US TV viewing: fewer minutes, but some bright spots
Nielsen just released their US TV numbers for Q1 of 2018. It’s available as a free download, and worth reviewing for anyone interested in the past, present and future of the traditional TV industry. There is an entire section at the bottom of this article on some important methodological issues, but I’ll save that for the measurement geeks and start with my findings and updates.
Traditional TV, means live and time shifted traditional TV viewed on any device (TV set, computer, smartphone or tablet), and delivered by cable, telco, satellite, over the air broadcast or digital. It does not include things like Netflix, YouTube or pirated content.
In Q1 2018, TV viewing for all Americans over 18 years old fell by eight minutes to 286 minutes daily. See chart above. That’s right, the “death of TV” folks still have a bit of a wait: the average adult watched 4 hours and 46 minutes of TV per day. That is down 2.7% in the last year and 11.5% since Q1 of 2014. Don’t get me wrong: down is not good, but this is nowhere near as bad as what happened to the newspaper industry. It also isn’t getting worse: the decline for all adult viewing has averaged about 3% per year for each year in the last half decade. No tipping point in sight.
One thing that shocks many people is how little time shifted viewing there is. Most “experts on media” watch MUCH less TV than the average American…and this definitely includes people who actually work for TV broadcasters and cable companies! They say they watch less than two hours per day and time shift over 50% of all their viewing. In contrast, (see chart above again) the average American adult time shifted only 36 minutes of viewing in Q1 2018, which represents 13% of all TV watched. Therefore 87% of all TV continues to be watched live, and the threat of ad skipping isn’t as large as was feared a few years ago.
In even better news, viewing by Americans over the age of 65 rose year over year! See chart above. US seniors watched half a minute more in Q1 2018 to a new record of 443.6 minutes per day. As always, that figure will shock many, since it means that the average American over 65 watched 7 hours and 24 minutes of TV per day. Yes, they are likely doing other things while it is on (cooking, playing Sudoku, chatting on Facebook) but assuming they are awake 16 hours per day: the TV is on, the sound is on, and they are in the room for about half of their waking day. No, it is not your imagination – you are indeed seeing more ads for the Acorn stair lift!
But every silver (haired) lining has its cloud, and for TV viewing that gray spot is younger viewers. In the past, I have written about the trends for 18-24 year olds, but Nielsen has changed their demographic breaks (see geek note on methodology at bottom if you are interested) so now the data is for 18-34 year olds. As shown in the chart below, the trend continues to be negative, and strongly negative at that.
No sugar coating it, 18-34 year old Americans watched 13.6% fewer minutes of TV than the year before, down to 137.3 minutes per day or 2 hours and 17 minutes. That is down from 256.5 minutes in Q1 of 2010, or a cumulative decline of 46% in eight years, for a compound annual decline of 7.5%. There are also few reasons for optimism going forward: I had hopes that the decline for this year would be closer to that historical average of around 7.5%, but instead the Q1 drop is the second-worst annual year over year data point we have ever seen, behind only the 14.1% decline in Q3 of 2014.
I should add that although I don’t have the data for the 18-24 and 25-34 year old demographic breaks from Nielsen for Q1 2018, based on past trends the numbers for daily viewing would be roughly 110 minutes for 18-24 year olds and 160 minutes for the 25-34 year old group. Those numbers are my own estimate, and not Nielsen's. It is also a virtual certainty that by Q1 2019 the daily viewing number for 18-34 year olds will be around 120 minutes or two hours, which will be down more than 50% from the peak in 2010, which is an important milestone in my view.
As a bit of a sneak peek, I now want to turn to radio (broadcast, satellite or over the internet.) I’ve never written about it before, but it will be one of our 2019 Deloitte TMT Predictions topics. Why?
Because radio is hanging in there quite nicely, even for 18-34 year olds. You’ve seen the numbers for TV already in this article, and everyone knows that other traditional media like newspapers and magazines have seen calamitous drops in younger viewers/readers. Yet radio numbers (see chart above) are much more resilient. Yes, radio is declining: from Q1 2014 to Q1 2018 daily radio listening for all adults is down 1.7% compounded annually, and double that for 18-34 year olds at a 3.4% compounded annual rate of decline. But over the same time frame, TV for 18-34 year olds has declined at an annual rate of 10.8%, or about 3X the rate by which radio has fallen.
There are digital alternatives for both TV and radio: Netflix and Spotify for example. But whereas young people seem to be using Netflix and YouTube as a partial SUBSTITUTE for traditional TV, they seem to be using Spotify or other services more as a COMPLEMENT to radio. Our Deloitte Prediction (Toronto launch will be Thursday January 10, location still TBD) will attempt to answer why Radio has Reach and is Resilient and is not Replaced by digital.
METHODOLOGY GEEKS ONLY:
Nielsen has been reporting TV (and radio) numbers for both 18-24 and 25-34 year old demographics going back to Q1 of 2010. They have also been publishing a document (called by various names, most recently the Total Audience Report) every quarter. Something changed in the last year, and although they published their data for Q1 and Q2 2017 on schedule, there were no reports for Q3 or Q4 2017, and then they published Q1 2018 last month. In that report they provided SOME of the numbers for Q3 and Q4 of the previous year, but NOT the key demographic breakdowns. And they shifted from publishing data on 18-24 and 25-34 year olds separately in past reports to combining them into an 18-34 year old group. That age group is very close to what many people call Millennials or Generation Y in Europe.
Nielsen is a public company, and publishes this data for free. Media researchers find their work of great usefulness, and I am thankful they continue to do so, and no criticism is intended. It is their data and they can publish when and how they choose! I <3 Nielsen!
Still, I had to spend 10 hours this Saturday and Sunday to reconstruct the historical data so I can compare it to their new reporting demographic breaks. I went through all the past Nielsen reports and added the data for 25-34 year olds in my spreadsheet. (I already had all the 18-24 year old data points, but double checked them while I was reviewing.) Then I looked up the most recent (2017) US population by age estimates, and found that there were 29,668,717 Americans aged 18-24 and 43,995,257 aged 25-34. Of the total, 18-24 year olds are 40% (well, 40.28% to be more exact) of the total and 25-34 year olds are 60%. Those percentages might have been a little different in 2010, but I am assuming not very different. So I weighted the two demographics for the daily viewing minutes and produced MY OWN COMPOSITE number for 18-34 year olds going back to 2010. To repeat: this is my own calculation, not Nielsen’s (except for the Q1 2018 number, and presumably numbers they publish going forward.) The final thing I did was make reasonable estimates for 18-34 year old viewing for Q3 and Q4 2017, since we do not have the data for those quarters for the subgroups.
As a final note, some people have said in the past that they think I am too positive on TV. They are convinced it is dead or dying, and accuse me of bias when I point out the bright spots. Perhaps I am some sort of insane TV watcher, and have it on ten hours per day?
Not so much. At bottom is a picture of my TV, all sad, lonely and unplugged in my basement. And below that is a picture of what I replaced my TV with, the new bookshelf on the lower left above the fireplace, where the TV used to sit.
I literally have not watched any television on any device in the last month. But just because I am not a TV watcher doesn’t mean I can’t be a TV researcher. My view is that you don't need to be a fan (or anti-fan) of a given medium or technology to think about it clearly. The numbers are out there, and evidence-based research is always the most useful.
