Still watching TV?

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on


Did you notice that this summer we had the least-watched week in TV history for the four biggest broadcast networks?

Back in the first week of July, CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox averaged 20.8 million viewers during prime-time, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Why?

Obvious stuff - holiday, nice weather sends us outside (thank goodness that is still true!), too many reruns on. But that's been true for a long time.

OK, add in all those cable channels & satellite channels, and video/DVD rentals. Yes, but also pretty old news.

So what is it? It's all the other media sources. It's watching video on the Net (YouTube & such), just surfing the Net (MySpace, Googling everything that interests us), mp3 downloads of music (and more video including some of those TV shows we are not "watching" for the Neilsen ratings). This is not news to many of us who are following this trend. I wrote about some of these reasons on Serendipity 35 before and I'll write about new ones in the upcoming months I'm sure.

The answer to the question of my title - Are you still watching TV? - really depends on who you are. If you are 35+ years old, there's a good chance you are still watching good old TV. Advertisers are going to start to target you more. The younger you are, the more likely it is that you are watching something other than trad TV.

Here's what was on top of the list that week - were you watching?
Were your students watching? If not, what were they doing and how can you reach them?

For the week of July 3-9, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships:

  1. "America's Got Talent," NBC, 12.03 million;
  2. "So You Think You Can Dance" (Wednesday), Fox, 9.78 million;
  3. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (Thursday, 10 p.m.), CBS, 9.7 million;
  4. "60 Minutes," CBS, 9.11 million;
  5. "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," NBC, 8.86 million;
  6. "So You Think You Can Dance" (Thursday), Fox, 8.85 million;
  7. "Cold Case," CBS, 8.82 million;
  8. "CSI: Miami," CBS, 8.66 million;
  9. "CSI: Miami," (Wednesday, 9:30 p.m.), CBS, 8.22 million;
  10. "Law & Order," NBC, 8.16 million.

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

No comments

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
BBCode format allowed
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.
To leave a comment you must approve it via e-mail, which will be sent to your address after submission.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA