Television Viewership is Down and Here is Why
Shows like 24, Lost, and Survivor all have taken a hit while shows like American Idol and Dancing With The Stars are still huge. This drop is causing huge losses for television giants like NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox. Advertisers are no longer willing to pay top dollar for television advertising.
Many people are offering possible solutions. Some are blaming daylight savings time while others blame constant reruns and tired shows. The best explanation I can think of is the popularity of the internet. With sites like YouTube and Google Video, people can start to find other forms of entertainment. User produced content is on the rise and people are tuning in to see and read it. People no longer need to tune in to the 6 o'clock news to see what it happening. They can just go to ABCnews.com or Yahoo! and get news anytime they want. Even popular shows like South Park are being placed on the internet. I have found several sites dedicated to putting up every episode of that show and I am sure there is many others.
This is not a surprising trend. The newspaper median is falling apart fast. They have had huge drops in sales. The internet is were it is at.
There has been other explanations. Some have blamed the changing ways in which people watch TV. Alan Wurtzel, chief research exec at NBC. says, "People are not consuming less television, they're watching it in different ways, and the measurements haven't caught up." The Nielsen ratings are the standard for television and viewership. Once this system catches us with new technology perhaps it will be found that television is still as popular as ever.
But maybe not. Maybe people are listening to the news about obesity and exercise and getting out there. Maybe TV has become so bland and so trite that people are saying enough. Personally, I don't watch much TV anymore. New shows are not offering me anything fresh and exciting. I can find classic shows on the internet. I can find innovative entertainment on the internet. Maybe we just don't have the patience anymore. TV shows last thirty minutes and they have a bunch of commercials. Why not just watch a 30 second clip of Tourette's Guy and then move on to a 15 minute long documentary on Asperger's? There is so much more variety on the internet. With the whole world at your fingertips, who needs TV?
Published by Mike
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- Television viewership is down 2.5 million viewers.
- Some offer explanations like Daylight Savings Time.
- The Internet is the real culprit.
11 Comments
Post a CommentTV viewing is increasing! It's just that with so many channels to choose from, the audience for the broadcast networks is dropping. There's more competition. The viewers are not turning off their TVs, they are simply changing the channel to watch programming on other networks (usually on cable).
My personal gripe are the incessant pop up ads, animations, and ID logos that obliterate programming. It's video vandalism, and I, for one, am fed up. Those greedy fools are killing their golden goose. Because once they drive away viewers, the sponsors will depart. Art cannot exist under those conditions.
I love TV, but I don't watch as much anymore b/c the networks only care about huge ratings. There are too many commericals, too many breaks, and mostly I hate getting emotionally involved in a show they are going to cancel in a few weeks anyways. I usually just wait for the DVDs now. I think the observation about "watching tv in a different way" is accurate too.
Other than sports and some content on Discovery, National Geographic, or Animal Planet, I watch little TV. Since the demise of Babylon 5, there has been little worth watching. Sitcoms aren't funny, episodic TV is boring, and so-called "reality" shows are way out in left field as far as reality is concerned. The "vast wasteland" has finally arrived.
The t.v. media players are banking on people simply wanting to watch something on the t.v. rather than have to work to watch something on the Internet. This is the answer the whole success of whether t.v. continues to lose more ground relative to losing viewers. They want nothing more than to keep you on your butt in front of the t.v., leisurely watching it. But I agree on the t.v. programming. And even the cable channels get old fast. PBS holdout here, though.
I hate television. If I watch it (other than the news or Discovery channels), I feel my IQ melting away. I'd rather read a book or stare at the sky. It's much more interesting.
Tv is a one way medium, it broadcasts to you. The internet is 2 way, and you choose what your interested in and you get results. TV news is all tease, stay tuned for this or that, but this or that either never shows up or is covered in such a pathetically thin manner as to make it nonexistent coverage in any case. Tv has a lot wrong with it and not much right. TV news is the ultimate government mouthpiece and Tv entertainment is mostly worthless pap done over and over and over. No sex just violence, whats the point of watching? Read a book, have a meal with friends, enjoy a conversation, take a walk. The country is going to hell in a handbasket and TV has made the handbasket as well as pointed it in the right direction.
I think that television fare is not as good as it used to be. Everybody does not love Raymond... (Sorry Ray). Shows like Sopranos and CSI are too violent. If they were airing older shows (Happy Days, Star Trek) I'd be more inclined to watch. I hate commercials, and smart people simply record shows and weed those things out. Personally, I prefer to pop in a DVD or simply read a book. Who's writing these shows? Hollywood needs a makeover.
I still love watching TV, but I don't like the new programming strategies that upset my week's routine viewing schedule. A show might have 5 new episodes and then 5 reruns before the next 3 new episodes. Sometimes, after the first 5 pilot episodes, the show is dropped. I enjoyed it much better when a season was really a season - like 6 months without reruns. They have screwed it all up for themselves. They drove people to the internet for entertainment. But, I agree with you about the news. When I watch the 6 o'clock - it is all content I've already read on AC or on the Internet. The entire industry needs some innovation based on real viewer focus groups.
I prefer to watch everything on my computer. I do watch some series but tend to rent them from Netflix. One cool thing is that you can watch many shows legally online, such as "Lost". There are brief commercials, but nothing like those from regular tv. Anyway, interesting article!