In its ongoing “The 10 Things You Need to Know About The New Season” series, The Futon Critic chimes in with an important primer on why the Nielsen ratings matter so much and why all the iTunes, Hulu and DVR numbers don’t yet.
The bottom line of course is that TV advertising is still HUGE and there’s not nearly as much money in online advertising for streaming or in ad free iTunes downloads. As for the DVR numbers, their conclusion like ours, is that the C3 (live plus 3 days of commercial viewing) just aren’t much different than the the program ratings that we generally report.
I admire and envy the ability to simply post that information once a year, and be done with it. But it’s easier to be stoic when, like The Futon Critic, you don’t allow commenting on your blog posts!
But their “10 Things” is a great concept, and we probably need to re-work our own FAQ into several different chapters that we can just easily point back to all the time. Perhaps a project for the holidays. In the meanwhile, for those who haven’t already, you can catch the first 7 things you need to know about the new season on The Futon Critic.
I left the futon critic months ago for TVBTN
I hate how it’s not interactive and blah
kudos to the TVBTN team!
For most shows, DVD sales are indeed too small to make a difference, but there are a few, such as True Blood, The Office and Heroes, for whom DVD sales are more than a meaningless revenue stream.
thanks, tdot
ebas, I left DVD out of the discussion even though they didn’t because I’m well aware of the phenom that is True Blood! But HBO Shows ratings don’t really matter so much because of monthly subscription revenue.
There are other shows where the DVD is not insignificant, but usually that is with shows that already have decent Nielsen ratings relative to their networks. Especially when it comes to DVDs from broadcast network shows. You could say that Smallville and Supernatural sold a lot of DVDs relative to their Nielsen numbers on the CW. And that’s true. But their Nielsen numbers relative to the CW were already very good last year.
Theres analysis is completely wrong they are comparing overall add revenue with prime time shows dvd and i-tunes sales. But prime time last only 2-3 hours. If they want to get the real numbers they should take the ad revenue from the prime time period only. No one is selling The Tonigth Show on DVD, or the news.
Here is an interesting article about Supernatural profits:
http://www.thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/supernatural/9-misc/2234-supernatural-by-the-numbers.html
This is interesting when it seems here in the UK we spend more on web advertising than on TV. There’s a good Guardian article here to read http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/30/internet-biggest-uk-advertising-sector
UK web accounts for 23.5% of advertising, with TV accounting for 21.9%.
That is interesting. I heard about this a couple days ago but I had not seen the full story.
I didn’t realize how comparatively weak the UK TV market is. Annual TV ad spend in the US is about $233 per capita. In the UK it’s about $83 (I’m making a crude pounds-to-dollars conversion there).
Online it’s about $72 in the US and $91 in the UK.
Igor makes an excellent point about comparing apples to apples and only adding prime TV revenue hours.
Also, what I worry about as an advertiser is not just people watching on Hulu or DL from iTunes – but who are these people? My personal experience tells me they are some of the most desirable audiences in terms of disposable income. Not being born yesterday I know my personal experiences are just that – and the true data is possibly not even available (as in the case of iTunes and DVD sales).
I noticed on the actual article a “yet” disqualifier was used at the end of the “why iTunes, DVR, etc. don’t matter.” So is the question ‘when’ and not ‘if’ these viewing styles matter? And does that mean we’re seeing just “early adopters” right now — or has it already moved past that?
Igor’s point is one of precision. For this discussion — at “matters” was used, was intended as “matters in terms of a shows renewal or cancellation prospects”.
My “yet” qualifier was in terms of that.
And again, as stated above, the profitability of Supernatural beyond TV is no doubt important to Warner Bros, but Supernatural already had very good ratings for the network it is on. What we haven’t seen a case of is a show that has very low ratings for the network it airs on that winds up being kept.
Dollhouse might be the exception, though it now seems likely that it was a bet on the HOPE for big profits outside TV ad revenue, rather than any real big profits outside TV revenue. Big DVD sales did not materialize for season one, but if the ratings don’t improve and Dollhouse winds up with a third season, my opinion will likely change.
I love Futon Critic. I personally don’t see it as an overlap to this site. The interactive piece is a nice component on here. I can read show news that is unrelated to ratings on there and read pilot reviews too. I think they complement each other nicely.
I’d love to see a more in depth DVR study done, maybe outside of Nielsen families. I believe they haven’t figured out how to calculate the FF aspect yet. And speaking for myself, in an hour show, I probably end up watching one of the commercial breaks in its entirety for some reason and hearing/watching maybe three to five single commercials as well (usually the ones closest to coming in and going out of the commercial breaks). I’ve observed this amongst friends and associates as well. So, I think there’s more ad value in DVR viewings than is currently thought. And if its an eye catching commercial that I see when FF, I will stop, rewind, and watch.
Tory, TiVo has studied commercial fast-forwarding and skipping extensively and found that typically around 80% of the commercials are avoided. At this point, TiVo represents only about 10% of the DVR market, but it has a very good sample size to work with. Whether TiVo users behave much differently than the broader DVR population I can’t say, though it jibes with other studies I have seen.
While the DVR viewing of ads might ad a small amount, we don’t think it winds up playing a role in a shows renewal prospects. if 30% of the show is viewed on DVR and 80% of the commercials are skipped, it is a very small percentage addition to the overall advertising revenue. We see it as very useful for purposes of PR, but otherwise not meaningful.