The Disappearing TV Audience

Not even a pandemic can save broadcast television.

As America opens up again after being told to stay home last year, we’re getting new data about some of the long term affects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  And since I’m a media and marketing dude, not a doctor, I’m going to focus on what I know about.  Get your health and wellness info from someone qualified to advice you.

I am qualified to talk about media and marketing because that is not just my passion but it’s been my livelihood for a few decades plus I have access to data that most of you don’t.

One of the predictions about 2020 was that media consumption habits were going to change due to our being stuck at home. Less people on the road would decrease radio listenership and TV would stop the slide in viewership that it’s been suffering for the past decade.

Well, radio listenership may have shifted a bit temporarily, it’s just as strong and healthy as ever.  Broadcast TV, that’s a different story.

Here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we have had 5 major broadcast TV stations since I was a kid.  ABC was channel 21, CBS was channel 15, NBC was channel 33, PBS was channel 39 and FOX was channel 55.  Those were the channels my Mom watched 20 years ago without cable and people of her generation are still watching broadcast TV, but not as many or as much because they are dying off (80 to 90 year olds), or they’ve done what my generation and those younger are doing and watching TV from cable or streaming services.

We have a collection of restaurants run by the Hall’s family in Fort Wayne that a friend of mine predicted would be out of business in 10 years because all their customers were old.  He made that prediction 20 years ago and most of those restaurants are still here.  Why?  Because they keep making old people is my answer.

But there is more to this problem for broadcast TV because the TV networks are not creating shows that younger generations want to watch.  The younger generations are finding them online or on streaming services, not ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox.

MarketingCharts.com shared data that compares July thru September 2020 with the same 3 months of 2019 and except for those age 65+, the trend for watching less broadcast TV that has been going on for more than a decade, continued despite being told to stay home.

This continuing decline is because of the habits younger generations have formed that simply can’t be ignored.  Teens are now watching less than an hour of TV, that’s a drop of 21% in just the last year. The 18 to 34 year olds viewing habits dropped over 23% in the past year.  The only age group that didn’t lose viewers were those 65 and older and they barely retained the number of viewers and time spent watching TV.   It happened to the Yellow Pages of the phone book, it continues to happen to the newspaper industry as technology changes occur and consumer habits change, the decline continues and is happening to broadcast TV.  Not even a stay-at-home order in the worst pandemic of our lifetimes has been able to save the TV stations from losing viewers.

I have a couple of questions for you if you are a business owner that has relied on TV advertising to draw in new customers.

How is it working for you compared to years ago?

19 out of 20 business owners I asked this question to at the end of 2019 (before the pandemic) told me that they have seen a decrease in their return on investment on advertising on traditional local TV.  The other person had no idea because business was booming and he used multiple avenues to advertise.

The other question is would you like to see an alternative form of advertising that hasn’t become less effective, that can either work hand in hand with your other marketing and advertising or replace some of the advertising avenues that aren’t producing for you like they used to?  Contact me, Scott@WOWO.com and I’ll put you in touch with someone from my team to discuss what can be done to make your business successful and growing this year and for years to come.