Outlook cloudy for television business
Future of industry in jeopardy as more viewers migrate online
PASADENA, Calif. • A cloud hangs over the television industry on this clear, bright sunny California morning, but not a cloud in the traditional sense.
In TV circles, “cloud” is being used more often in its computer sense. The cloud refers to programming — anything from a TV drama or sitcom to a recorded concert or sportscast — that’s delivered to the consumer over a wireless network, such as the Internet, using a PVR or personal media player.
The cloud is so named because of the cloud-shaped symbol used to define it. A cloud depicts something that’s up in the air, largely unseen, but reaches everywhere.
And it may be changing the way the TV business works.
Of all the issues facing the network presidents, studio executives, schedule makers and TV producers meeting for the next two weeks in this sunny enclave at the foot of southern California’s San Gabriel mountains, the cloud may be the hardest to pin down.
The traditional network TV business — everything from Survivor and The Big Bang Theory to NCIS and The Amazing Race — is driven by the 30-second commercial spot. Those ubiquitous ads, annoying and persistent though they may be, are the financial foundation on which the entire business rests.
The cloud is changing the way many people watch TV, though. The days when there were just a handful of TV networks and consumers had to watch programs when and where they first aired, are long gone.
The result was never more evident than in this past fall’s TV ratings. The numbers showed that viewing for such successful, long-running programs as CSI and Grey’s Anatomy slipped to series lows, even though anecdotal evidence suggests viewers are more engaged in their favourite TV programs than never before, thanks to social media and real-time blogging.
More than in past years, data from the U.S. ratings agency Nielsen suggest simple math is no longer as simple as it used to be.
The industry used to rely exclusively on so-called “same-day” ratings to decide which shows to save, and which to keep. Now, though, viewing delayed for up to seven days — so-called “live-plus-seven” viewing — is becoming increasingly important to the equation, as more viewers choose to record a program and then watch it later, or else watch it online after its initial airing, via the “cloud.”
A comprehensive Nielsen survey in October showed huge gains — 42 per cent and 38 per cent respectively — for Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory in the seven days following the show’s original broadcast, among viewers aged 18 to 49, those most likely to use PVRs.
That same Nielsen survey found that more than a dozen TV programs gained three million viewers or more over their live broadcast — an amazing number given that the most-watched program on U.S. television in any given week pulls in around 20 million viewers.
This is important because viewers who watch a program after its initial live airing may be less inclined to watch the ads.
And that could turn TV’s entire business model upside down.
The cloud is just one of several issues facing TV industry veterans as they gather for the semi-annual meeting of the TV Critics Association over the next two weeks.
The prevalence of onscreen violence in popular entertainment is likely to be debated once again, in the wake of the recent Sandy Hook elementary school shootings in Newtown, Conn.
Pop-culture trivia — how will new judges Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban fit in on American Idol, when it returns Jan. 16, and how will Shakira and Usher fit in on The Voice, when it returns March 25? — will once again dominate the infotainment conversation.
The sports-minded in the group will turn their focus once again on the pressing concerns of the day: Will NHL hockey return before the Super Bowl, after all, or will the 2012-13 NHL season go the way of 2004-05?
Over it all, though, unseen but omnipresent, will be the cloud. It’s a mobile world, and increasingly we’re migrating online.