TV Ratings Sag As Cord Cutting Continues To Surge

from the hard-to-have-any-sympathy dept

By all accounts cord cutting continued to set records in 2019, a trend that (despite some baseless claims to the contrary by industry executives) is only expected to accelerate this year. Customers continue to grow tired of paying their local cable TV provider hundreds of dollars per month for giant bundles of channels they don't watch, paired with some of the worst customer service of any industry in the States (a continued, impressive claim given the banking, airline, and insurance industries exist).

Despite years of the industry claiming cord cutting was "no big deal" or entirely nonexistent, the numbers from last year couldn't have been any clearer:

The problem is also being clearly reflected by cable TV and broadcast TV ratings. Outside of Fox News, cable TV news viewership continues to slowly but surely erode, with MSNBC losing 3% and CNN losing 9% of their viewers in 2019 (Fox News saw 3% growth). Traditionally well performing networks like USA saw notable viewership declines as high as 18% on the year:

"USA, which was the most watched cable network for almost a decade, slipped another spot from No. 4 last year to No. 5 in total viewers (-18%). In adults 18-49, it remained No. 2 behind Fox News but was down 16%. AMC was down 22% in viewers as its flagship drama The Walking Dead is starting to show its age FX was down 21%, TBS 17% and TNT 15%.

The biggest hits continue to come for channels that focus on kids' programming, as families continue to flock to on demand content from the likes of Netflix (and now Disney+):

"Disney Channel, a former No. 2 basic cable network, posted the largest year-to-year viewership decline, 30%, to drop to No. 28, with Disney Jr. logging the second biggest year-to-year drop, 25%. Those are linear ratings declines as young viewers flock to the Disney Channel’s app or website to watch its shows."

Since so many cable TV providers are also broadcasters (Comcast NBC Universal, AT&T Time Warner) it wouldn't be too hard to keep this trend in check by improving abysmal customer service and actually competing on price. Instead, most cable TV executives continue to push their luck and raise rates, or focus on things only certain to annoy consumers further (like Charter CEO Tom Rutledge's relentless whining about password sharing). That's in large part because most of these executives know their monopolies over broadband insulate them from real harm, allowing them to jack up the cost of broadband connections to counter any revenue losses on the TV side of the equation.

Filed Under: cord cutting, tv ratings

CBS Eyes Ditching Nielsen As Streaming, Cord Cutting Change The Game

from the adapt-or-perish dept

For years, we've noted how popular TV ratings firm Nielsen has turned a bit of a blind eye to cord cutting and the Internet video revolution, on one hand declaring that the idea of cord cutting was "pure fiction," while on the other hand admitting it wasn't actually bothering to track TV viewing on mobile devices. It's not surprising; Nielsen's bread and butter is paid for by traditional cable executives, and really, who wants to take the time to pull all those collective heads of out of the sand to inform them that their precious pay TV cash cow is dying?

Eventually, the cord cutting trend became too big to ignore, forcing Nielsen to change its tune and start acknowledging the very real trend (though they called it "zero TV households" instead of cordcutters). Broadcasters (especially those hardest hit by cord cutting) didn't much like that, and began bullying the stat firm when it showed data that didn't jive with the view a foot below ground. While Nielsen slowly improved its methodologies, it would occassionally back off on certain data collection and reporting changes if the cable and broadcast industry complained loudly enough.

Ironically, this fealty to wishful thinking may not pay dividends for Nielsen. Nearly every broadcasters in your cable lineup is expected to launch their own streaming service by 2022. Many of these companies (like CBS) are now considering ditching Nielsen because, they claim, it's charging too much money for a user tracking system that hasn't adapted for the streaming era:

"At issue is a long-running complaint from TV networks that Nielsen isn’t measuring the many different audiences for their programming as well as it should. As smartphones, mobile tablets and broadband-connected TV’s gain more consumer acceptance, audiences are increasingly able to stream their TV favorites in on-demand fashion, making the task of counting them exponentially more difficult. TV networks have long based their advertising rates on Nielsen’s measure of linear TV audiences, which have slipped as consumers embraced Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and other streaming and on-demand options.

In this environment, TV networks believe Nielsen’s overnight ratings are no longer as reliable a barometer of viewership as they once were.

Go figure. It's ironic that Nielsen often went out of its way to show cable and broadcast executives a narrative they desperately wanted to believe, only to find itself (potentially) booted by broadcasters who no longer see Nielsen's measurement systems as an accurate barometer of customer viewing habits in the cord cutting era.

Filed Under: cord cutting, nielsen ratings, streaming, tv, tv ratings
Companies: cbs, nielsen

Netflix Mocks NBC's Obsession With TV Ratings Systems Built For A Bygone Era

from the the-wailing-of-the-dinosaurs dept

Last week, NBC executive Alan Wurtzel boldly claimed that Netflix and YouTube weren't threats to traditional cable. His only evidence? Data purchased from a company named Symphony that guesstimates Netflix's closely guarded viewership numbers. That data actually showed Netflix's viewership numbers for its original series are impressive, but found that viewership wanes a little once users get done binge watching. That's it. The data didn't really support Wurtzel's claim that Netflix doesn't pose a threat to traditional cable, NBC was just boasting that it had figured out Netflix's viewership tallies.

Symphony was born out of the well-documented failures by Nielsen to track consumer viewing on new platforms, and not only tracks every viewing habit of some 15,000 Netflix customers, but also uses GPS data to track where these customers are viewing the content. It's a welcome improvement for an industry that spent the last decade paying for data that only told it what it wanted to hear: namely that cord cutting and Internet video weren't a serious threat.

And while trying to understand your competitors makes sense, it's hysterical how Netflix's hidden viewership numbers seem to drive traditional broadcasters absolutely crazy. You'll recall that CBS threw a similar hissy fit last year, clearly upset that Netflix doesn't have to adhere to traditional ratings metrics because it's not an ad-supported legacy service.

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos also spoke at the same Television Critics Association meeting, and first highlighted how it's telling that NBC took its allotted time at the meeting to obsess over Netflix:

"Given what is really remarkably inaccurate data, I hope they didn't spend any money on it," he said of the numbers. "There's a couple mysteries at play for me. Why would NBC use their lunch slot to talk about our ratings? Maybe because it's more fun than talking about NBC ratings. … The methodology doesn't reflect any sense of reality we keep track of."

But then Sarandos went on to make what's probably the biggest point (and one CBS and NBC clearly don't understand): the existing ratings measurement system doesn't matter when you're not reliant on traditional advertising.

"I can't even tell you how many 18-49 users we have … we don't track them," he said. "Those sample sets don't give you a lot of information when people are watching thousands of shows [on Netflix] around the world. Somewhere in the world, every second of every day, someone is pressing start on a Netflix original. … There is not an apples to apples comparison to Netflix watching and any Nielsen rating."

Sarandos noted that the specific numbers — Wurtzel had 4.8 million adults 18-49 watching Jessica Jones, followed by Master of None (3.9 million adults 18-49) and Narcos (3.2 million adults 18-49) — wouldn't even be relevant to his business if they were true. "The ratings themselves have no specific impact on the business," he added. "If we were spending a lot of money on shows people weren't watching, they will quit. People are finding value in how we're spending our content dollars … if they're watching today, tomorrow or seven days from now."

As for NBC's claim that binge watchers always return to watching TV in the "way god intended," Netflix noted in its quarterly letter to shareholders (pdf) that "our investors are not as sure of God's intentions for TV, and instead think that Internet TV is a fundamentally better entertainment experience that will gain share for many years." Obviously the histrionics by broadcast executives surrounding Netflix obfuscating its viewership numbers originate in jealousy; jealously that Netflix gets to operate under a new paradigm where traditional ratings are less important, while legacy sector executives have to stare at charts like this one:

The collapse of broadcast TV ratings. How close to zero before we stop talking about "broadcast", "TV" & "ratings"? pic.twitter.com/4IWnkNAe1J

— Chris Anderson (@chr1sa) January 18, 2016

And while it's great that the traditional cable and broadcast industry is finally cooking up viewer measurement systems that challenge its long-held delusions about cable's infallibility, the petty sniping at Netflix really isn't all that flattering and isn't going to help them compete anytime soon.

Filed Under: streaming, tv ratings
Companies: nbc, netflix, symphony