Cord-cutting accelerates among younger viewers
With so much choice, including streaming, millennials don’t find network schedules appealing
Younger viewers are fleeing TV at an accelerated pace.
The trend should surprise no one who has seen the rise of Netflix, a resurgence of video games and a shift to digital. But new Nielsen data show a widening gap in viewing behaviour among young and old in the U.S. that’s alarming some network executives.
For the four weeks ending Oct. 28, coinciding with the start of the official TV season, the number of people ages 18 to 34 using TV has plunged 15 per cent and is down 36 per cent from 2014. The drop-off among teens —18 per cent from last year and 48 per cent since 2014 — is even more pronounced.
“It looks like a big, daunting number,” says Peter Katsingris, senior VP of audience insights at Nielsen, and marks a sharp contrast with the mere 2 per cent drop from 2017 among folks 55 and older, the most loyal viewers. But he says it reflects the new millennial mindset.
“Younger generations are growing up with more choices at their fingertips,” he says.
“They don’t know that you had to watch at 3 o’clock on a Wednesday if you wanted to see a show.” For them, dependency on a network schedule is “like looking at a typewriter.”
In fact, the very definition of TV watching has changed. A broader measure of television usage that includes streaming through any device connected to a TV — but not websites or mobile apps — shows a less worrisome 5 per cent yearly drop.
And, as often happens, executives question the reliability of Nielsen data, suggesting it could prove another statistical blip. But all signs point to contrary evidence: for the three months ending Sept. 30, cable and satellite systems reported the loss of another one million customers, the largest quarterly drop yet. (About 40 per cent of homes led by millennials don’t subscribe to cable or satellite services.)
Brian Hughes, executive VP at ad firm Magna, projects that 47 per cent of the video watched by the 18-to-34 crowd is streaming, up from 41 per cent last year and 21 per cent in 2014, and he expects the figure to top 50 per cent in 2019.
For the CW, which targets the audience that’s bailing from TV schedules, “multiplatform” viewing over a longer time span “has always been part of our business model,” says network president Mark Pedowitz. But that pace is accelerating.
Close to half of the Riverdale audience is online, on CW’s own app and website, and for the new Charmed remake the figure is 40 to 45 per cent, he says. ( The Flash is also among its most heavily streamed series.)
MTV is responding to the declining usage among its core audience with a 36 per cent boost in original programming since 2016, using lower-cost shows produced in-house, which has led to ratings increases.
As an insurance policy, the network has also shifted its target audience — once the most fickle 12-to-34 age group — to seek 18-to-49-year-olds with shows including a revival of 2009 reality series Jersey Shore.
“We flipped the strategy,” says Chris McCarthy, president of MTV and sibling channels, who now sees it as a “youthculture brand” rather than a TV network. And MTV no longer even wants TV for some projects: last month it signed a deal to relaunch reality series The Real World on Facebook Watch and it plans similar online revivals of former shows including Aeon Flux, Daria and Undressed.
But other programmers have hastened the decline by selling reruns of their shows to Netflix and other streaming rivals, who are using them to steal viewers. Two-thirds of all TV homes in the U.S.A. now subscribe to Netflix, Amazon and/or Hulu. That’s why Disney and Warner Media are belatedly planning streaming apps of their own.
“Many networks are going to be under stress to adapt, and some are not going to make it,” predicts Kevin Reilly, president of TNT and TBS. “I think it’s going to be a very tumultuous time with the fraying of the audience” as fewer viewers translate to lower ad revenue, the lifeblood of the traditional TV business.