Cravings remain insatiable
Published 12:58 pm Sunday, September 13, 2009
Disappointed with the traditional Neilsen Media Research rating system, 14 television big wigs are joining forces to discover new, digital-age ways of measuring our “television consumption.” Which sounds like how many we eat. “A Samsung flat screen on sourdough with melted cheddar, to go.”
Major players include Time Warner Inc., Viacom Inc., CBS Corp., NBC Universal, Walt Disney Co., Procter &Gamble Co., AT&T Inc., and advertising giant WPP Group, the Los Angeles Times reported. They call their group “the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement,” illustrating why they are on the business side of TV, and not the creative.
Researchers want to know whether people are losing their appetite for TV, or just watching shows outside the living room, USA Today reported.
People losing their appetite for TV? Only if it hasn’t been properly sauteed in pounds of butter. Is that Julia Child movie flavoring everything?
People losing their appetite for TV? On what planet? Is this a “Twilight Zone” episode? What’s that wacky coalition thinking?
They didn’t like it when Neilsen reported that CBS was the only major broadcaster whose audience increased in the season that ended in May.
And they didn’t like it when Nielsen acknowledged this year that an internal study revealed that some homes where the firm’s TV meters were installed weren’t using them properly. Ooops. The coalition is worried that with people watching TV on computers and mobile devices, and using digital video recorders, an accurate number of viewers is being missed.
Nielsen, however, already tracks all this, the Los Angeles Times reported.
On cue, Nielsen released a quarterly report last week that says 57 percent of Americans watch television while surfing the Net at least once a month. They report:
n American video consumption across the three screens of television, Internet and mobile continues to rise.
n The mobile video audience increased 70 percent from a year earlier and time spent watching online video increased 46 percent in the same period.
n While online and mobile are taking on an increasing role, traditional TV consumption continues to grow and remains at a seasonal all-time high (141 hours a month in the second quarter).
They conclude: American consumers appear to be adding video consumption platforms, not replacing them, and media multi-tasking is part of the equation. (Emphasis ours.)
So fret not, big media. More people are watching more television on more devices. It’s a mind-boggling good news business forecast.
The coalition’s real concern, of course, is how to make sure all those viewers are also consuming the coalition’s recommended daily dose of commercials.
