
TV is not dying - sbachman
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2017/05/08/tv-not-dying-it-s-lies-damn-lies-and-bad-media-statistics
======
exelius
I work in this industry, and let me assure you: TV is most definitely dying.
Or rather, the traditional business model where you subscribe to a huge bundle
for pay TV is dying. That's a good thing.

The thing is, it's dying in a long-form death: people don't just change media
consumption habits overnight; it's more of a generational shift that happens
pretty much like the author of this article describes. I don't anticipate TV
as we know it today to disappear for another 10-15 years. I mean, we still
have land lines a good 2 decades after cell phones made them obsolete...

The author's numbers are garbage (no offense intended to op; good numbers on
media consumption are considered confidential and proprietary for most
companies so it almost requires working for a large media company with a large
customer base). Nielsen in particular is known within the industry for
basically only being meaningful in the context of a specific month (i.e. it's
a good way to know if show A outdrew show B, but the overall numbers they give
you around viewership are wrong). Basically everyone knows Nielsen is wrong,
but there aren't any better options because nobody is willing to trust anyone
in media measurement.

But however you slice it, medium-form TV content (>15 mins, <60 mins) is not
going anywhere. Viewers like this format and I expect it to stay. But look
where all the highest quality content is aggregating: for-pay, ad-free
services like Netflix , Amazon and Hulu (not _entirely_ ad-free, but close).

Video advertising, however, is about to see an apocalyptic drop in ad rates.
There's a 20-30% disparity in CPMs between TV and online, and once advertisers
catch on that most of those TVs are probably playing in the background with
nobody watching, ad rates will come down. And that will _really_ kill the
traditional TV market.

~~~
davidgerard
I used to be in telly too. We knew last decade that YouTube would soon be a
better television than television, and right now it's true. (YouTube, iPlayer,
whatever.) I still (proudly) pay my TV license, but all our BBC is over the
net; I haven't owned a physical TV for eight or so years.

The mass media have suffered the effects of the Internet much in the manner of
the record industry, as consumers, conclusively sick of their shit, withdraw
their attention. Their worry has gone from piracy to ... being ignored.

From
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-19/nbc-s-12-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-19/nbc-s-12-billion-
olympics-bet-stumbles-thanks-to-millennials) :

> Back in June, Steve Burke described what he called his Olympics “nightmare.”
> “We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief
> executive officer of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my
> prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a
> Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it.”

I'm 50 (Gen X), but this was me. I literally had no idea the Olympics had
actually started until occasional posts about it showed up on Tumblr. Nor did
I realise it was in Rio until then.

My daughter, now 10, has watched TV entirely on a computer from age 2.
(Sysadmin parent = house with lots of spare obsolete boxes.) She spends her
life on YouTube. (Watching Let's Play videos. StampyCat and DanTDM rock her
world - they are the Saturday morning cartoons of her generation.) I tell her
horror stories of my day, when there were three channels and they only showed
stuff at a particular time and if you missed it you couldn’t watch it again
... She _laughs_ at me.

The media hegemony broke absolutely the moment we could get the hell away from
them. Now people watch TV because they want to, not because there's no other
way to get there.

~~~
exelius
> The media hegemony broke absolutely the moment we could get the hell away
> from them. Now people watch TV because they want to, not because there's no
> other way to get there.

I wouldn't be so sure about that -- I would venture that 95-99% of the stuff
on YouTube / Twitter is owned in some form by one of the 10-15 largest media
companies (Disney, Comcast, Viacom, Fox, Bertelsmann, etc) . Ownership is hard
to verify (top content creators / on screen talent tend to be able to write
their own contracts much like top actors can) but I worked in this field long
enough to know that if you want to make the jump from 100k subscribers to 10M+
subscribers, you almost _have_ to rely on a content network for cross-
promotion (YT's recommendation algorithms really reinforce this). Even if
you're an established star in your own right.

But you're right; there's an age cutoff where if you were born after about
1990, the idea of watching TV the way people born before then do is almost
totally foreign to you. If it's not available instantly and on-demand, it
doesn't exist.

------
Eridrus
The data this article points to is quite surprising. Video on Demand is only
1.1% of TV viewing and 85% of households watch Live TV.

It just points to how much of a bubble I live in. I don't even know anyone who
watches live TV.

One of the things that confuses me is why Hulu still runs ads against some
content when I've paid for the no ads membership. Obviously it's contractual
reasons, but what reason do content companies have for not allowing platforms
to stream their content ad-free? Or is this just Hulu lying to consumers about
the reason for running ads against this content?

------
shubhamjain
TV usage may / may not be declining but I find no reason why brands would move
away from TV advertising that easily. The internet hasn't yet established any
immersive equivalent of traditional media ads. Irrespective of how loathsome
they might be, they work. I doubt if a distracting banner ad can be as
influential as the one you see on the TV. My TV viewing time is absolutely
zero and personally, it has created an interesting dynamic in terms of brand
recognition. As I walk into any supermarket store, I can barely recall any ads
of products I see displayed.

Youtube is the only product that brings anything comparable to the table. But,
then again, the number of advertisements I see there is exquisitely low in
contrast to the old TV days. Maybe because Youtube is throughly vigilant about
not damaging the UX but for the major part, my internet time is mostly spent
on other content websites.

I think Internet has a huge advertising problem. Even though it offers every
advantage in terms of distribution, there isn't any contender that can replace
TV ads.

------
libertine
Live TV is different from TV - just like LiveStreaming is different from
Streaming ... let's just get that out of the way.

Young marketers, like myself, if they are good professionals should be media
agnostic, and just choose the best media channels for the target audience they
are aiming to reach, depending of course of the objectives of the campaign.

Again, depending on the target, the consumer journey makes their attention
shift to alot of media touchpoints - the reality is that the media landscape
still includes outdoor 8x6, newspappers, etc.

Yet you can't dismiss that what we call ivideo is a cost effective medium. It
doesn't depend on huge agency groups deals, with massive minimum investment
requirements influenced by rapel. And lately it has become even more
expensive... it's not that the audience isn't there - it's the cost of the
GRPs.

tl;dr - TV is just another medium. The most expensive one, and marketers
sometimes question it's cost effectiveness and shift investment to online
video.

~~~
zzalpha
_TV is just another medium. The most expensive one, and marketers sometimes
question it 's cost effectiveness and shift investment to online video._

And then shift it back again.

The stories are legion of advertisers transitioning to online advertising and
back again when they discover it's less effective.

Combine that with increasing awareness of impression fraud, and the difficulty
of controlling where media is placed (resulting in brands appearing on...
Questionable sites), and it seems the internet advertising hype is deflating a
bit.

And rightly so. As you say, it's a weapon in the arsenal, not a wholesale
replacement for traditional TV advertising.

~~~
libertine
Usually the shifts come when some mediums stop being saturated - Apple uses
outdoor media in specific areas for example (something traditional for high
end products, like Rolex, Aston Martin, etc).

I think that one of the main problems of TV is the cost of production is
increasing, and they don't want to kill their margins. Even the live content
is dropping it's quality - that's why sports are still kings of audiences.

Ad fraud, viewability and brand safety are defintly hot questions atm, but
tools are already being set in place to help it (I don't think there's a
definite solution) - some brands blew it out of proportion though, other
brands are using this to drop down the costs.

But yeah, it's just another weapon - TV is definatly the heavy artillery.

------
hammock
This topic comes up a lot and Ad Contrarian has had my favorite takes on it.
His latest-

[http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2015/04/death-of-tv-
continu...](http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2015/04/death-of-tv-continues-
not-to-happen.html?m=1)

~~~
unit91
Whoa! _Five_ hours of TV per day. At first I thought this was hyperbole, but a
quick trip to Google confirmed it's an accurate metric. That's an absolutely
staggering amount of TV.

~~~
rimliu
How do they measure that? Is it done by some TVmeters, or just self-reporting?
There is a possibility that TV is on for five hours, but nobody really watches
it that much.

~~~
zzalpha
Measuring TV viewership has been going on for 50 years. They're not so dumb as
to just measure the time the TV spends emitting photons.

Today Neilsen uses multiple techniques. In addition to self-reporting via
diaries, local people meters are deployed in measured homes. When a person
sits in front of the TV they identify themselves to the LPM by pressing their
ID button in order to indicate someone is in front of the TV.

Yes there may be error in this since it's just-in-time self-reporting, but
viewership numbers have been robust and consistent for a very long time.

~~~
Arizhel
They're also only getting metrics from people willing to be Neilsen reporters.
What kind of compensation do they offer to do this? How many people refuse,
because they can't be bothered with it? Is someone who makes $150k going to
have any interest in being a part of this? If not, then the results are skewed
because you're only getting the lower-income people. What about people who
don't have a TV; how are they measuring that?

I posit that viewership numbers have been "robust and consistent" because
they're picking people who fit that.

~~~
Godel_unicode
You might wish to consider how many people in the US make "$150k", and then
reconsider if excluding them would be representative.

Also, all the cable providers sell aggregate/anonymous statistics about TV
viewership. Because of SDV, they know what channel your Cable box is tuned to.

~~~
Arizhel
Making $150k in the US is nothing remarkable, especially if you're a dual-
earner family. Good luck affording decent housing in many metro areas if you
make less than that.

~~~
scarface74
[http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-
rank/](http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/)

If you have a household income of $150K you are in the top 13% of earners.

~~~
Arizhel
So what? That's irrelevant, because housing costs vary dramatically in
different markets. $150k isn't going to buy you a nice house in Silicon
Valley, maybe an efficiency condo at best.

~~~
scarface74
It's always an option to move. There are plenty of opportunities outside of
SV.

~~~
Arizhel
Yes, in places like Seattle, NYC, Boston, DC, etc., where the housing costs
are also astronomical, and your salary is commensurately lower.

~~~
scarface74
[http://www.businessinsider.com/cities-us-software-
engineer-r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/cities-us-software-engineer-
ranked-salary-cost-living-2015-6)

~~~
Arizhel
According to your link, San Jose is #2, right behind Seattle, for software
engineers as far as salary/CoL ratio. So it really doesn't get much better
than Silicon Valley's insane cost of living. It's just like I said: the
housing costs may be lower elsewhere, but the salaries are even lower so it
isn't worth it. Seattle is the only exception, and it's not _that_ much
better.

~~~
scarface74
I can personally tell you that salaries for your run of the mill enterprise
senior softwares developer is between $120K and $145K in Atlanta and you can
easily buy a house in the burbs with a good school system for less than $400k.

From what I've seen, the same is true for at least the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

------
webwanderings
In the age when humans were able to produce TV shows like Game of Thrones, you
cannot kill TV. The TV has only overtaken the Cinema. It will now be a race to
topple the expensive shows in the history.

No offense to technology but this is all about age old entertainment and
story-telling enterprises in human history.

~~~
imron
You cannot kill story-telling, that's for sure, but the medium certainly
changes.

TV didn't kill radio, and the Internet won't kill TV, but it will lessen its
role and importance significantly, with the physical TV essentially being
relegated to the role of a large, communal monitor as TV content moves to an
Internet first model.

I basically watch zero over-the-air TV these days, and if there is anything of
interest it will also be online (either legitimately or not) if I really want
to watch something.

~~~
webwanderings
Yes, that's pretty much what I meant to say as my comment above. I have not
watched TV in a decade, but I hear these calls of TV dying all the time. The
thing is, TV is not going to die because it is essentially fulfilling the core
needs of human urges (that is, to hear and tell stories). The TV may take
another shape and form, as it has in the form of Internet videos and video-
watching. Who tells and creates stories (the production houses) is also
insignificant.

However, TV has indeed evolved over the years. It has gone from fictional
shows like Lost which made space for semi-fictional reality TV shows era (Lost
was a precursor to Survivor), to Cinema-like experience of GoT. TV has also
seen itself evolve so fast that fictional shows like House of Cards lost
itself to the reality on the ground.

These are human evolution in terms of what we're telling ourselves via our
stories. It matters less how we're telling stories (Netflix, Internet,
CBS...doesn't matter).

~~~
Arizhel
You're arguing semantics.

If the cinemas all die out, because everyone's renting movies at Redbox or
Amazon Prime or using Netflix and watching movies at home, are you going to
argue with someone who says "Movies have died!"? If you do, then you're being
pedantic and annoying, because they're right: the cinemas in that scenario
_have_ died. The format of a ~2-hour story in video hasn't died, but the
tradition of going to a business, open to the public, to watch it on a large
screen in a room full of strangers has.

Same goes here: when someone says "TV is dead", they mean watching ~50-minute
video episodes through an antenna, or from a cable TV provider, with
commercials interleaved. That format _is_ dying out.

------
FussyZeus
The only thing I suspect that is dying (or should be) is packaging of TV
channels. This day and age with the customization available for nearly every
product you buy, being forced to spend hundreds of dollars to get the content
you want, usually Sports content, is fucking absurd.

* Not even a sports fan, friends tell me how much their cable packages cost when literally the only thing they watch is ESPN and the like. They're getting robbed but there's no way around it.

~~~
Arizhel
I don't think it's absurd at all. In previous years, the sports fans were
getting their addiction subsidized by other viewers by having ESPN packaged in
with basic cable. Now with more and more people cutting the cord, their
subsidy is evaporating, so they're having to pay closer to the true cost of
getting that entertainment. If they don't like it, no one's forcing them to
stay subscribed to cable TV.

~~~
FussyZeus
Well yeah and no one forces you to get broadband Internet either, the fact
that for most people there's only one option that's often insanely overpriced
is the issue.

~~~
Arizhel
That's a poor analogy. No one forces you to hire an artist to create a
commissioned artwork for you, but that doesn't mean that anyone actually needs
to do that, and in fact, very few people hire artists on commission, because
it's purely a luxury. Similarly, no one forces you to buy a Rolls-Royce, and
whining that there's only one (insanely overpriced) Rolls Royce dealer in town
isn't going to generate much sympathy, because again it's purely a luxury.

Internet access these days isn't a luxury, it's a necessity if you're in any
kind of non-minimum-wage profession, and it's a necessity to participate in
modern culture in many ways. People do banking, pay their bills, look for
jobs, read the news, file their taxes, etc. online these days; it's just as
necessary as a telephone was 20 years ago.

Cable TV is not a necessity at all; it's a luxury. It's no more necessary than
a Ferrari or a Rolex or box seats at a sports game or a meal at a $100/plate
restaurant.

~~~
FussyZeus
Except when you commission an artist, you don't get (and pay for) 20 paintings
you didn't want in addition to the one you wanted. Rolls also doesn't send you
a Chrysler, Chevy and a BMW along with the Rolls you bought. In fact I think
you'd be hard pressed to come up with another luxury good that's priced this
way.

~~~
Arizhel
That's irrelevant. If Rolls wanted to, they could very well send you a
Chrysler, Chevy, and BMW with every Rolls purchase. If you don't like it, you
don't have to buy a Rolls.

No, I can't think of other luxury goods priced this way either, but again,
it's irrelevant. They can price things however they want, and you can choose
to take it or leave it. It's a luxury, nothing more, and if you don't like the
terms, you're free to take your business elsewhere. If they want a weird
business model like that, it's their right, and it seems to be working for
them since there's so many suckers happily sending them money for this.
Perhaps the truth is that the really high-end luxury goods (Rolls, Rolex,
etc.) are smarter than the typical cable TV customer and wouldn't put up with
that kind of BS.

~~~
FussyZeus
> That's irrelevant. If Rolls wanted to, they could very well send you a
> Chrysler, Chevy, and BMW with every Rolls purchase. If you don't like it,
> you don't have to buy a Rolls.

OK but now you're involving a free market which we've already established
doesn't exist in terms of broadband providers in most places.

~~~
Arizhel
We're not talking about broadband here, we're talking about cable TV. Cable TV
isn't that much of a free market, admittedly, but it does have competition:
satellite TV (Dish, DirecTV) and internet programming (Hulu etc.). But most
importantly to my argument, cable TV (unlike broadband internet) is purely a
luxury. You don't _need_ to watch TV, and countless people do just fine
without it, even in societies where it's commonplace, and in fact lots of news
articles are discussing people who are voluntarily giving it up ("cutting the
cord") because they're spending their free time with other pursuits such as
internet usage.

------
empath75
Tv isn't dying, it's dead. The only people who watch a lot of live tv are over
50. They aren't going to live forever.

~~~
tzs
A look at the ratings for a current top show (Big Bang Theory) shows that
about 2/3 of its viewers are in the 18-49 group.

Here are some charts on the amount of TV viewing by age group over the last
several years: [http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/are-young-
people-w...](http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/are-young-people-
watching-less-tv-24817/)

~~~
tdb7893
18-49 is a huge range. I know people in their 30s and 40s with cable but no
one in their 20s. I'm sure some people do but I would be surprised if it
wasn't declining

------
jksmith
Feel good piece. When you see consolidation as orchestrated by Tribune and
Sinclair, that's a natural step in the evolution of any dinosaur business that
is declining. In the immortal words of Danny Devito in the movie "Other
People's Money," "Increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes."

------
xbmcuser

        Yeah so we should not believe the stastics provided by Google and co but believe in nielson etc that have an incentive to show that TV is not dying. I would get the author if he had chosen sources that were not as biased as the ones he stated the other way. 
        To me personally TV is not dying the old model of subscription TV is dying if I am going to pay for a subscription I want to control when I want to watch the content and not be dictated to by the channel.

------
yAnonymous
TV? No.

Regular TV program? Yes, certainly.

The only people I've heard say the opposite are people who profit from TV
programs being popular, mostly because of ads.

~~~
zzalpha
Well, this article at least provided data to back their assertions.

Where's yours?

------
BEEdwards
>In the end, the internet is dry and informative but television is magical and
entertaining.

What the literal fudge?

This guy is out of touch with his finger far from the pulse of society.

I'm not saying he's wrong about TV having some life left, but the belief that
television is unkillable and the internet a fad is just wacky.

------
metaphorm
this article seemed woefully bereft of age-breakdowns on the data. a whole lot
of averaged out statistics with no drill down. what happens if your project
out 10 years from now when there are half as many baby-boomers still alive as
there are today?

