By Haddon Libby
May represents one of the most important months of the year for television broadcasters as it is the last ‘ratings sweeps’ period for the broadcast year. Rating sweeps are the time of year when the Nielsen ratings service does a large study of what Americans are watching on television. Viewership is typically tracked via a paper book in many households with electronic meters in a smaller portion of the homes. Despite advances in how people consume media, this arcane measurement process remains critical in calculating and determining advertising rates.
Most advertisers will pay a premium for viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 years of age. As an example, ABC can get twice the price for ads on Grey’s Anatomy versus a show like NCIS on CBS that attracts an older viewer.
David Letterman’s recent retirement announcement is likely related to the fact that he is the lowest rated of the three broadcast network talk shows at 11:35pm. Among viewers between 18 and 49, The Tonight Show has nearly three times the viewers of Letterman with Jimmy Kimmel in the middle of the pack. Looking at the 12:30am time slot, NBC’s Late Night gets twice the viewers The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS and a third more than Nightline. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and Colbert Report get one-third the viewers of The Tonight Show with TBS’ Conan on par with them. Given all of the above, it is no surprise that CBS is transitioning to a new late night pair of shows.
When looking at the three main cable news networks, they garner less than 1% of all Americans viewing their programming at their rating peaks in the aggregate on any given day. While Fox News leads the pack with total viewership of about 2 million at their high point, this is still a very small portion of the 116 million television households and 318 million people. When we look at the key demographic to advertisers (18-49), all three networks average less than 750,000 viewers, 10% less than The Daily Show. While newsies pay a lot of attention to what is said on the news networks, the majority of all Americans are paying no attention whatsoever.
Given the shortcomings of Nielsen’s research methods, shows with high recording and viewership rates on DVRs are prized despite the likelihood of those viewers will fast forward through commercials. The top five DVR shows are The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, The Blacklist, Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy with shows like Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Resurrection and Parenthood doing surprisingly well.
Of the cable only networks, TBS, USA and ESPN lead in the 18-49 demographic with the History Network ranking highest with the over 50 viewer and Disney ranking highest with the under 18 market. The Walking Dead on AMC is one of the highest rated shows among all television shows with Game of Thrones on HBO, WWE on USA, Duck Dynasty on A&E, Major Crimes on TNT and American Horror Story on FX all ranking near the top.
Have you noticed that there has been significant growth in sports networks and sports programming? This is because viewers typically watch the ads on these live programs. When it comes to ad dollars, the NFL is in a league of its own as this league gets some of the highest ratings amongst all television programming. The NBA, MLB and college football are all solid ratings draws if not exceptional like the NFL. When it comes to hockey, the NHL draws less than one in 500 television viewers in the United States…which is still better than CNN most of the time.
