Through a rather impressive collection data released over the weekend, Jim Edwards of The Business Insider claims television is dying. According to the data, people are unsubscribing in droves from cable television providers and as a whole, aren't watching as much television as they used too… or are they? Perhaps there’s an argument still to be made. One based not in traditional viewership tracking, but in that of specific new-media organizations. Perhaps the problem isn't that people aren't watching television, it’s just that they're not watching in a way the current tracking system requires.
While Nielsen ratings do track viewership over DVR, PC and mobile devices, they don’t track specific third-party companies. We don’t know what the numbers out of popular services like Hulu, iTunes and Amazon look like, we never have. We have an idea, sure, but we don’t have any hard numbers. As Edwards’ data points out: with so many people actively shutting down their cable and satellite subscriptions, to the point where they’re not even watching the ratings king that is major league sports like they once were, it’s easy to say television is dying. But where’s the data on specific programming being watched through new-media outlets?
Where's the data from the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL on how many people are watching games through their individual digital platforms? Especially now when watching a major sporting event on your television is as easy as owning a Roku box with an active WiFi connection. Where’s the data on viewership from Hulu+? A service that offers subscribers the ability to watch new programs next day on their television through an internet connected device. Where’s the data from iTunes and Amazon on program specific season pass downloads? A service that, again, allows users next day viewing of new episodes. And we all know about
This current television season has already shown audiences are switching to a time-shifted viewing schedule more than they ever have before. ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., NBC's The Blacklist and FOX's Sleepy Hollow have all posted record setting upticks from the added viewership of Live +3 and Live +7 DVR ratings. So if we already know people are using the services we can track to watch programs at later times during the week, how do we know the same isn't being made true through third-party distribution outlets? Yes, the numbers are declining in television viewership over traditional means; we've known this for years. We also know there’s been an upswing in new-media viewership over mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets in the latter half of the last ten years, as shown by Edwards' data. But in all that time, we’ve always been working with an incomplete picture, and the longer networks, tracking services and digital platforms refuse to work together, the worse the picture's going to look.
According to Nielsen's own findings: while testing their new digital ratings system they found it was mainly younger viewers watching television through new-media devices [but again, the data sample was only tracking programs available from a network's own site, not third party services]. The funny thing about younger viewers is that they eventually grow into older viewers that become set in their ways. We're slowly entering an age where a cable subscription means nothing from the start, and that's where the problem with the current tracking system comes into play. If the key demographic (adults 18-49) isn't watching shows through systems that are being tracked by Nielsen, television as a whole will suffer.
Is the medium in zero-hour? Probably not. But it’s certainly wounded, and the time to act is now. From simply a business stand-point, advertisers and networks need to know how programs are performing across third-party services because that’s where people are migrating to, to watch their favorite media, scripted and non-scripted alike. If this wasn't true, why would Netflix pour millions of dollars into a show the data says is devoid of viewership? It’s a move that makes no sense unless there’s something they know that we don’t. Viewers could benefit from knowing this information too because the more they see their favorite programs struggling to retain an audience in the traditional tracking model, the less inclined they are to watch. If history has shown them anything it’s that bubble shows often get popped before their prime.
Not since the switch from analog to digital broadcasting has the medium of television been under this much scrutiny. We aren't living in a simple world anymore where 100 million viewers tune in to a series finale on a major broadcast network. The television audience might very well be larger than ever, but we can’t know for sure without the data to back it up. We need to see the real numbers from those digital outlets Edwards claims the audience is migrating to, the outlets that could determine the fate of the medium as a whole. We need to see the full picture, and we need to see it now.
