Television Audience 2009, Nielsen's annual data dump on the state of the American viewer, is just out. Taking a look through the charts and graphs, here's what I see in the ongoing evolution of our entertainment centers.
Cable breaks the 90 percent barrier. Or in other words, cable reaches ubiquity. With 62 percent of people subscribing to wired cable and another 28 percent paying for satellite and other wireless services, cable channels are everywhere they want to be. Where they aren't, the audience is thought to be out of reach — abstainers and folks on a strict PBS diet.
While it is true that cable channels rarely take a broadcast-sized slice of the viewing audience, the growing availability of cable means that the gap between big cable channels and small broadcast networks will get smaller and eventually vanish. Surely this weighed on Conan O'Brien as he pondered TBS's offer. After all, TBS will be in nearly 101 million homes when he signs on TBS later this year. That is how many homes NBC was broadcasting to in the year 2000. ("In the year two thou-saaaaaaand....")
VCRs crash, DVDs saturate. People, I hope you're recycling your VCR players and cassettes responsibly! Because if you aren't, America's landfills have a helluva mess on their hands. Just in the past year, the number of homes with VCRs has plummeted from 72 percent to 65 percent. In just five years, the players have disappeared from a third of American homes. DVD players peaked in 2008 and remain in 88 percent of homes, a notch lower than the high water mark of VCRs (90 percent in 2005). However, with DVD sales hitting the wall and online viewing surging, shiny disc players have nowhere to go but down.
Factors that boost TV-watching are on the rise. Fully 83 percent of homes are now multi-set, which is worth keeping in mind when you read the time-spent-viewing numbers below. (For instance, when you put a TV in the kids' bedroom, which I don't recommend, they will instantly add to your total household viewing time.)
DVR use has doubled in just three years — 34 percent of homes have one and that figure is above 40 percent in markets like Kansas City. And digital cable is now in 46 percent of homes. Both DVRs and digital cable offer options for time-shifting, which increases viewer convenience, which leads to more TV watching. Which brings us to the annual eye-popping statistic ...
The average household now consumes 58 hours 29 minutes of television per week. That is more than eight hours per day per household, up two minutes from 2008. Women watch more than men, teenagers or kids.
If your household is black, add 20 hours to that. African America continues to lead the country, by far, in time spent viewing. Black households were parked in front of their TVs for 78 hours and 44 minutes a week, more than 11 hours per household per day. Black households spend more time watching all forms of cable, including pay channels — which is why HBO can cater to them with shows like "Treme" that unapologetically feature African-American actors.
The fastest growing demo in TV isn't a "demo." The audience portion with the largest year-to-year increase, according to Nielsen, is adults 50-plus. This is a demographic grouping, to be sure, but not what the industry considers a "key demographic" — i.e., one that advertisers pay dearly to reach. The reason is that 50-plussers watch more TV than any other group save African-Americans. (Tellingly, Nielsen doesn't even break out time spent viewing for older adults.)
Meanwhile, the two demos that media buyers covet almost more than life itself — adults 18-49 and teenagers — slightly shrunk last year. Of course, this will have the perverse effect of driving up advertising rates for those networks that can prove they are young viewer magnets. If older viewers want more respect from TV programmers and advertisers, they'll have to follow the young 'uns lead and watch television less.
