(click to enlarge)
(click on chart to enlarge)
Update 8/7 2:20PDT: or maybe not a $30+ CPM. There are many different ways to slice and dice the numbers. The first chart (at the very top) shows # of households viewing and calculated CPM based on households. The second chart shows viewers (more than 1 per/household) and recalculates the CPM based on viewers. We at the yet-to-be launched tvbythenumbers.com are trying to figure out why ad buyers would care about anything other than # of viewers -- and are not sure that is not the case. We hope to standardize on one, useful and helpful metric and remove a lot of confusion that comes from throwing around a lot of different metrics for more or less the same thing (ratings, households, viewer).
From Variety:
For the first time ever, a Spanish-language show has topped the New York area ratings for the 11PM Saturday news slot. In July, "Noticias Univision 41" on Univision 41 (WXTV) came out at number one in all three key demographics.
From: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969725.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=2562
Big, and getting bigger
TVbytheNumbers is still over a month off, but here's an update to change from ratings to actual viewers and to include the 2007 data. (click on the chart to enlarge).
I pulled a semi all nighter last night and after a few hours of trying to learn how to do tables efficiently in CSS and writing a blog entry on Nielsen//Netratings new measurements (that will hopefully be published somewhere else) I wound up starving at 3am and needing food. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep so I headed to IHOP with my iPhone.
I'm sitting there eating my eggs and watching 24 on the iPhone when at about 3:30 I get a beep in my ears that I have an e-mail. It was from Mark Cuban -- who I believe was probably on the east coast and up early. He was responding to an e-mail I'd sent him based on his blog entry about HDNet & HDNet Movies leading in the High Definition ratings according to TNS Media Research.
There wasn't actually any numeric data in the release and the way I read it was unclear to me what it really meant. It indicated the combined HDNets were the ratings leader both in HD-Exclusive networks and broadcast/cable HD simulcasts. So I wrote to Cuban and asked if when Fox ran it's MLB game on Saturday if the combined HDNet/HDNet Movies had more eyeballs than were on the HD version of FOX's MLB broadcast.
This is a case where I believe even when I'm a "focus group of 1", I'm representative. Sports is something that really is enhanced by HD, and so if HDNet beat out the MLB Game of the week in HD, I would have found it astonishing.
Cuban e-mailed to say, no, HDNets didn't have more eyeballs than the MLB game in HD on Fox, but that on average for the day, HDNets averaged more viewers than Fox HD (and all other HD).
I'm happy for HDNet, and I think it is a nice achievement that I would likewise trumpet if I were running an HD tv network. But I'm not and am more into head-to-head comparisons with real numbers. I think eventually there will be some publicly available data that's sliced like that, but we're not there yet.
In the meanwhile, being in IHOP (or maybe they will change it to iHOP) at 3:30 a.m. watching TV on my iPhone and getting e-mail from Mark Cuban -- it made me smile.
Mark Cuban hypothesizes on the value of concentrated eyeballs on a video stream. He doesn’t remember why he was reminded of Metcalf’s Law, but I do, he brought it up in an exchange we had a few weeks ago regarding the perception that the more people watching at the same time, the more valuable the content is. Cuban hoped to generate thinking and discussion with his blog entry, so here is my “thinking out loud” on the subject.
I agree with Cuban’s hypotheses in his blog entry for the most part, but I am in “simple man asking simple questions” mode when it comes to my examination of the TV space, and so far my thinking boils down to:
The value is to both the producers of the content stream and the broadcasters of the stream(s). How is this value determined?
1. How much people are willing to pay for the content
2. How much companies are willing to spend on advertising
3. a combination of both
One assumption I have not validated is that for the most part in cases like ESPN, people don’t realize they are paying for it specifically. Oh sure, they know they pay for cable, but they don’t associate the fees with “buying the content” until you hit the realm of HBO, PPV, MLB Extra Innings, etc.
For purposes of forward looking thinking, at some point in the future I don’t think the opportunity will exist in the scale it currently does to monetize content via physical media (DVD, etc) distribution. I don’t see the revenue from that drying up completely, but I think for the most part how people will buy content in the future will change and I’m guessing how content is purchased/received/accessed will change dramatically. I believe every single one of those changes (some which are already in progress) will come at the expense of the # of people with eyes on the stream at the same time.
As Cuban himself pointed out to me, the number one show in 2007, American Idol wouldn’t have cracked the top 20 in 1987. More people watched Monday Night Football , the #20 show in 1987, then watched American Idol, the #1 show in 2007. I don’t have the data available, but I’d bet $1000 without the data that the cost for a 30 second spot on American Idol in 2007 was higher (adjusted for inflation, etc) than 30 seconds on 60 Minutes in 1987. If this is correct, 1/3rd of the audience 20 years later has more “value” than three times as many eyeballs in 1987.
This my friends seems to be the new math. Why?
My working theory is : advertisers have no real idea how to value their advertising, but they believe what Cuban is preaching. American Idol may have 1/3rd the eyeballs of 1987’s top show, but it’s the biggest “all eyes on at once” show, and the advertisers do value the concentrated viewership regardless of any real ability to quantify (or even qualify) what the value of this actually is in pure dollars and cents. The thinking seems to be more is better, and “fear” comes into play. Fear of looking stupid, fear of missing opportunity, fear that NOT paying to have more eyeballs at once will impact sales (even though I can find no actual data that would seem to justify such a fear).
What results is the buyers of television advertising and the sellers of the space seem to form one of the most inefficient markets ever, with no real basis for determining “valuations”.
Can it continue? If the top show in 2027 has 1/3rd the eyeballs of American Idol – will the price (relative to inflation) go up, stay the same or go down?
What happens when even 50% of the people are watching 50% of their content via time shifted DVR viewing?
And in the future, won’t I actually be able to get more for less? Is it possible I’ll be able to subscribe to the major broadcast networks, HBO, TNT, all of ESPN’s channels, USA, SciFi, whatever the local cable sports channels are, all in HD and with some kind of “virtual” DVR/On Demand (anything on the channels I’ve subscribed to me is available for X time after it initially airs) and pay significantly less than the channels I have today?
Is there anything prohibiting someone from trying to cut these deals now? In the case of the subscription the individual channels (ESPN, TNT, the local sports channel) would likely get a bigger cut than in the current arrangement with the Cable & Satellite distributors, and honestly, I don’t care about almost ALL of the channels on my package. I’d be better off paying for specific content on a pay per view basis than subsidizing a whole boatload of content I almost never watch on a monthly basis.
I believe these services will certainly come and fragment the concentration of “people viewing the same content at the same time” even further. But it’s a fairer market for the buyers of content.
