In the age of DVR’s, media fragmentation and more time being spent online, I was pleasantly surprised when I read that Americans are watching a record amount of TV. Nielsen recently reported that the average American watches 151 hours of TV a month, an increase of about six hours from a year ago. The number of hours of TV watched monthly increases with age. Adults 65+ watched the most TV, averaging over 207 hours a month!
Effectiveness of TV Increasing
I was also surprised to find out that TV is actually working better than ever. A Media Marketing Assessment (MMA) study found there’s been a slight increase in the effectiveness of TV in recent years, as reported in Ad Age on February 23, 2009. This finding was confirmed by Leonard Lodish, a marketing professor of mine at Wharton, who found that TV advertising became more effective after 1995, in a paper published in the Journal of Advertising Research. Another study funded by Nielsen and the Council for Research Excellence confirms these findings, noting that TV is still the dominant medium, even for reaching the youth market. MMA has also found that TV is influencing online activity, with a third of online search being driven by offline media, particularly TV. Nielsen reports that 31% of Internet usage occurs while people are watching TV, which helps explain the continued increase in online sales from DRTV campaigns.
Cable Outperforming Broadcast TV
However, not everything is rosy in the TV industry. Cable TV appears to be holding up better during the recession than broadcast TV. The network TV model based on developing big budget shows that appeal to a mass audience, with a shelf life of many years, with reruns in syndication and attracting enough ad dollars to cover the cost is no longer viable, per the NY Times, February 28. 2009. Ratings for broadcast network programming continue to decline, which makes it more difficult for them to justify higher ad prices. In contrast, cable TV now has the resources to spend more on original programming, which is attracting new viewers, so they are not buying as many reruns of broadcast TV shows.
Primetime viewing on the major broadcast networks is also declining; however viewing of late night shows such as Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Saturday Night Live and Last Call with Carson Daly are showing increases in viewers. The morning shows are also retaining viewers. However, cable is also competing with the broadcast networks in the late night time periods with shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, which both showed big increases in viewers, according to Joe Fine in the March 9 issue of Business Week.
Although television is still the dominant medium, it’s more important than ever to employ a multi-channel media approach, including targeted broadcast, cable and online advertising to best reach consumers in today’s more fragmented media environment.
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