TV Viewers Are Getting Older, Or… ?
By fred | June 30, 2008
Because time-shifted viewers aren’t new for this past season, it’s been a while that viewers have been using DVRs and not watched their shows live. But until yet, Nielsen was ignoring those people, they were not part of the “official” television audience, not part of the statistics that, sadly, are religion to advertisers and, therefore, networks.
Remember Jericho ? That little show CBS killed, not one, but twice! This is a show that had a destiny out of the ordinary, it was something quite extraordinary yet CBS never really believed in it, as shown by the way the treat the show. I mean, after fans of the show showed such love, support and dedication for their favorite show, after they went “nuts” so much that they brought it back on the air, CBS should have realized they had something potentially huge on their hands.
Instead, they sent it to their death slot (Tuesdays at 10.00) thus ensuring the show would slowly die. I think it’s fair to say they never really believed in it, nor really tried to give it a real chance and made the best so that it would work. But what may have hurt Jericho as well, are the numbers. After being saved by fans, the second season of the show never did too well in the ratings, and had a hard time getting 7 million viewers.
Or, at least, that’s what we’ve been told by Nielsen. And many times I’ve read fans of the show complain about Nielsen, and being replied that it would be quite odd that Nielsen would be wrong for Jericho, yet right for CSI or American Idol.
But let’s not even mention how Nielsen might have their boxes completely misplaced, and be wrong for Jericho - which would be matched a lot more - and wrong for CSI as well - which would be quite less viewed! But what if, simply, Nielsen is completely ignoring our third group of people, the ones watching the show, but not doing it neither live or within 7 days, from their DVR ?
Maybe that third group of viewers doesn’t watch CSI that much, but loves Jericho. 9% of CSI’s “total” audience was time-shifted, while for Jericho it was 18% ! According to Nielsen, Jericho was CBS’ scripted series with the biggest time-shifted audience, so it would seem fair to think that it was also probably the number one CBS series in our third group of viewers, those viewers ignored by Nielsen, because they’re watching the shows any of those ways Nielsen doesn’t know about / count.
I’m not here trying to argue that the TV audience isn’t getting older, but I think it’s interesting to see how time-shifted audience is much younger than live audience, and does have an impact on the global median age of each of the main networks. And I’m sure there isn’t anyone, especially here, on a blog, who will deny that there are other ways to consume television these days, than watching live, or from your DVR within seven days after original airing.
Many people uses other means to get their TV shows, and none of them are taken into account by Nielsen. Maybe the TV audience is getting older, or maybe it is only the TV audience Nielsen known about and tracks that is, but the global TV audience might simply be sliding into other territories where they’re not counted (yet).
I still believe that the Nielsen’s had nothing to do with canceling Jericho but to each his/her own.
The NTN campaign to Nielsen’s is flawed and they will not listen.
Wonderful article. Full of interesting information.
Can you write another one about how to get Nielsen out of the 1950’s?
Gwen
http://www.jericho-kansas.com