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 ...
Very easy!!! Using a movie as an example......the great Clint Eastwood film, “American Sniper” has now grossed $570 billion dollars, worldwide. All of this years Academy Award nominees, put together, with the exception of “American Sniper” made less then 10% of this number.
Forgetting the money difference....you cannot forget the viewer attendance, which is in the millions of people who saw “American Sniper”. Producing & showing films or TV programs that impact tiny percentages of America life and history and people is no sane way to run a business.
The very fact of life that the “Fox” mega empire is killing all the competition in every sector as cable and alphabet news dwindles away is proof of much failure of vieweship on many biased TV stations!!!
Until that practice and attitude changes, many “Obamabot”, “waterboy” TV stations will only continue to go down in both viewership of news and regular programming!!! End of story!!
‘Creek is only mildly funny.
All gay, all the time, is a ratings loser.
My time is limited on this earth. I don’t waste it on crap like TV. So many people wasting their God-given time on worthless b-flat, time-controlled entertainment.
Yes, I’m from the TV generation. It was broadcasting coast to coast when I was 5 (1939). I wasted a lot of my free time on this crap all the way through the 70’s. By the early 1980’s my TV rabbit ears were gone and I moved into videos.
Life was good once again. And so, for 33 years, I’ve been very, VERY happy. Watch a movie once or twice a week. That’s all I need.
We have DirecTV and it is pretty good, but it’s a tad pricey, we have Comcast for internet though, which is OK.
That was one of the reasons I gave up on "King of the Hill" eons ago. During a movie on FX, Hank Hill drove his lawnmower across the screen and back again, with sound, I stopped watching Hank.
Well that, and about the same time, I bought a Palm, and a free utility was a multi-timer app. I remember watching "Kiss of the Dragon", and timing the segments. When the commercial breaks started outlasting the movie segments, I pretty much stopped watching FX, since they made it too aggravating. Seriously, 5+ minutes of commercials, and < 4 minutes of show?
There was a guy who created a device that muted and blackened most of the screen when a live tv event went to commercial. It could sense the signal change from live to taped, and back. I believe on the older sets.
Therein lay the tip of the sword. What you said. An open sewer. In the chest.
The spear to decent programming of yesteryear. Frankly, I miss Leave It to Beaver, pearls and dresses for dinner, civility, meals together, but only after the prayer of Thanksgiving, and father’s in the home and mothers there to greet them at the end of the day. God help us.
Yes, the Match Game for sure. I haven’t seen Hollywood Squares in years, but I often wonder why they’ve never tried to bring it back.
I really do wish they’d go back to showing the real old shows. I’ve Got a Secret was great.
Then they had to break into the movies for live coverage of tornadoes, and tornado warnings, and the movie idea sort of got scrapped.
It’s impossible to watch because of all the commercials. Unwatchable.
The story or mood to any good show now is like driving on a highway with someone slamming the breaks on every 3 minutes.
If you want to watch free streaming sports, any sport, go to VIPLeague.com. I like college basketball and NFL, and can watch any game online, they have them all. Just manage the ads at the beginning. Also any TV channel free on TVPC.com.
Cool! Sounds like it would work with any type of TV. Maybe it is an abrupt change in volume which ads tend to do. The station will crank up the volume on ads and there is a level of intensity in an advert because the company is spending millions and needs to cram as much info into the few seconds that they have.
I was telling my wife the other night that our provider would love to be able to control the mute button on my remote.
The problem was it only worked on live tv events, not the vast majority of programming that was not live, but running off tape or dvd.
Yes, cater to 3% of the population on the way down!
It is a wonder they manage to find time to run their homo porn sitcoms between the daily Obama rally and conservative bashes.
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