Broadcast TV has given up trying to get audiences to watch advertising commercials

https://www.petevanbaalen.com/post/broadcast-tv-has-given-up-trying-to-get-audiences-to-watch-advertising-commercials 

Has broadcast TV just decided to give up?

It is very difficult right now for broadcast and cable tv as their market continues to erode. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend tonight as I was watching NBC’s show Manifest.

My Comcast DVR offers a feature called “Smart Resume” (https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/dvr-smart-resume) which quickly blows through commercials so you can get back to the show. You’ll notice in the picture from my tv the little yellow lines mixed in with the blue line on the timeline across the screen. That is where the commercial are, or should I say were.

Fast forwarding is nothing new. Even back in the old school days of VCRs, tv viewers were fast forwarding through commercials.  Broadcast and cable stations would still try fight that bad habit, even tricking viewers into watching commercials if necessary.

But with today’s technology advancements, spot tv is facing tougher competition and are simply conceding the battle. But I’m sure they’re still charging for the audience even when the Comcast and others have set up technology to eliminate them. The irony of this, of course is the fact that Comcast owns NBC (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-comcast-nbc/comcast-completes-nbc-universal-merger-idUSTRE70S2WZ20110129) which is the very network that the show Manifest is on.

Digital disruption is quite evident for tv and cable viewership. Fewer and fewer shows are watch in real time as DVRs,  on-demand programming and more and more streaming services coming on line are all screaming audience attention. The streaming service space is especially interesting.

There are many studies that show the decline in consumer time spent with advertising, including a new one just today (https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/345962/advertisings-share-of-time-spent-with-media-conti.html). Today’s news focused on time spent vs. advertising dollars spent and clearly shows a correction is coming.

Advertising's share of time spent with media continues to erode, falling to a 45% share of media revenues in the U.S. in 2020, according to this year's edition of the Global Consumer Media Usage & Exposure Forecast from PQ Media.

While advertising continues to remain the dominant share of media revenues vs. consumer spending on a global basis, it also continues to erode, falling to less than two-thirds (65.9%) in 2020, according to PQ Media. 

While that continue to drop, it seems strange to me that my cable company who owns the network I’m watching would make it easy to disengage with the advertising they are selling. And it is only going to get harder! 

Disney + was introduced in November. Apple TV+ was added to the mix just prior to that. NBC and others are preparing their launching plans, which will make this a very crowded space. Netflix announced today that they grew subscriptions by 8.76 million globally but only 420,000 in the US in Q4 2019 (https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-q4-2019-earnings-results-subscriber-growth-revenue-analysis-2020-1) , which was far short of expectations. Their growth is slowing down as more and more services become available.  

The future is bright I think for consumers, who is gaining more control on the available programming they’ll receive in their home. With established Netflix and Hulu, newcomers like Disney+ and Apple TV+ and even more emerging, pricing pressure will surely happen soon which will reduce the cost of tv entertainment.

That future for brands that rely on spot tv to sell products is less clear. The digital disruption continues to split the audience in many different directions, making it harder to buy programming and even harder to reach the audience effectively. The exception is still local tv news, which continues to deliver a steady audience due to its unique content.