Television

Key Findings

  • TV is a vast and fast medium – it reaches a large proportion of the population quickly.
  • Practically everyone watches TV regularly. Around a third of the population is watching television at any point during evening prime-time hours.
  • TV remains a largely unsegmented mass medium; even with the great proliferation of numbers of channels.
  • Double Jeopardy Law of TV viewing: more popular / larger channels are watched by more people who, on average, watch them for more hours a week than viewers of smaller channels.
  • Duplication of Viewing Law: the main determinant of the number of viewers of one channel who also watch a specific other channel in the same week is simply the latter’s reach.
  • TV viewing habits in the US and UK have changed little in response to the huge investment in new TV channels. Access to greater channel choice has not increased total viewing appreciably. The audience is now more fragmented – much the same viewing hours are spread over more channels – but the patterns of channel use are largely unchanged.
  • Duplication of viewing of programs is always higher within a channel than between programs on different channels.
  • Most single-genre channels are small, even in homes able to receive them; they have low reach.
  • Single-genre channels are seldom strongly segmented (e.g. like the readership of specialist consumer magazines can be), nor exceptionally loyal, nor exclusive. Most of the viewing of single-genre channel viewers goes to the main networks and to other channels.
  • For an advertiser, single-genre channels are a useful adjunct to the main networks, especially for reaching certain audiences such as sports fans and the young. However, they deliver only a small number of viewers who still spend at least 90% of their time watching other channels.
  • Single genre channels tend to attract lower CPMs than the main networks; because of their low coverage, limited segmentation, and lack of exclusive audience delivery.
  • There is almost no program genre loyalty, and very little demographic audience segmentation by genre.
  • Viewers show little, if any, loyalty towards particular genres. Specifically, someone who watches a program of a given genre in one week allocates almost exactly the same proportion of their viewing in the following week to that genre as does the average viewer.
  • Repeat viewing rates (from show to show, from week to week) are low and are based on ratings, with a double jeopardy pattern of higher repeat rates for larger rating shows.
  • “Appointment Viewing” is not the norm. The dominant reason that viewers miss a program they watched the previous week is that they don’t happen to be watching TV at the same time the following week. For lower-rating programs, watching a competing channel becomes a more prominent reason for missing an episode.
  • Light TV viewers are in fact similar to the rest of the population (i.e. in demographics and other media consumption)
  • Light TV viewers are not always light viewers. 70% of light viewers from the first week remained light viewers in the second week and after six weeks only around 30% remained consistently light.
  • Light TV viewers are broadly normal consumers of other media. They are slightly more likely to be exposed to outdoor and cinema advertising, as they are out and about (not home watching TV) and are also slightly heavier internet consumers.
  • Campaigns that include TV in their multi-platform media mix outperform those that don’t.
  • Using media that light viewers consume more of, i.e. internet, cinema and outdoor is beneficial for increasing cumulative reach and also keeps frequency at a manageable level among heavy TV viewers.

Best Practice

  • Broad reach campaigns must continue to use TV as it remains the most dominant media in people’s lives, particularly as fragmentation across all media increases.
  • Spread TV advertising across channels to gain high reach relative to frequency of exposure.
  • Spread out TV advertising over time to reach light viewers.
  • Spread out advertising over other media to broaden reach of light TV viewers.
  • Be very wary of claims of highly targeted, highly loyal TV channels and instead carefully check the audience metrics. Most small channels aren’t niche, they are simply small.
  • Advertisers should think carefully about light TV viewers because they are key to achieving the reach potential that TV has. Also simply because they are more difficult to reach and because there are so many of them.
  • In order for TV to deliver efficient broad reach the scheduling of advertising must be carefully planned – this is increasingly true as fragmentation increases.
  • Reaching light viewers will continue to be of great importance and is best achieved through high-rating shows.
  • The internet is potentially a good medium to reach lighter TV viewers, and TV is a good medium to reach lighter and non-users of the internet.