Tidbits from Superbowl viewers

eMarketer released some recent poll stats on Superbowl viewers.

Almost half (46%) of smartphone and tablet owners reported they were likely to use a second screen while watching the Superbowl this year.  About a third said they'd likely be on social media, while one in five thought they'd be on sports cites or apps.  Grouping at just under 20% were the following uses: playing games, watching videos, checking news, and getting weather updates.

Another study looked at how people thought about Superbowl ads. It was no surprise that people overwhelmingly thought of them as primarily entertainment. About one in five thought the ads contributed to brand awareness.  Other than that, people didn't like the ads as advertising.  16.6% saw them as a waste of money that could better be used to keep product prices low; just under 10% thought they made the game too long; and about 7% saw them as unnecessary interruptions.  Only about 10% thought that the ads might encourage them to seek more information about products, or influence they buying habits.

Source: Mobile Apps Score Among Super Bowl Viewers, eMarketer

What's going on with US cable news? Fox soars, MSNBC tanks

In one sense, tracking cable news program ratings is predictable - at the top.  The ratings for the third quarter of the 2013-2014 season is out.  Despite a fairly heavy news load (war and conflict in the Ukraine, Gaza/Israel, Iraq/Syria (ISIS/ISIL), saber-rattling by Russia and China, a number of celebrity deaths (Robin Williams, Joan Rivers), and new and continuing scandals in Washington, the border crossings, Ferguson MO, to name just a few) ratings for most of the cable news networks continue their freefall.

MSNBC saw prime-time average ratings drop 2 percent from the same period last year, but the really bad news is that viewing in the key 25-54 demo dropped 21% over the same time frame.  Ratings for its prime-time line-up experienced all-time lows in the key demo.  Which meant that reruns of Shark Tank on CNBC beat out every MSNBC prime-time show for the quarter.  The rest of MSNBC's programs didn't help much.  Total Day viewing was the lowest since 2007, falling 12% from the previous year.  The drop-off was worse in the adult 25-54 demo, where MSNBC lost a quarter of its total day audience from last year's performance.
CNN's new mix of news and reality/documentary programs experienced modest gains in prime-time viewing from the previous year (up 2% among all adults, and up 4% among adults (23-54).  Despite an initial modest rating spike for Anderson Cooper's live reporting from Ferguson, the news show fell back to its normal mediocre numbers, letting CNN's Sixties documentary series beat it out for the channel's most-watched show of the quarter.
The exception is Fox News Channel, which continued its domination of cable news.  This report marks FNC's 51st consecutive at the top of cable news channels ratings, and it did so with 12% increases in both total adult and adult 25-54 viewing.  This made Fox News not only the top cable news channel, but the most-watched of all cable channels (beating both USA and ESPN).
Another way of looking at the state of cable news is to consider each show's performance. Looking at individual shows, the 14 highest-rated were on Fox News Channel. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show was their top performer, coming in at 15, and Anderson Cooper came in at 18th, and Nancy Grace made an appearance for HLN at #36.

Sources -  Fox News Nabs Historic Cable Ratings Victory, The Hollywood Reporter
The Top Cable News Shows in Q3 were...,  TVNewser

Media Sports Consumption - Infographic

From PERFORM and Kantar Media: Global Sports Consumption 2014

Infographic: Modern Mobile Workforce

From GigaOm, The modern workforce part I: supporting productivity with mobile, BYOD, and cloud.

Social Media Week Infographic: Social TV

From Social TV: The Value of the Second Screen, AllTwitter

Social Media Week Infographic: Scary Stats

From Social Media Stats That'll Make Your Hair Stand on End!,  Digital Information World

Social Media Week Infographic: The Cost of Fake

From The Cost of Social Media Fame in 2014? About $6800,  Forbes

Social Media Week Infographic: The Cost of Fame

According to Forbes, The Cost Of Social Media Fame In 2014? About $6800

Pew: Key Indicators of News Use

The PewResearch American Journalism Project released its State of the News Media report for 2013 last week.  The report suggests a news industry in transition, and news audiences starting to shift their patterns of news use as they discover the value of newer news delivery options.  Here's some highlights-

The decline of print
The newspaper industry has been fighting, unsuccessfully, declining subscription and readership numbers for decades.  Even with liberalized definitions for subscribers and the growth in usage of newspapers digital offerings, they managed only a 3% increase in total readership in the last NAA report.  

The outlook's even worse for News Magazines' print editions.  Newsstand sales have dropped 43% since 2008 (although subscriptions have remained steady). Two of the major US news magazines have abandoned print for online, and even with the significantly lower costs of online are struggling to survive.

Readership also continued to decline for the top alternative weeklies, although at a slower pace.

Broadcast & Cable News
The broadcast networks tended to hang on to their aggregate news audiences, although differences continued to exist among the big three performances.  On aggregate, audiences for both the evening and morning news shows grew slightly, but remained within the range of audience numbers over the last few years.

Cable news network audiences declined slightly in 2013, but were coming off a Presidential election year (so no real surprise there).  2013 was more notable for the continuing fall of CNN, whose ratings have been hitting 20 year lows in recent weeks, leaving CNN in the cable news ratings basement.  MSNBC, lacking a significant Republican to bash, dropped a quarter of its primetime audience in 2013.  Fox News Channel retained its ratings dominance in ratings, and continue to reap the benefits, generating almost twice the revenues of CNN, and four times the revenues of MSNBC.

Local newscasts from broadcast stations started to gain audiences in 2013, building on the growing morning news programming, and greater use of mid-day and afternoon time slots for expanded news offerings.  With more stations doing news programming before the main evening newscast, and extending the time for those shows, employment opportunities in local news improved slightly - one of the few bright spots in traditional journalism.

Digital

The transformation of the news marketplace is being driven by digital. In 2013, 82% of Americans reported getting news on their desktops or laptops, and more than half (54%) reported getting news through their mobile devices.  Online is where most people go first for news.  Digital operations of newspapers saved readership numbers, and many (but not all) outlets found online subscriptions a growing source of revenues in an otherwise declining market. Digital advertising dollars remain the fastest growing segment (soon to surpass TV), although the share earned by traditional news outlets is shrinking and is unlikely to replace print and TV advertising losses.  2013, and the last few years, have seen a surge in the use of commercial online-only news outlets, other online news sources, and social media by audiences.  outlets.

More transformational has been the developing role that social media plays in the news process.  News users are increasingly involved in disseminating news (sharing reports), discussing it with others, and contributing content (primarily photos and videos) to developing stories.

Source: Key Indicators in Media & News, a report of the PewResearch Journalism Project (part of State of the News Media 2014 study)

Social Media Week Infographic: Social Media Wars

From A Global Overview of Social Media Use, Digital Information World

Social, Digital & Mobile Around the World (slideshare)

I'm hoping that this embed of the slide show works.  If not, you can access the slideshow here.

Social, Digital & Mobile Around The World (January 2014) from We Are Social Singapore

Cable News Numbers - CNN's continuing implosion

One sign of CNN's continued ratings fall was last weekend's cancelling of their premiere prime time show, Piers Morgan Live.  The newly reported Feb 2014 viewing numbers provide ample support. CNN's prime time viewership last month was down 47% (from Feb 2013) at the 8 pm slot, and down 46% at 9 pm.  The 7pm lead-in was down 39%.  The situation with the desired news demographic of adults 25-54 was not quite as dismal - down 32% at 7pm, down 46% at 8pm, and down 38% at 9pm.  The full-day numbers are also down significantly, with CNN losing more than a quarter of its viewers from Feb 2013, averaging just 307,000 total viewers, and just 96,000 in the 25-54 demo.  The monthly numbers were the lowest ever for Piers Morgan Live, Crossfire saw its lowest ratings ever for total audience, and CNN hit a 22-year low in total viewing for the 7pm time slot.

As for its competition, Fox News continued its dominance in total viewing (146 consecutive months as the top-rated cable news network).  Total day viewers averaged more than a million viewers, and almost 1.9 million total viewers in prime time.  FNC saw modest gains of 2% in total average viewers from Feb 2013, and primetime viewing saw a 6% gain in overall viewing, and 3% in the 25-54 demo.  Total day viewing in the desirable 25-54 demo was down 2%.  O'Rielly and Hannity saw slight gains, while the The Kelly File at 9pm saw viewership gains of 23% overall, and 11% in the key demo.

MSNBC saw slight drops in total day (-5% overall) and prime time (down 9% in overall viewing, and down 2% in the 25-54 viewing), while also seeing a small increase (3%) in total day viewing averages for the 25-54 demo viewership.  Hardball with Chris Matthews (live) saw big gains (+22% overall, and +27% in the 25-54 demo) from Feb 2013 in the 7pm slot (when MSNBC did a repeat airing of the 5pm Hardball show in that time slot).

The numbers were enough to put Fox News as the third highest prime time viewership among all cable networks (fifth in total day); in comparison MSNBC ranked 26th in prime time and 27th in total day, while CNN came in 39th (prime time) and 34th (total day).  CNN was able, however, to return to beating Headline News.
Fox dominated the top-ranked programs list, with the top 13 shows in total day, and 8 of the top 10 in prime time. Four Fox programs registered more than 2 million average monthly viewers, with several others just under than threshold.  MSNBC's top show was The Rachel Maddow Show, with just under a million viewers on average (14th overall).  CNN's top show was Anderson Cooper 360, whose average total audience of 421,000 made it the 23rd most-watched cable news network program (behind CNBC's Shark Tank).

Sources - February Cable News Numbers: CNN Tumbles as Fox News Channel Logs 146th Consecutive Win; MSNBC Hangs On,  Deadline Hollywood
The Top Cable News Shows in February Were..., TV Newser
Cable Network Ranker: February 2014, TV Newser

Social Media Demographics Vary - Instagram Most "Diverse"

Chart of the day - demographics vary across social media sites.

Sources -  Twitter Users' Diversity Becomes an Ad Selling Point, Wall Street Journal
Data from Pew Research Center's Social Media Update 2013

Al Jazeera America ratings continue fall

Last month, cable news network Al Jazeera America earned abysmal ratings from Nielsen. 

Then, as now, the numbers of estimated viewers fell below the threshold Nielsen has established for its main ratings service for overall network ratings.  Still, the latest numbers suggest the network has averaged only 13,000 viewers a day since the news service launched on Aug. 20, 2013 (and only 5,000 viewers in the coveted 25-54 demographic sought by news organizations).  That puts it's viewership less than half of the failed network it purchased (Current TV, at 31,000).

In contrast, average daily viewing for Fox News Channel was 353,000; CNN 174,000, and MSNBC 121,000.

Source -  Al Jazeera America fails to attract US audience,  NY Post

CNN's slide continues; Fox News dominates

The original cable news network isn't faring all that well against competition, pulling in the lowest primetime average viewing in the last year.  For the Oct. 28 - Nov. 1 week, CNN averaged just 385,000 viewers for its prime time block, and only 95,000 in the prime news demographic of 25-54 year-olds.  Putting that into context, Fox News Channel averaged nearly 2 million more viewers in primetime (2,367,000), and pulled almost as many viewers in the prime demo (377,000) as CNN had in total.  MSNBC was a distant second in the ratings, averaging 683,000 viewers in primetime, and 150,000 in the key demo.  To make things worse for CNN's Jeff Zucker, CNN managed to just bet CNN's Headline News in weekly average audience (by some 6,000 viewers), and actually came in 5th on Wednesday for the key demo group, trailing both Headline News and CNBC.  The 25-54 daily ratings for Oct. 30th: FOXN 396,000; MSNBC 127,000; HLN 93,000; CNBC 79,000; CNN 67,000; Fox Business 4,000 (Al Jazeera America still doesn't pull enough viewers to make the daily Nielsen ratings).

Fox News' revamped evening news line-up powered its dominance in the monthly primetime ratings.  Newcomer The Kelly File soared to the number 2 show on cable news.  Audience numbers for Fox are up more than 20% in both total audience and in the key 25-54 demo following the launch of the new primetime schedule in early October. In fact, Fox News primetime's line-up were 9 of the top 10 shows on cable news, and its 2.12 million average primetime viewers made Fox News the third-most watched cable network in October, trailing only ESPN and TBS (which benefited from carrying MLB baseball playoffs).  Coming in tops isn't new for Fox, October marks the 141st straight month topping primetime cable news ratings (despite regular predictions of FNC's imminent collapse among more liberal news outlets).  But October's numbers also reveal its growing dominance - Fox News averaged more viewers for its 7-11 PM primetime than did CNN, MSNBC, and HLN combined.

Maybe there's something more to that "Fair and Balanced" idea than Fox's critics have been willing to credit.  That, or Zucker's revamp of CNN isn't working at all and its corporate owners will be looking for a new President for CNN.  (MSNBC is posting higher growth rates, but that's partly a result of it's ratings collapse after the 2012 elections).

Sources -  TV Ratings: CNN Suffers Worst Week Under Jeff Zucker,  Hollywood Reporter
Fox Tops October Cable News Ratings with Revamped Primetime; 'The Kelly File' Ends First Month in No. 2 Spot Behind O'Reilly,  Deadline Hollywood

Pew: The Demographics behind ABC/Univision's Fusion

Spanish-language broadcaster Univision is working with ABC News on the development of a new cable network to be called Fusion.  Fusion will target young Latinos with a mix of news, sports, and entertainment - in English.  The folks at Pew Research Center have noted 5 demographic trends among US Hispanics that are behind the move.
  1. Latinos are increasingly native born (93% of those under 18 were born in the U.S.); Latinos increasingly prefer consuming news in English; 3. 90% of young Latinos get their news, in English, from TV (and increasingly prefer English-language entertainment and music; 4. Even so, using TV for news is declining among young Latinos; 5. A growing share of Hispanics speak only English at home.

Univision, which actually was the most watched network in the US last July among the 18-49 demographic, has seen some of that success fall as the big 4 brought out the Fall PrimeTime big guns.  It makes sense for them, looking at their trends and what's happening within their demographic, to expand their expertise with their audience and market by supplementing their Spanish-language channels with English channels targeting their audience segment.

Source -  5 demographic realities behind the creation of Univision/ABC News' "Fusion" channel,  Pew Research Center FactTank

Source -  5 demographic realities

Al Jazeera America viewing remains minimal

The latest cable news ratings show that Al Jazeera America's (AJAM) news programs are getting minimal viewing.  How minimal? In the latest report, the network's daytime shows garnered a rating of 0 among the key 29-54 age demographic.  (Ratings refer to the percentage of US TVHH watching, and are rounded to a single decimal point, so it doesn't necessarily mean that no one watched.  The ratings services also provide estimates of the number of homes watching, which can be more useful for cable network's hyper-competitive and fragmented audiences).  At this point, the network's ratings are so low that they don't show up in most reports.

Primetime shows did only slightly better.  Consider This, their 10 p.m. also earned a 0 rating, and averaged 9000 viewers total, with only 3000 in the 29-54 demo.  AJAM's flagship program, America Tonight at 9 p.m., averaged 18,600 total viewers, and was one of many shows to record 0 viewers in the 29-54 demo at some point during the week.  To put the AJAM numbers in context, audiences for America Tonight's 9 p.m. competitors on Wednesday night (Oct. 9, 2013) were 542,000 for CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, 1,445,000 for MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, and 2,475,000 for Fox's The Kelly File.  America Tonight also got outperformed by specialty shows Dr. Drew on Call (CNN Headline), with 257,000, and Secret Lives of the Super Rich (CNBC), with 131,000.

While AJAM is handicapped by the fact that it's channel isn't on all systems and only reaches about half the TVHH of the other cable news networks, the continued poor performance does not bode well for a nominally advertising-financed network; nor does it give the network much of a bargaining position to earn carriage (and licensing fees) from multichannel distributors.

Source - Al Jazeera America Had a Rough Ratings Week; Some Shows Hit Zero in Key Demo,  Mediaite
Cable News Ratings for Wednesday, October 9, 2013,  Zap2it TV by the numbers

New ratings low in sports

Even in a world of 500 channels it really takes something to pull a 0.0 rating - where not a single ratings sample household watched the program.  Particularly if you're a hometown sports team.  But last Sunday, the Houston Astros pulled the feat, in an away game against the Cleveland Indians.  Specifically,

not a single, solitary Nielsen household tuned in for as long as a few minutes in any given quarter-hour to watch the Astros lose to the Indians for their 105th defeat of the year.

Sure, there were excuses - the NFL's Houston Texans were on TV at the same time, the game was carried only on a regional cable sports network, it was against Cleveland, who isn't doing all that well this year, and the Astros are really, really bad this year (Sunday's game was the 9th loss in a row, and the 105th of the season).  The ratings were also from the Houston overnights, which are based on a fairly small sample of homes (Nielsen reports having 851 metered households in the Houston market).  But even against the Texas A&M/Alabama college football game, they pulled a few viewers, earning a 0.04 rating.

Apparently, turnout in Cleveland wasn't that great either.  (The Cleveland Indians has the lowest percentage of tickets sold in Major League Baseball - the pic is from that Sunday game).


Not the kind of record any sports team wants to set.

Source -  New low for Astros: 0.0 TV Rating,  Houston Chronicle

FTC clears Nielsen-Arbitron deal

The FTC has approved Nielsen's acquisition of former audience metrics rival Arbitron, after securing an agreement that Nielsen will continue the "Portable People Meter" (PPM) project, and license its use to others (notably competitor comScore).  The PPM project was originally a joint project of Nielsen, Arbitron, and comScore, and there was some concern that Nielsen would try to freeze out comScore.  ComScore and Nielsen are also involved in the competition to develop industry standards for online video metrics.

“In the event that an FTC-approved third-party elects to agree to licensing terms and other requirements, Nielsen would make available for license Arbitron PPM and related data as well as software and technology currently being used in the ESPN project for the sole purpose of cross-platform measurement for up to eight years,” Nielsen said in its statement.

While that wording sounds awfully restrictive, other language from the FTC indicated that comScore would clearly get that initial license.

With the FTC's approval, Nielsen's acquisition of Arbitron is expected to close Sept. 30.

Source -  FTC Clears Nielsen-Arbitron Deal, comScore Retains PPM License,  MediaDailyNews

Goin' Mobile - For News

Sales and diffusion of mobile devices, particularly tablets, are continuing its fast pace.  The good news for journalism is that people are also increasingly using them for accessing news.

A survey by the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI), in connection with the Digital Publishing Alliance (DPA), conducted early this year found that roughly one-third of U.S. adults have and use a larger media tablet.  The rapid growth was fueled by the introduction of major new tablet models from Samsung, Google, and Microsoft, Apple's move into smaller media tablets, and new larger-screen smartphone models that may provide competitive alternatives for smaller tablets.

The good news for journalism and news media is that most mobile device owners report using their devices to access news. For most age groups (and both smartphone and large tablet users), roughly two-thirds of the sample reported using their devices for news.  Among smartphone news users, a majority report still using web and search portals to get news, but the acquisition and use of specific news apps is rapidly growing.  The survey reported that more smartphone owners had downloaded apps from newspapers than any of the other traditional media - although almost as many had "niche" apps (those affiliated with special events or narrow topics such as weather).  The survey found that for smartphones, only a third of the oldest respondents (65+) used their devices for news.  Interestingly, men were much more likely to use smartphones for news than were women (across all age groups).

In contrast, media tablet owners seem to prefer sites and sources that allow them to take advantage of their larger screens.  While have had downloaded newspaper apps, a whopping 94% had television (video) news apps on their devices.  Looking at the demographics of large tablet news yielded some interesting highlights.  For tablet owners, usage of tablets for news was lowest among the youngest group included in the sample, at 42%. News use for tablet owners in the 25-64 age group (66%-70%) mirrored the rates for smartphone owners, although the older 65+ group was slightly less likely to do so (60%), while less than half of tablet users in the 18-24 age group reported using their devices for news.  There's also an interesting interaction between age and gender - among the youngest and oldest groups, women were more likely to report using tablets for news (than men), while for those between the ages of 25 and 54, men were more likely to be news users on their tablets.  Tablet owners also expressed a small preference for using news apps rather than browsers for their news content.

It's looking like mobile is becoming a significant market for news access by audiences - although in many ways one that is still under development.  As news organizations face increasing competition and declining usage in their traditional markets, this seems to be one that news organizations should take seriously - in reaching out to new audiences, and in the opportunities mobile presents for new ways to package and distribute news and information.

Source -  2013 Q1 Research Report 2: Media tablets now used by at least one-third of U.S. adults,
RJI-DPA Mobile Media Research Project release