TV networks’ dominance of the delivery of TV content is rapidly collapsing, as alternatives expand and people build up their libraries: Primetime Mystery: Where Did All the TV Viewers Go? - Derek Thompson via The Atlantic The networks’ share of primetime TV audience (dark blue in the graph below [above in this post]) has declined from 45% in 1985 to 25% in 2009. Basic cable ate the networks’ lunch post-dinner audience, and now it’s technology’s turn gobble up what’s left. Even with this long trend line (and despite the fact that viewers often unplug in the spring), there is a sense that we’ve reached a tipping point thanks to what Gaspin calls “built-up libraries.” There is more good stuff to watch not-on-live-TV than on live-TV, and even the head of entertainment at NBC knows it. Television technologies are dragging us away from live television, to a world of smaller screens, shifting “windows,” and no more ads. In 2000, a company called Netflix was experimenting with movie rentals. Now they have more than 20 million streaming customers. In 2005, about 1% of households owned DVRs. Today, it’s more than 40%. In 2006, Hulu didn’t exist. Today it has just under 30 million monthly uniques, with more than 1 million paying subscribers. In 2009, there were no iPads. Today, there are 60 million, and most of them are in the United States. That’s a Cambrian explosion of options for “watching TV” without literally watching an actual TV. So people are ‘watching TV’ but not watching network programming in real time: they have defected from the ‘appointment TV’ model, or defected from broadcast and networks as the delivery mechanism for TV media. PS DVR is a strange intermediary technology, one that foreshadowed keeping your TV shows in the cloud. (Apple’s iTunes in the cloud is poised to destroy the market for DVR devices.) (h/t emergent futures)

TV networks’ dominance of the delivery of TV content is rapidly collapsing, as alternatives expand and people build up their libraries:

Primetime Mystery: Where Did All the TV Viewers Go? - Derek Thompson via The Atlantic

The networks’ share of primetime TV audience (dark blue in the graph below [above in this post]) has declined from 45% in 1985 to 25% in 2009. Basic cable ate the networks’ lunch post-dinner audience, and now it’s technology’s turn gobble up what’s left.

Even with this long trend line (and despite the fact that viewers often unplug in the spring), there is a sense that we’ve reached a tipping point thanks to what Gaspin calls “built-up libraries.” There is more good stuff to watch not-on-live-TV than on live-TV, and even the head of entertainment at NBC knows it. Television technologies are dragging us away from live television, to a world of smaller screens, shifting “windows,” and no more ads. In 2000, a company called Netflix was experimenting with movie rentals. Now they have more than 20 million streaming customers. In 2005, about 1% of households owned DVRs. Today, it’s more than 40%. In 2006, Hulu didn’t exist. Today it has just under 30 million monthly uniques, with more than 1 million paying subscribers. In 2009, there were no iPads. Today, there are 60 million, and most of them are in the United States. That’s a Cambrian explosion of options for “watching TV” without literally watching an actual TV.

So people are ‘watching TV’ but not watching network programming in real time: they have defected from the ‘appointment TV’ model, or defected from broadcast and networks as the delivery mechanism for TV media.

PS DVR is a strange intermediary technology, one that foreshadowed keeping your TV shows in the cloud. (Apple’s iTunes in the cloud is poised to destroy the market for DVR devices.)

(h/t emergent futures)

27 April 2012 10
tvdvrprimetime

Notes

  1. journo-geekery reblogged this from stoweboyd
  2. obliterated1 reblogged this from stoweboyd and added:
    Ah that’s what I like - a graph that so clear you have to explain it in the first par of the accompanying copy….FFS...
  3. sosungalittleclodofclay reblogged this from stoweboyd
  4. jackyan reblogged this from stoweboyd and added:
    The end of network TV This hardly surprises me, especially as someone who listens to more radio per week than watches...
  5. futuresagency reblogged this from stoweboyd and added:
    TV networks’ dominance of the delivery of TV content is rapidly collapsing, as alternatives expand and people build up...
  6. stoweboyd posted this

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