Linear TV Is Steady, the Rest of the Medium Is a Mess
Point #1 – According to Nielsen, there are 121 million TV homes in the US, continuing the TV set’s dominance as the primary information and entertainment device in all these homes. Total TV households have increased every year since 2014 and the penetration rate of all US households has remained steady between 92.2% and 96.5%.
Point #2 – eMarketer estimates more than 6 million US households will cancel their pay TV (cable, satellite and telecom) subscriptions (cut the cord) during 2020, the worst year ever. Although there are still 77.6 million pay-TV subscribers, that is 7.5% fewer than 2019. Cord-cutter households are forecast to total 46.6 million by 2024. Consumers may be choosing a streaming service over traditional pay TV, but other factors causing cord cutting are the addition of more channels, many of which only very niche audiences watch, and the increasing cost of a subscription.
Point #3 – People are certainly “streaming” to streaming services, especially during the pandemic, but that portion of the industry is anything but steady. Slingbox announced the day this newsletter was written it pulled the plug for all its products and services November 9.
Many services, including newer ones, such as Disney+, offered promotional subscriptions to boost their launch and to interest more viewers during the pandemic. Many of those promotional periods are about to end, including Disney’s, causing not only the loss of initial viewers, but also a larger-than-usual turnover of viewers.
Point #4 – Almost no other TV programming available via local stations is more steady than local TV news. During the early-pandemic period, people wanted as much news as possible about local conditions and restrictions, resulting in large spikes in local TV news viewership, especially among young adults. With states instituting restrictions again, people are likely to rely on local TV news for the most-recent and most-reliable information throughout the winter.
Although viewership did return to pre-pandemic levels, Nielsen’s Local Watch Report (October 2020) indicates local TV news was the first choice for 64% of surveyed adults while working from home (cable TV 62% and national broadcast TV news 58%).
The steadiness of local, linear TV is a quality of the medium that has benefited advertisers for decades and a primary selling point for you to convince more local businesses they should be on your station.
