[opendtv] Streaming Helps Cut 3Q Live TV Viewing | Broadcasting & Cable

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2014 09:19:32 -0500

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/streaming-helps-cut-3q-live-tv-viewing/136051

Streaming Helps Cut 3Q Live TV Viewing

The decline in traditional TV viewing is accelerating as more viewers use 
streaming services, time shifting and digital devices to watch video, Nielsen 
says.

Nielsen has renamed its quarterly Cross Platform Report as a Total Audience 
Report, designed to capture changing viewer behavior.

In the third quarter, live TV consumption dropped to four hours and 32 minutes 
per day from four hours and 44 minutes a year ago, the report said, and 
watching time shifted rose to 30 minutes per day from 28 minutes.

At the same time, time spent using a smart phone jumped to one hour and 33 
minutes from one hour and 10 minutes and the amount of time spent on a computer 
using the Internet rose to 1 hour and six minutes from one hour.

The increased accessibility of content on digital devices is giving consumers 
more choices, and the result is increased use at a time when traditional TV 
ratings are showing marked declines. That might be especially true in the third 
quarter, when summer programming including reruns drives viewers to experiment.

Subscription video on demand, now in 40% of homes, is up 19%. (Nielsen says the 
effect of putting current shows on streaming services like Netflix is a mixed 
bag. In some cases the ability to catch up on previous seasons boosts ratings. 
But in other cases, traditional ad supported viewing has gone down.)

Tablets are in 47% of homes and usage is up 59%. Smart TVs are in 13% of homes 
and usage is up 78%.

The number of homes with broadband but no multi-channel pay-TV service has 
increased to 2.8 million from 1.1 million last October, when those homes began 
to be included in the Nielsen sample.

As the leader in producing viewership data Nielsen has been challenged by the 
changes in technology and criticized by clients. Collecting data has become 
more difficult as illustrated by a glitch Nielsen and its clients discovered in 
October that led to the ratings being recalculated for the first weeks of the 
Fall season.

Viewership of Netflix is growing, but Netflix and other streamers make 
gathering audience information about their programs difficult. And Nielsen also 
faces a growing rival in the measurement business in Rentrak, now partly owned 
by advertising powerhouse WPP.

“While we are not seeing a departure from media content consumption, we do see 
a shift in consumer behavior and today we see a resounding growth in 
consumption on digital platforms,” Dounia Turrill, senior VP, insights, at 
Nielsen, said in the report. “The growing penetration of new devices and the 
popularity of subscription-based streaming services, time shifting and 
over-the-top viewing—as well as cord-cutting and cord shaving—are fundamentally 
changing the TV industry.”

Turrill said that the industry is at a crossroads and that Nielsen’s goal is to 
create a total measurement of all content and all ads “regardless of how they 
are accessed and the ad model that they’re supporting.”

The growth of video consumption is spreading among age groups, with older 
viewers starting to exhibit behaviors first associated with younger consumers. 
With people 55 years of age and older, digital video is up 55%, while TV screen 
time is unchanged. For people 25 to 54, time spent with digital video is up 
62%, with TV viewing down 2%. And among people 18 to 49, digital video time is 
up 53%, while TV time is down 3%.

Nielsen notes that the heaviest users of streaming services are also the 
heaviest TV viewers.

And while viewers have more choices than ever, they’re watching fewer TV 
channels. The average number of channels viewed was 21 in the third quarter, 
down from 21.7 a year ago.

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