Posted on 03/15/2015 7:15:25 PM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
February was another heartbreaker for the $65 billion television ad business.
Commercial ratings — the viewing “currency” that determines what advertisers pay for TV time — cratered across broadcast and cable networks, marking the fifth straight month of double-digit declines for the industry.
“It’s clear the downward spiral in TV ratings continues with no end in sight,” media analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in a research note on Friday.
Overall prime-time broadcast network ratings were off 12 percent last month compared to a year ago, while cable networks dropped 11 percent, according to his report.
Nathanson looked at so-called C3 ratings, which come in later than traditional ratings. They measure average commercial viewership in shows up to three days after the original air date via DVR playback.
While a couple of networks that carried the Super Bowl and the Olympics last year clearly suffered because of tougher comparisons, almost every channel was hurting.
Looking at total-day C3 ratings, only three networks boosted their audience: HGTV, Discovery and TBS, while TNT, History and Nickelodeon fell the most.
Typically, TV ad sales executives can increase prices to compensate for a ratings decline, citing scarcity. But Nathanson said seismic changes are pressuring networks to hold the line on pricing.
Although some of the ratings declines can be blamed on changes to Nielsen’s measuring methods, among other changes, “we believe these terrible ratings trends are also indicative of changing viewership habits,” he wrote.
The numbers underscore the rapid changes in how TV viewers are consuming content.
Americans are increasingly watching TV shows on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming and other services. Some 40 percent of households now have subscription video service, Nielsen reported earlier this week.
Yahoo, Amazon and Hulu are among the bidders for the streaming rights to “Seinfeld” episodes, WSJ.com reported Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Men kissing on the cable shows, and that’s considered cutting edge.
Roku is terrific. Incredibly easy to set up and use, and you get hundreds of free channels, many of them really terrific (for news junkies, for example, they have a channel that streams the daily half-hour newscasts from a boatload of cities. Very interesting to watch). I Heart Radio is also free, so you get radio from all over the country, as well. And Youtube has just been added to the free lineup with its bazillion videos. If you want pay channels like Netflix, you just add them from the on-screen “channel store.” And considering Roku is a one-time $40 purchase (sometimes less if you buy it reconditioned on Amazon), I can’t think of a better value. You have to have wi-fi, of course.
“The TV execs just had a meeting and decided more homosexual programming was the solution to their problem.”
Yep. More gay friendly characters, feminists taking on whole armies, and emasculated men should do it.
As my father used to say,it’s a vast wasteland.
You feed us lies, trash, filth, and side with enemies of America while promoting every agenda of the leftists while calling the good hardworking productive citizens of the United States “terrorists” and you wonder why viewership is down? Are you freaking kidding me?
I’ll predict by 2025...half of all Americans will be streaming their TV desires. Networks like History, National Geographic, and Discovery will still be around. But I’ll predict that one of the big three will consolidate itself into a streaming service-only.
What I see Netflix doing is carrying shows that people really desire and want to see continued.
If the science fiction show....Firefly....had originated today instead of 2002....it would have gone on past the fourteen episodes, and easily been a part of Netflix, with five to seven years of episodes.
The message to the Comcasts and Verizons of this world should be that the only thing of value they have to sell is internet bandwidth. None of this triple-play bunk! TV is a waste of time. Telephony is better provided over the internet. Everything TV and telephony can do can be done better over the internet!
Of course, these companies got into the business long ago providing cable TV. They hoped to make a pile selling content on top of the legacy bandwidth monopoly granted to them by the various municipalities. For that purpose, they invested in content-creating entities. So, it will take a while for reality to set in. For creative dismemberment to occur.
They need a bath!
I think you mean $570 MILLION, not billion. Clint’s good, but not that good. All of his ex-wives that still get alimony probably wish it was true though.
Has anybody NOTICED that TV commercial time during a show is increasing a lot on many cable channels..
some shows are almost unwatchable... with mute on most of time..
I dropped Comcast about a month ago (felt great), and replaced them with a $60 over-the-air antenna. I get about 30 channels now, all free, and many in beautiful hi def. I get all the local stations, two stations that play classic TV (Andy Griffith, Lucy, etc.) I also get two stations that play nothing but movies, old ones but good ones, like On the Waterfront. All free.”
I get all that and more from Comcast basic at $30.00 per month. Why are you paying $60?
Great finish today. Patrick Reed, Sean O’Hair and Jordan Spieth in a playoff that went to three holes. It’s the very meaninglessness of golf that gives it its meaning, I would say. Anyway, the skills have never been better.
Your father was Newton Minnow ?
I tend to dvr shows so I can skip over commercials
Inspired by him, I gather.
Our Free Market System and the incidental Corporate Culture that developed from it are NOT the same thing.
The former understands the concept of a saturated market and/or equilibrium, the latter refuses to acknowledge its existence.
I think that's the secret to success discovered by Apple.
Their customers are almost always delighted with their products, and those that don't buy their products are ignored instead of incorporating problematic features to capture a few more percentage points of sales.
Agreed.
When I was laid off a few years back, we dropped the dish (actually, Direct TV.) We still had an outside antenna setup we used for local channels when rain blanked out the dish (usually just as severe weather approached!) Reception is trickier than in the old analog days — the all or nothing downside of digital. But, even in a rural area we get a few stations and they have 2-4 channels each, with a usually-but-not-always decent selection of older shows and local news & weather. Plus, there’s just not that much good on TV anymore. We do miss Fox News sometimes, and some of the science / nature / history stuff. But, there’s lots of that on the web, and at one’s own schedule, too. So, same here - it mostly works for us and saves us some $$.
Plus — people are just busy, whether it’s trying to keep up with the seeming ever greater complexity of life, or the poor (for the middle class) economy, or tied up with social media (not me!), and so on. I know in my own case, there’s just not that much viewing time available for me, anymore.
My mistake...it was $570 Million dollars, per “Deadline Hollywood”!!! Sorry, for my stupid mistake.
But...but....but...they’ve become more “gay-friendly”!
That $60 is a one-time cost, the cost of the digital antenna.
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