‘A dynamic time for TV,’ executive says
Who are you? Where are you? What do you watch on TV, and how do you choose to watch?
And, most critical to the TV decision-makers who decide what programs are made in any given year, why do you watch what you do?
Those questions percolate in the background whenever TV network executives face reporters. But at the just-concluded summer meeting of the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles, they took centre stage. The overnight numbers suggest viewers are defecting the traditional broadcast networks in droves. The numbers are deceiving, though, the decision-makers insist. Just as many people are watching TV as they ever did. In fact, they may be watching even more.
A recent cross-platform survey across the U.S. by ratings measurement agency Nielsen suggests average TV consumption is up nearly two hours a month. According to Nielsen, the average viewer now watches 157 hours and 32 minutes a month — more than five hours each day, no average.
“Which is amazing,” Fox Broadcasting Entertainment chairman Kevin Reilly said.
“I think that more than justifies all our livelihoods. People are loving television. It’s a dynamic time for television.”
Viewer behaviour is changing, Reilly acknowledged, and the broadcast networks need to do a better job of figuring out where the audience is and how people are watching.
The mid-season thriller The Following, for example, averaged 11.8 million viewers the night it was broadcast. But when viewing over the following seven days was factored into the equation — through DVR recording, online streaming, video-on-demand, etc. — the audience jumped to 16.3 million viewers, Reilly noted, making The Following the network’s most-watched mid-season program and one of the most-watched programs on TV. In Canada, The Following drew 1.3 million viewers to CTV in any given week, good enough to land a spot in the Top 25 most-watched programs on any network.
That was not how it was reported, Reilly said. Most media stories cited only the immediate, overnight ratings. And by that measure The Following was a modest success only.
“This is not spin,” Reilly said. “This is not to somehow suggest that Fox did better than it looked. We were down last year, and that’s a fact. We’re going to be up this year. This is really a look at, ‘Where is the audience?’”
New Girl draws 6.6 million viewers on any given night, Reilly said, but when later viewing is factored in, that jumps to 9.46 million.
“If you roll up some of the cumulative viewing for the season on some of our top shows, you see some unbelievable numbers. New Girl: 185 million views. The Following: 283 million views. American Idol: 560 million views. Sometimes I read stories that say nobody is watching network television anymore. Well, that’s a lot of nobodies.”
New Girl airs on City in Canada; The Following and American Idol air on CTV, and Family Guy airs on Global.
“There are a lot of services now that speak loudly to a small audience. I think that’s OK. They’re putting on great shows,” said Reilly.
“But I do think we have to try and keep things in perspective. Of the more than 1,000 basic cable shows last season, only four would have made it into the Top 50 shows on television.
“I just think that in this marketplace, where we’re going to have more originals than ever before in the history of broadcast television, more good shows and more options, I want the analysis to be equal.”