Findings about TV audiences

Here are a few general findings about TV audiences, confirmed by a number of research studies in different countries.

• In temperate countries, TV audiences vary greatly between seasons. Audiences in the middle of summer are sometimes little more than half as large as midwinter audiences. (This doesn't seem to happen with radio audiences, which are much more stable throughout the year.)
• The programs with the largest audiences are not always the most highly valued by the audience. If you ask people "what types of programs would you like more of, on TV?" many will suggest educational or informative programs. But the same people spend more time watching entertainment programs. (This seems contradictory, but needn't be: what you value most isn't necessarily what you use most.)
• You might expect that programs with small ratings are more liked by the audiences who do watch those programs. Unfortunately for the makers of those programs, this doesn't happen. In fact, it's nearly always true that the most watched programs are also the most liked. This is called "double jeopardy" and is supported by a huge amount of research done by Andrew Ehrenberg and his colleagues. The main exceptions occur when a program is targeted at a specific minority - e.g. in a language that most people in that country don't understand. Such programs can have small audiences, but high appreciation levels.
• When a TV program is broadcast every day or every week, people stop liking it before they stop watching it. If both audience appreciation and audience size are tracked regularly, a drop in appreciation (% of people liking the program) is often followed a month or two later by a drop in audience size.
• The use that audience members make of a program is often very different from the use expected by the producers. For example, young children watch situation comedies - not for amusement, but to see how other families (even fictional ones) relate to one another, and how family roles can be used.
• Audiences to news and current affairs programs are much better informed about the presentation of these programs than staff realize. For example, TV file footage, if shown more than a few times, is instantly recognized by many viewers, who take it as a sign that the news is old. Stations' motives in presenting particular stories in particular ways are widely discussed, and viewed skeptically. Specially in western countries, viewers don't always assume that the news is true, and presented fairly.
• Large audiences and popular programs are not the same thing. In most countries, where members of a household watch TV together, usually around a quarter of a program's viewers may not like it, or take much notice of it. They're there for the company, not the program.
• Peak TV audiences are probably smaller than you think. In Australia, for example, in a typical week, only a handful of programs have a rating more than 20 (i.e. watched by more than 20% of households). But 20% of households is a lot less than 20% of people, because often several people in a household are watching TV together. At peak times, 20% of households is about 12% of people. TV programs watched by as many as 20% of all people are very rare. As Australia has fewer main channels (five, in most cities) than many other rich countries, TV audiences in those countries are even smaller. People talk about the "mass audience." Years ago, there was a mass audience: there were fewer channels, and people stayed home more, watching TV. But audiences are much smaller now - with so many other channels, and so much competition for watching TV.

  TV audience sizes in wealthy countries are shrinking, but slowly. When this happens, the audience size may drop slightly two years out of three, but rise slightly in the other year. If you don't draw a long-term graph, you don't see what's happening. And because most advertisers are focused on the present and near future rather than on trends going back a few years, they tend to look at current data and deny there's any change. "What do you mean, our audiences are shrinking? They were up 1% this month!" But maybe down 10% in the last 10 years. This slow shrinkage will probably continue, as more and more alternatives to TV become available.

• As for the attention paid to advertisements on TV, a number of studies broadly agree on the findings:
  - About one third of the audience pay close attention to the average commercial message;
  - About one third pay no attention at all - they leave the room, change channels, etc.
  - The middle third pay partial attention - they talk through the ad, turn the sound down, and so on, but are still available.

• Online reports on television audiences

  Most television audience research, particularly audience measurement reports, are sold at very high prices, and you don't find free copies on the Web. However, other types of findings are available, particularly from the ITC in Britain. Since 1998, they have published most of their audience research in PDF (Acrobat) format. You can read this List of published reports from ITC.

  It's interesting to look at these reports (e.g. the one on "The Public's View 2002", and reflect on the questions they asked, as well as the questions they chose not to ask. In many ways, the choice of questions tells you more than the survey data does. It seems, for example, that they're very worried about offending people, and that they consider their competition to be other mass media (such as DVDs) but not private media (such as SMS). It's often like this with surveys: the findings tell you more about the organization than about its audience - specially when the questions are framed in such a way that it would be socially undesirable to give certain answers.

  The Newsweek Media Research Index also includes some material on TV audiences, but nothing in detail.   The resource Michael Bay may also be of interest.

  Latest findings on TV audiences and sources will be published here soon.