June 13, 2013
"TV Everywhere" (TVE) services aren't yet being used much by consumers, and that may be the result of low deployment, which has yet to reach 50% of America's multichannel TV subscribers, according to recent study results from The Diffusion Group (TDG). Despite its growing pains, TVE could find a willing customer base: new data from EPIX suggests that the more screens subscribers watch content on, the more value they attach to their pay TV service. That's important for an industry that suffers from chronically low customer satisfaction ratings. Read more »
June 12, 2013
[Editor's Note: This is the latest quarterly update to this article, this time containing Q1 2013 data and trend analysis.] There's a strong perception that with the rise of social media, mobile device usage, and other such digital trends, youth have put TV on mute. According to the most recent cross-platform report [download page] from Nielsen, traditional TV consumption continues to drop off on a year-over-year basis among 18-24-year-olds, though the rate of decline slowed somewhat in Q1. Read more »
June 6, 2013
PwC has issued its annual "Entertainment & Media Outlook" report, which contains projections for online and offline media markets through 2017 across various components including advertising revenues and consumer spending. The outlook for traditional media markets is similar to previous forecasts in that TV and out-of-home advertising have the healthiest future, while radio continues to grow at a modest pace and the outlook for print continues to be dim, although losses may slow. Read more »
June 3, 2013
A recent study from Convergence Consulting Group detailed the rise in cord-cutting, showing that TV subscribers are being added at a far slower rate than lost. According to a more recent report from Leichtman Research Group (LRG), the top multi-channel video providers, who represent about 94% of the market, posted their first overall subscriber loss over a four-quarter period (between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013). Cable companies were the hardest hit, with a net loss of 1.6 million subscriptions, slightly higher than their net loss (~1.5 million) the previous year. Read more »
May 31, 2013
71% of American adults aged 21 and older drink some type of alcohol, whether that be beer, hard cider, liquor, wine, or wine coolers, and Millennials (21-34) make up 27% of that group, according to [pdf] a study from Scarborough. The researchers, dubbing this group "Shaken and Stirred Millennials," examine some of their characteristics, as well as their purchasing and media habits. Read more »
May 21, 2013
What kind of social behaviors do local media fans exhibit on Facebook and Twitter? It depends on the medium, says TVB [pdf] in a study conducted in conjunction with Colligent, that combines Nielsen Media Research and Kantar Media data with social media behaviors. The "Cultural Currency" study analyzes the social media behaviors of 167 million Facebook and Twitter users across a range of legacy media, finding that overall, local broadcast TV viewers tend to be most heavily engaged socially with their stations. For advertisers, understanding how social behaviors vary among fans of various local media is an important consideration when crafting social calls to action to accompany their local media buys. Read more »
May 21, 2013
Customer satisfaction with pay TV providers remains relatively low, although it has increased slightly after remaining flat for 3 consecutive years, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The index for subscription TV services rose a couple of points from last year's 66 to 68 on ASCI's 100-point scale. By comparison, satisfaction with cell phone manufacturers stands at 76, fixed line phone service providers are at 74, and wireless phone service providers are at 72. Among the information sector categories, only Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have a lower score than pay TV services this year, debuting on the index at a score of just 65. Read more »
May 20, 2013
Americans might be listening to more radio, but radio's advertising revenues aren't going anywhere, at least for the time being. In Q1, total expenditures were flat, at $3.5 billion, according to [pdf] the latest revenue report from the Radio Advertising Bureau, which excludes network radio data due to incomplete information. Healthy growth in digital (9%) and off-air (5%) helped offset a sluggish quarter for spot, which was down 2% from Q1 2012. While remaining the smallest segment, at $179 million in revenues, digital's growth means that it now exceeds 5% share of total radio revenues. Read more »
May 8, 2013
An average of just 44% of viewing of full-length TV shows is live, according to [download page] respondents to a study from Vubiquity. However, the survey was limited to consumers with access to video-on-demand services from a cable/telco/satellite provider, meaning that it may not be representative of the entire TV viewing population. (Previous research from Nielsen indicates that around 90% of broadcast and cable primetime viewing is live.) Still, the results suggest that live TV viewing is falling victim to alternative sources of content: respondents to the Vubiquity study indicate that 22% of their viewing of full-length TV shows is from a DVR, 14% is on demand, and 6% is via an online source, among others. Read more »
May 2, 2013
Online video attracts a significant audience, with 1 in 5 or more American adults watching a TV show online (23%), user-generated content (UGC - 31%), or originally produced online video (OPOV - 19%) on at least a monthly basis, per results from an IAB study [pdf] conducted by GfK. But who are these viewers? The study profiles the audience of each online video type, finding that they each skew male, but more so among OPOV viewers. Viewers of original online content also skew older than those who watch TV shows online. Read more »
