Ask Not Where the Broadcast TV Audience Went, It Went To Ad Supported Cable, And Still Is
We've seen that primetime broadcast network viewership has been on the decline since the early 80's. But we've also seen that primetime TV viewing by household has been relatively flat from the early 90's.
Where did the primetime broadcast TV network audience go?
It went, and continues to go, to ad supported basic cable networks.
Note that the percentage of US TV HHs (rating) viewing during prime-time has risen slowly over time, but the broadcast networks share of viewing has continued to drop during the period.
As the prime-time broadcast network audience began declining in the early 1980's, it shifted to cable networks, and primarily basic/ad supported cable networks.
Some additional things jump out at me:
- Independent Stations have joined up and become Network Affiliates. Note the ever growing list of networks below. I don't have good data on the number of Independent stations vs. Network Affiliates, but conventional wisdom is that Independent station numbers have shrunk substantially over time. That's why I colored both of those series blue. I think they should be considered part of the same viewership trend. Taken together, those two groups have gone from a rating of 54.5 to 26.6, a decline of 51%.
- Public broadcast primetime viewing has fallen from a HH rating of 2.6 to 1.1, a percentage decline of about 58%.
- In 1984-85 audiences were watching more Premium/Pay Cable than Ad/Basic cable. The growth of Ad Supported/Basic cable viewing was not followed by a similar growth in premium/pay cable viewing. Premium/Pay cable has seen its share fall modestly during the period. It's hard to compare the Premium/Pay Cable numbers before 1999 with those after 1999 because of the definition change (noted below) though.
- Today more people watch "other" cable (shopping, music, etc) cable than watch premium/pay cable.
Primetime HH Rating (% of US TV Households Viewing) by Season, 1984-2009
| Season | Network Affiliates | Independent | Public | Premium/Pay Cable | Ad/Basic Cable | Other Cable | All Other Tuning |
| 1984-85 | 44.8 | 9.7 | 2.6 | 4.0 | 3.6 | ||
| 1985-86 | 45.1 | 10.1 | 2.5 | 3.4 | 3.9 | ||
| 1986-87 | 43.3 | 10.5 | 2.7 | 3.3 | 4.7 | ||
| 1987-88 | 40.1 | 11.5 | 2.5 | 3.8 | 6.0 | ||
| 1988-89 | 38.7 | 11.7 | 2.4 | 3.9 | 7.5 | ||
| 1989-90 | 36.5 | 11.9 | 2.2 | 3.6 | 9.0 | ||
| 1990-91* | 38.4 | 7.8 | 2.3 | 3.4 | 11.6 | ||
| 1991-92 | 41.0 | 5.5 | 2.1 | 3.1 | 12.8 | ||
| 1992-93 | 40.4 | 5.7 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 13.6 | ||
| 1993-94 | 40.5 | 6.1 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 14.1 | ||
| 1994-95 | 37.8 | 6.4 | 2.2 | 3.1 | 15.9 | ||
| 1995-96 | 35.7 | 6.6 | 2.1 | 3.3 | 18.0 | ||
| 1996-97 | 33.2 | 6.7 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 19.8 | ||
| 1997-98 | 31.4 | 6.7 | 2.0 | 3.9 | 22.3 | ||
| 1998-99 | 31.3 | 7.2 | 2.0 | 4.2 | 24.1 | ||
| 1999-00 | 34.7 | 2.1 | 2.0 | 3.5 | 24.0 | 1.9 | |
| 2000-01 | 32.6 | 2.4 | 1.9 | 3.5 | 26.0 | 2.1 | |
| 2001-02 | 30.3 | 2.5 | 1.6 | 3.5 | 28.2 | 2.1 | |
| 2002-03 | 29.6 | 2.6 | 1.7 | 3.6 | 29.4 | 2.4 | |
| 2003-04 | 28.9 | 2.9 | 1.6 | 3.4 | 30.9 | 2.9 | |
| 2004-05 | 27.8 | 3.7 | 1.6 | 3.1 | 32.8 | 3.2 | |
| 2005-06** | 29.1 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.8 | 33.5 | 3.4 | 0.5 |
| 2006-07*** | 28.1 | 1.2 | 1.4 | 2.6 | 33.8 | 3.0 | 2.4 |
| 2007-08*** | 26.9 | 1.0 | 1.2 | 2.6 | 35.1 | 3.0 | 3.8 |
| 2008-09*** | 25.6 | 1.0 | 1.1 | 2.8 | 36.3 | 3.1 | 3.8 |
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Network Affiliates:
1984-90: ABC, CBS, NBC affiliates
1991-1999: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX Affiliates
1999-December 25, 2005: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, UPN, PAX affiliates
December 26, 2005-January 29 2006: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, UPN, UNI, PAX affiliates
January 30, 2006-February 26, 2006: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, UPN, UNI, TEL, PAX affiliates
February 27, 2006-August 27, 2006: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, UPN, UNI, TEL, TF, PAX affiliates
August 28, 2006 - September 3, 2006 : ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, UPN, UNI, TEL, TF, AZA, PAX affiliates
September 4, 2006 - 2008: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, UNI, TEL, TF, AZA, ION, MNT affiliates
2008 - Present : ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, UNI, TEL, TF, AZA, ION, affiliates
Independent:
1984-90: Commercial independent stations including FOX affiliates and TBS
1991-99: Commericial independent stations including WB, UPN affiiliates and superstations except forTBS.
1999-2006: Commercial independent stations including Telemundo and Univision affiliates. Excludes TBS
2006-present: Commercial independent stations including Telemundo and Univision affiliates. Excludes TBS
Public: PBS affiliates
Ad Supported/Basic Cable:
1984-99: Tuning to basic cable including Pay-Per-View
1991-1999: Tuning to basic cable including TBS and Pay-Per-View.
1999-present: Viewing to advertiser supported cable networks. Includes TBS and WGN cable.
All Other Cable:
1984-99: Tuning to basic cable including Pay-Per-View
1999-present: tuning to cable networks that are neither ad-supported nor premium pay, includes pay-per-view, interactive channels, home shopping channels, and audio only feeds.
Premium/Pay Cable:
1999-present: Viewing to premium pay cable services.
1984-99: Cable Subscribers receiving at least one premium channel. This does not include Pay-Per-View.
All Other Tuning: Tuning where the source was not encoded and Nielsen was not able to measure what was watched.
*Effective 1991, FOX changed from Independents to Network Affiliates and and TBS changed from Independents to Basic Cable.
**Combination of Live data and Live+7 data.
***Live+7 data
All years prior to 2005-6 are Live Data.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2010 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Ummm, would “All other tuning” be something like Hulu or say, watching a television feed through a computer with a TV output/input card?
And will the Broadcast trend ever flatten out? There has to be a bottom somewhere, the question of course is “Where is it?”
Quantity over Quality. 500 channels and nothing good on most of the time.
“All other tuning” does not include online viewing of streamed content. That's not included anywhere in *this* discussion. Period. It's mostly channels that for whatever reason are not encoded like traditional broadcast and cable signals or are too small to subscribe to regular Nielsen measurement.
Once online viewing with the exact same commercials as ran on TV is counted by Nielsen (supposedly Q1 2011) it will be interesting to see what Nielsen does with it for these purposes. My guess is they will figure out how to lump it back to broadcast & cable respectively, rather than “other tuning” but that's just a guess.
I don't watch television on an actual television, That's so silly.
I'm bad an illegally download it all.
Well, I do pay for television service so why not?
I be the first to admit that I watch much more television than I did in my single digit years (parents sanctioned tv watching to premium movies on HBO, PBS, MASH, Hill Street Blues, Double Creature Feat. on Saturdays and the news), 20's and even early 30's. I can only speak for myself that my dvr works overtime but not on network television.
I am more than happy to pay for premium cable. I am currently enjoying The Pacific, Treme, Nurse Jackie, U of T, Tudors.
Basic
AMC-Breaking Bad
FX-Justified and Damages
USA-nothing right now
There are a copious amount of shows left out that are not airing right now such as SOA, MM, BN, etc.
I do enjoy Modern Family, 30 Rock and a few other network shows but guess what gets deleted even before a viewing – network shows.
Wait Bill, so TBS and Fox are Network Affiliates now? Clarified by reading article more slowly.
Where does AMC and FX fall in? and BBC? I've always considered those channels basic. Obviously, my cable bill jumps by having premium cable.
My brother lives with me, he just graduated college-what does he watch when he is home? Soccer and premium cable.
I also agree #2 poster, John, with quantity over quality. It's a pity. However, imho, there is good quality programming to those who want to watch it via whatever means they deem fit.
No, as of 1991 Fox stations were changed to network affiliates and TBS was changed to basic cable. I had the original Nielsen language in the post which might I have now edited to be clearer.
Any cable network that runs commercial advertising is put into the basic/ad supported category.
Where does a channel like TCM (Turner Classic Movies) fit into this classification system? It's not a premium channel, it's included in a lot of basic packages, but contains no commercial advertising.
I would assume basic cable, just like Disney, which only has inhouse advertising.
I assume TCM would be in the basic cable group too. The Other Cable category definition does not exclude it, but I would be surprised if it was in that category.
If I had to pay for cable (we got basic for some reason), I probably wouldn't have it. For most people cable's a good deal (given that the average person in this country watches too much TV), but I barely watch tv, and most of what I do watch is on ABC. Well, after Ugly Betty and Lost are gone…
When flipping through the guide, the most surprising thing is that, despite having over 100 channels, there is so little that seems interesting to watch. Even though the audience has fractured 10 ways from Sunday, I would bet that there's little more actual high quality programming now than 10 years ago.
My theory is that the lack of reruns is hurting the networks. Before you could miss an episode of a show and know that you could watch it later. This meant that people were less likely to quit shows, and more likely to jump into shows that have been airing for a while. But now the nets fill every spare minute with new reality shows or midseason shows or crap. If you didn't catch the first airing of an episode you'll have to go online or wait for the DVDs, once you start that you have no reason to ever go watch TV live ever again.
Lack of reruns? IMO there is no lack of reruns. I believe there are plenty of reruns. The problem is, scheduling seems to be so haphazard. Years ago, I could watch a series through several weeks, maybe get a couple of weeks of reruns or specials over the holiday season, then see several more weeks of new episodes and be guaranteed to see reruns through the summer. That would give you the opportunity to see shows that you had not seen in Spring and Fall during Summer. Nowadays, shows seems to go 2-3 weeks of new episodes, then they're either out for reruns or cancelled. If they're not cancelled, they seem to come back for a couple of weeks and then out for reruns again.
I also don't understand why so many people are quick to pay for cable, at least in the current format. “Pay x amount to get 100 channels when you only want 4!”
Also:
September 4, 2006 – Present : ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, WB, UPN, UNI, TEL, TF, AZA, PAX, MyNet affiliates
Not exactly “present”, missing one other time frame with one network less. (UPN).
And possibly one more spanish network (Galavision, which I think is wider distributed than Azteca))
That's a good point about reruns. A lot of the popular cable programs not only air repeats during the off season, but also run multiple times throughout the week. Of course the latter is a luxury the broadcast networks don't have, since they only have 3 hours to work with each night. I wonder what would happen if the broadcast networks allowed the affiliates to run repeats of the current season's shows in the hours outside of primetime? That would put a monkey wrench into the syndication system, not to mention DVD sales. Or would it? Cable shows seem to sell DVDs pretty well despite all the repeats.
The All Other Tuning answer I got from Nielsen is pretty much exactly what's in the post above.
Jamesboat, Thanks, I had some old text in that legend below. I have updated it with the latest Nielsen information.
Its difficult to watch national broadcast television these days when the programming is full of fake-crap dancing shows, fake-crap bachelor/bachelorette shows, fake-crap ‘celebrity’ apprentice shows etc. Remember the good ole days when you turned on tv to see a star that had some talent versus nowadays where someone who pops out 8 kids and basically abandoned them is labeled that? Sad
Its difficult to watch national broadcast television these days when the programming is full of fake-crap dancing shows, fake-crap bachelor/bachelorette shows, fake-crap ‘celebrity’ apprentice shows etc. Remember the good ole days when you turned on tv to see a star that had some talent versus nowadays where someone who pops out 8 kids and basically abandoned them is labeled that? Sad
I tell my friends to stop bellyaching about the meager amount of quality programming. The fewer grade-A shows there are the more cherished they become. And really, if there were great shows as far as the eye could see when would we find the time to watch them anyway.
I tell my friends to stop bellyaching about the dearth of quality programs out there. After all, where would they find the time to watch them if there were great shows as far as the eye can see? Anyway, it makes the handful of good shows on the air now seem even more precious.