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Where Did the TV Audience Go?
On this week’s GLoP Podcast, co-host John Podhoretz noted that last weekend’s Emmy Awards drew the worst ratings of all time. Despite the program being a well-run affair, the broadcast garnered less than 12 million viewers while the key 18-49 demo fell by 14 percent.
Fox foolishly ran the awards opposite “Sunday Night Football” in which my beloved Green Bay Packers trounced the perfidious Seattle Seahawks (you can tell which program I watched). Also, CBS offered a new “Big Brother” episode while AMC had “Fear the Walking Dead.” Was the competition to blame for the lowest ratings in history?
Rob Long had a different explanation for why the Emmys tanked. “Because nobody’s seen the shows,” he said. “The Emmy Awards was an awards show for people who like small shows … the vast majority of the broadcast audience isn’t watching.”
As Jonah Goldberg said on the podcast, I didn’t even know the Emmys would be on until that afternoon when Fox aired ads during the Arizona Cardinals game. Just now I reviewed the list of nominees and I had regularly watched only two of the shows in the past year — “Better Call Saul” (love it) and “The Last Man on Earth” (got tired of it about five eps in).
The numbers reinforce Rob’s reasoning. Not only are audiences avoiding the critics’ favorites, many are switching off the telly completely. In an article titled “Where Did Everybody Go?” AdAge reviewed the carnage of the Tuesday night returns. A few findings:
- “According to Nielsen fast national data, every returning Tuesday night drama suffered double-digit ratings declines, while the three new series were a mixed bag.”
- “As was the case Monday night, some of broadcast’s most reliable franchises were down versus their year-ago numbers.”
- “The number of adults 18-to-49 watching prime-time programming dropped 8% versus the year-ago period and overall usage in the demographic for the last two nights is down 10%.”
- “[T]he most disconcerting PUT data concerns younger viewers, who are ditching traditional TV faster than anyone could have anticipated. TV viewing among adults 18-to-24 is now down 20% versus the first two nights of the 2014-15 season, and male usage in that age range has withered by nearly a quarter (24%). While last fall was blighted by disappearing female viewers, this year it’s the menfolk who are pulling the old Invisible Man routine.
How have your viewing habits changed over the past few years? Are you watching more or less TV? And, if less, how are you spending your time instead?
Published in Entertainment
The TV left the house almost ten years ago. I can watch my baseball games on the computer. I don’t really watch anything any more (it is so slow). Instead I read and listen to the radio or podcasting. I wasn’t watching anything anyway, since the “media” became blatantly partisan. The reality shows and the talent shows make me crazier. What I really should do is disconnect from the buzz entirely and live a life of the mind.
Most of my TV viewing is live sports and the bulk of that is MLB.TV streaming in glorious big screen HD through a roku box.
During the work day I have Fox Business on in the corner of my trading screen– usually with the sound off.
Other than sports I watch TCM. I love pre-1968 movies and Bob Osborne is my favorite human on television. Also, anything to do with cars– racing them, auctioning them, restoring them, collecting them– will get my attention.
My wife’s channel (other than TCM) is Investigation Discovery. She especially enjoys the stories about women who murder their husband and get away with it. I probably shouldn’t have taken her to the shooting range, she’s pretty handy with a gun.
I’ve had DISH since 1999 and see no reason to drop service. The only time I watch broadcast network TV is when the football game I want to see is on one.
Being in a rural area, we have an antenna—no cable, Dish, Directv, etc. Upon cataloging shows we watch, I know I’ll get told to get a life, but here goes.
On Netflix, we binge-watched Warehouse 13 2-3 episodes at a time, ditto on Farscape and Arrow. Have watched several episodes of Daredevil and like it. PBS—Sherlock Holmes, Arthur and George, Antiques Roadshow, and Austin City Limits (last 2 not every week), some cooking shows. On network TV: Grimm, Elementary, Blacklist, Sleepy Hollow, Criminal Minds, Scorpion, Bones, The Voice, CSI: Las Vegas; we’ve started watching Blindspot, Rosewood, Limitless. We enjoyed Agent Carter (the cars & the clothes!) and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
I also multi-task: my laptop is on Ricochet while watching TV (drives Mr.C nuts!).
I don’t watch much TV, but everyone else in the house does. Wife watches a lot of Friends in syndication, and NBC pretty much rolls all the time. Incidentally, how many talent / competition / singing shows ARE there? It seems like they’re just rolling from one to the other to the next non stop ad nauseum.
Other than that, anime through Hulu / Crunchyroll. Just started watching GATE. (Magical portal opens in downtown Tokyo. Fantasy creatures – orcs, dragons, soldiers, etc., invade Tokyo. They rampage for a bit until the JSDF starts bringing in the tanks, machine guns, and Apache helicopters. After they get the area secure, Japan decides that because a) this gate is in Japanese territory, and b) it’s not on any map, they annex it, and declare it part of Japan. At which point they send the JSDF through the gate to establish a base and try to set up relations, trade, or just take over. Two eps in, and it looks like fun.)
Because everyone else in the house watches stuff, I’m pretty caught up on Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, Project Runway, Top Chef, and Big Bang Theory.
We dropped directv a couple of years ago and it would seem that no one has really missed it. They watch a full slate of reality oriented programs (survivor, amazing race) but I can sense that those are beginning to wear a bit thin. I am much like a lot of the others here. I watch the NFL live on sundays and on a device for the midweek stuff (thank you Verizon) but the rest is Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon prime. I have found that most serialized TV is so completely predictable (or politically loaded) that it is unwatchable. I am a sucker for great dialogue and story telling so shows like Justified and Firefly were completely able to scratch that itch for me. Sadly programs like that are rare indeed and most die an untimely death. A lot of the more heralded programming in my opinion is just too full of the horrible things we see around us everyday to make me want to watch. At the end of my day I want to be entertained and relax not preached to, insulted, reeducated, or treated as a moron with no sense of my own.
Is that too much to ask?
The TV is almost strictly for my wife and youngest son now. She’s the one that DVR’s all these shows. I’ve chided her about it… “You complain about what Hollywood is doing to the culture, yet you put money in their pockets”… and it’ starting to sting a bit. Combine the rot with the ever increasing expense of cable, even she is starting to talk about cutting the cord. She’s also admitted that she’s starting to feel guilty about what she’s watching.
The youngest, a 9 year old, he’s all about SpongeBob. Well, there are DVD’s for that.
Me, TV is basically DVR’s of old movies on TCM, mostly pre-1950’s stuff, a little college football here and there, and an old TV series called Emergency on Netflix. That’s about it. Modern Hollywood disgusts me to the point where I haven’t watched a regular, current TV show in over a decade. Same for movies. I basically just don’t go anymore. I made one exception for my boy, as he desperately wanted to see the new Jurassic Park (Dinosaurs, Trains, the Titanic… his trinity of interests). That’s the only movie I’ve seen at a theater in years.
I seem to something of an outlier here – because I watch TV. A lot. On cable. With a DVR. But I did not watch the Emmys because I do not watch awards shows of any stripe.
While I genuinely appreciate the talent and craft of the folks that make TV shows, films and hit records, I do not care one whit about their politics, religion, or their apparent need to congratulate one another publicly for a job well done.
Perhaps the Emmy folks should consider a return to the days where they held a big gala dinner and handed out the awards in a non-televised ceremony. Because – surprise, Hollywood! – a lot of us out here aren’t any more interested in your profession than you are in ours.
#39 You are exactly right when you say …
I’d end up paying them less money but I think they would
get more customers overall. I hate paying for hundreds of channels
that I never look at just so I can have a handful of favorites.
We seldom watch anything besides live sports and news.
Sometimes we watch Blue Bloods because by Friday night,
life just needs Tom Selleck. We are seriously considering cutting
the cord and going back to an over the air antenna.
Oh, and Firefly!!!
Do you all realize that you have just made Rob throw up?
If I hear about a show and feel like checking it out I look for it online and usually find it. A Football Life, Cutthroat Kitchen, 20 for 20, BBC Masterpiece etc… Pretty much everything is online, often for free. The other night my wife heard about a show called Fixer Upper. I looked and found the pilot the other night so we checked it out. TV is an after-the kids-go-to-bed event for us (except NFL games once in a while) and we typically will only watch a show or two per week, on nights where we are both mentally fried.
For NFL we’ve gone back to the old antenna days. I’m surprised how similar TV is to the way it was back in the 90’s when using an antenna, but it seems to work just as well.
Why do you think Rob co-founded Ricochet? When you are on the Titanic, build your own lifeboat.
Seawriter
I watch too much TV, too much Netflix.
When I was in college and graduate school I seemed to hit on just the right mix of TV to real-life watching. I have never had cable, just an antenna also.
Rob knows all about this. He talks about it all the time. He himself has used the words “Hollywood is dying”. He might disagree on the causes of demise, but he can see it happening front and center.
People are still watching TV, it just doesn’t always come through the TV. The problem is that we can’t fully quantify it.
HBO and Netflix have similar subscriber bases, around 28 million. We know that a “hit” show on HBO is capable of pulling a rating of around 3+. So Netflix is probably costing the nets a similar drop.
On a winter’s evening there may be a 500 basketball telecasts of the sport on all levels – from high school to the pros. The low level stuff draws hundreds, not hundreds of thousands. But cumulatively it adds up. Then add to that the YouTube viewers, the other entertainment and sports streaming services, people watching foreign networks illegally through proxy servers, etc, etc. Those are not counted in any fashion.