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Monday, August 18, 2008

Broadcasting Dead?  Yeah.  Right.

The numbers don’t say so…

Every time I hear people saying “broadcast television is dead!”, I like to think of weeks like this.  Weeks when tens of millions of viewers all tune in to one event at the same time.

This article in the New York Times points out that the Beijing Olympics are delivering audiences to NBC in the range of 30 million viewers per night, with equally impressive Website hits and streams.  Where on the Web can you reach 30 million sets of eyeballs at once?

In the article, the chief executive of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, points out…

“When you have an event that transcends popular culture, the only place you can aggregate these audiences is network television.”

And in the smiling-even-though-green-with-envy department, his opposite number at CBS, Les Moonves, said:

“Anybody who doubts the viability of network television after this is nuts.”

Spot on.  And while this kind of reaction is most pronounced for extra-special extravaganzas like the Olympics or one-off programs, you can even see it in the astounding, sustained audience levels of some series like (ecccch) “American Idol,” which routinely pulls around 17 million viewers.

Pop quiz, hotshot:  What is the most-viewed American TV show ever?

You knew it, the M*A*S*H finale on February 28, 1983, which drew around 110 million US viewers - over 77% of the TVs that were turned on were watching.  Could this ever happen again?  Not a chance in a 500-channel (plus DVDs and video game and computer) universe.  Still, the 30 million or so NBC is raking in with the Olympics is something that no other medium can even approximate.  That’s an important thing to remember whenever someone starts writing the obituary for broadcast TV.

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A lot of it is the concept of personal TV versus event TV. Something you just want to watch yourself, versus something you want to share with friends, talk about around the watercolor tomorrow, etc. Even if we move to a TV on demand model (and DVRs are getting us there, even if the cable et al providers aren’t), I bet some shows will still be held back for “event” viewing - such as the last episode of Seinfeld, or the Olympics. (At least, the popular events.)

Posted by Chris Meyer  on  08/18  at  08:06 PM

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