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FYI

Media Beat: October 19, 2020

From Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman’s latest newsletter

Media Beat: October 19, 2020

By David Farrell

From Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman’s latest newsletter

We haven't heard much from the "TV Is Dead" imbeciles recently, so I thought a little update would be appropriate. First some background.


The concept that the TV-Is-Deadheads never quite seemed to understand is that there's a difference between consumer behaviour and industry shit fights. The fact that broadcast tv and cable tv and satellite tv and internet-delivered tv were fighting over share meant less than nothing to consumers. Consumers like to sit on their asses and watch television. That's all there is to know about the subject.

But the Deadheads saw the eroding share of broadcast tv and knee-jerked that into "TV Is Dying." Whether the signal gets to peoples' tv sets by electromagnetic waves, underground wires, satellite pulses, web streaming, carrier pigeons or rowboats is of no interest to them. As long as it's simple to use, entertaining, and cheap, they'll watch (Although advertising has become so horrible lately people are willing to pay way more than imagined to avoid it).

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Even in an environment in which streaming is gobbling up share, over the air broadcast is still dominating. According to Nielsen...

   - The average adult spent 4 hours and 30 minutes a day watching traditional tv in Q2 2020.
   - The average adult spent 1 hour and 6 minutes on streaming. The growth of streaming has been quite substantial and impressive, but it still constitutes only 25% of video viewing.
   - Remarkably, streaming services (Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Disney+, HBO, Hulu, and Sling) bought over a quarter billion dollars of ad time on traditional tv in the past 12 months to promote their products. That's gotta tell you something.

Regardless of who wins the internecine battle of delivery systems, one thing is clear. People love tv and reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.  h/t Lara Bracken

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