TV networks.
Wow! The article referred to Zenith. A brand name blsst from the past!
“In the world of TV, aren’t the major broadcast networks heavily invested in cable channels?”
—
They’re all owned by major corps that have their fingers in all kinds of pies. The independent & local channels are a different matter, tho.
To my perspective TV is a dangerous entity. It is an entity whose product is crafted by sick, torqued liberal minds, and broadcast without remorse unto the World to wreak as much havoc as possible. TV has become a powerful weapon against the unsuspecting as has our education system.
Other than college football games, I have not watched network TV in over 10 years. I don’t miss it.
TV is great if you love watching endless commercials interspersed with a few moments of the show. TV land is saturated with inane commercials.
Broadcast TV....cable tv.
Better off just getting you viewing via the Internet. My kids WiFi more than they watch broadcast/cable channels.
The old-line businesses - and the media that cover them - STILL believe in the magical power of Nielsen ratings and the mechanisms/processes used to capture Nielsen ratings.
What networks and advertisers won’t admit to themselves is that the competition for attention and the resulting attention deficits are blunting and even erasing the utility of TV commercials. America is on its phone and on its tablet as soon as the game or show is interrupted. Mute buttons are engaged and the big flat panel on the wall is roundly ignored in favor of the small flat panel in one’s hand.
There are some signs that TV types know this - every commercial involves whiz-bang visuals and about one thousand edits/cuts within a 30 sec spot. Bright solid primary colors - eg shirts and jeans. Typical interaction: crazy customer with sane employee or vice versa. The setups, scripts and scenarios are mind-numbingly similar. Go back and watch 90s ads and in the days before HDTV they could only rely on lighting to emphasize the product, usually with a strong halogen key light on the label and shadows in the background. Now everything is lit brightly and digitally enhanced to emphasize edges and fonts.
But even with these cloying, desperate annoyances we’re still not paying attention - especially when a break may last 5-6 minutes. Networks hear of streaming services, binge-watching, etc. and still believe they can get away with 22 min of ad time per hour - to say nothing of the logjam of ads during sporting events.
It’s over, Johnny.
“My kids WiFi more than they watch broadcast/cable channels.”
—
Yup - and you can see pretty much everything that’s on those channels online anyway.
The way I read this is that the NFL is pretty much propping-up the broadcast TV industry at the moment.
We are one more kneeling outbreak away from the whole house of cards coming down.
Is it possible to garner a negative rating? It’s not because they haven’t tried.
I’m sure this will only accelerate as more and more people cut the cord. I finally dumped comcast cable and my only regret is that I didn’t do it years ago. I mostly watch documentaries and there is a lifetime supply of those on youtube.
I agree except about the radio. I only listen to Limbaugh and Hannity on the car radio. At home on I Heart. All for free.
My music is via what I’ve purchased on Amazon / ITunes etc. I listen to my playlists in my car and at home. Occasionally I’ll listen to free broadcast radio for music. (Stopped listening to ‘new music’ around 1979. Nothing new interesting to me.
Never payed or would never pay for satellite radio.
“This Is Us”
I personally know the execs and producer for that show. One is a crazy leftard moonbat while the other is a sane libertarian.
The Masked Singer
We stream and have the cheap Hulu. This is one of the shows my wife and 13 yr old girl watches.
I know the stars of the shows are the judges, but this show is beyond dumb. Just pathetic. We should be embarrassed as intelligent human beings that this show is one of the top-rated shows.
I watched a sum total of about 2 minutes of noobs and deleted them from my TiVo ‘to record’ function:
Evil
Bluff City Law
All Rise
Stumptown
Almost Family
Emergence is iffy. I keep thinking it might get better. It hasn’t.
SWAT [Social Work At Ten] has also become tediouly social justice warrior.
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