The end for Traditional TV is closer then ever

Bruce

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This is from Nielsen, the ratings folks, not some blogger, showing streaming is way up in November, while Traditional TV is way down in the one month they do not like it to be down, Sweeps, when they set the Advertising Rates based on Ratings.

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Netflix, HBO Max and YouTube all achieved double-digit viewing increases in November, up 13.1%, 12.2% and 11.8%, respectively versus October. Netflix also saw the most significant monthly increase in share (+0.4) to finish November with 7.6% of TV.

On a year-over-year basis, time spent watching cable content declined 9.3% and the category lost 5.1 share points.


 
Someone should tell the TV station chains. These fools spend billions buying up smaller chains. Since linear TV is going away next Thursday.

This is what in statistical analysis "the strawberry effect". It is used to show a common mistake made in reading such statistics. Imagine a restaurant with two flavors of milkshake. It introduces a third choice. So the ice cream saleman comes by and the restaurant and the owner orders 100 cases of strawberry, but no chocolate and no vanilla. The sales man asks why, and he says "well strawberry went from zero to 20% of our sales. Obviously, it will continue to grow like that and no one will want chocolate or vanilla ever again.

The only thing you can add to this easy explanation of a common rookie mistake in statistical analysis is that, in this unique case, the restaurant is losing money on every strawberry sale.
 
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Someone should tell the TV station chains. These fools spend billions buying up smaller chains. Since linear TV is going away next Thursday.

This is what in statistical analysis "the strawberry effect". It is used to show a common mistake made in reading such statistics. Imagine a restaurant with two flavors of milkshake. It introduces a third choice. So the ice cream saleman comes by and the restaurant and the owner orders 100 cases of strawberry, but no chocolate and no vanilla. The sales man asks why, and he says "well strawberry went from zero to 20% of our sales. Obviously, it will continue to grow like that and no one will want chocolate or vanilla ever again.

The only thing you can add to this easy explanation of a common rookie mistake in statistical analysis is that, in this unique case, the restaurant is losing money on every strawberry sale.
You don't agree that traditional viewing is falling to the wayside from people streaming?
 
The locals are not going away. People still will watch the locals through their streaming service. My son lives in Columbus, Ohio. He can get all the local channels through an attic antenna. But they also have YouTube TV and they watch the locals using YouTube TV.

YouTube TV lets you stream live & local TV across sports, news, shows from channels including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, HGTV, TNT, Univision and more in English and Spanish.


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Someone should tell the TV station chains. These fools spend billions buying up smaller chains. Since linear TV is going away next Thursday.

This is what in statistical analysis "the strawberry effect". It is used to show a common mistake made in reading such statistics. Imagine a restaurant with two flavors of milkshake. It introduces a third choice. So the ice cream saleman comes by and the restaurant and the owner orders 100 cases of strawberry, but no chocolate and no vanilla. The sales man asks why, and he says "well strawberry went from zero to 20% of our sales. Obviously, it will continue to grow like that and no one will want chocolate or vanilla ever again.

The only thing you can add to this easy explanation of a common rookie mistake in statistical analysis is that, in this unique case, the restaurant is losing money on every strawberry sale.
The part you never bring up in your Traditional Pay TV will never go away fantasy, the fact that Traditional Providers have lost, roughly, 40% of it’s subscribers.

Also, streaming has overtaken Paid Live TV every month since June and the percentages have increased since then.

Live TV has clawed some subscribers back because of YTTV, Hulu Live, Sling, etc picking up about 12 million, but it is still at 68 million total ( including all Live TV providers), which is still a loss of 32 million since 2013.

And the losses will continue to happen and will pick up if we go into bad economic times, once people come to understand you can get the majority of content on pay Live TV plus the streaming shows for much less of a price, also in better quality, they will drop Live TV.

And since most DVR their shows, what is the big deal about Live TV except sports, which a lot of is already on streaming services, just watched the Lions beat the Jets on Paramount+ for example.

Also Pay Live TV is not doing itself any favors with a massive Price Increase, especially with a recession looming, other factors, DirecTV losing NFLST, if the rumors are true that 2 million subscribe to it, I could expect at least 1 Million extra to leave DirecTV next year with the loss of it, plus the high price, average DirecTV bill is about $140 a month with the increase.


 
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My son lives in Columbus, Ohio. He can get all the local channels through an attic antenna.
And therein lies the weakness of Nielsen ratings. There is no way to know who is watching what and how often with guaranteed accuracy if they receive their TV via an antenna. While Nielsen touts roughly 119 million viewing households in their blurbs they have never revealed exactly how many are Nielsen members nor what the breakdown is between satellite/cable, and antenna viewing. We were members at one time and it's really a joke. At that time you got a booklet and you were supposed to write in the booklet what you watched and when you watched it etc.. So if you didn't want folks to know what you were really watching you could just write in "PBS". Who's going to know you were really watching reruns of "My Mother The Car"?
 
And therein lies the weakness of Nielsen ratings. There is no way to know who is watching what and how often with guaranteed accuracy if they receive their TV via an antenna. While Nielsen touts roughly 119 million viewing households in their blurbs they have never revealed exactly how many are Nielsen members nor what the breakdown is between satellite/cable, and antenna viewing. We were members at one time and it's really a joke. At that time you got a booklet and you were supposed to write in the booklet what you watched and when you watched it etc.. So if you didn't want folks to know what you were really watching you could just write in "PBS". Who's going to know you were really watching reruns of "My Mother The Car"?
They used the book system for decades without much apparent controversy. Some misreporting in one household might be nulled out by misreporting in another. Didn't they start using something called a "people meter" some years ago? Would that work with a variety of inputs from TV services?
 
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I have been streaming more, but I watch prime time tv mainly from my OTA antenna. I will watch ota instead of Dish anytime the same show is on. The daytime watching is mainly Dish and some streaming. Right now it mostly Dish due to the endless supply of Christmas movies for my wife to watch.
On a side note I have never watched YouTube TV. One reason I am streaming more is I got free one year subscriptions from TMO for Apple+ and Netflix. I most likely will not renew these, so my streaming may go down. But this will depend on if Dish gives me the shaft or not next month.
 
You don't agree that traditional viewing is falling to the wayside from people streaming?
No, because I understand statistics and how to use them to find out what is going on, rather than just try to prove the point I have already decided is true by truly twisted interpretations of statistics.

Reality?

- Most streamers are money pits. There is this childlike faith that someday, some how, some way, it just has to make money. Presumably the billions of $$ that linear TV makes. Why? Lots of very nice technologies were very entertaining. And unprofitable. But the blunt fact is no one can answer the question of just what streaming has to do to become profitable. What is the secret?

- Streaming is a supplement. In the past people had no choice (don’t knitpick, just work with it) so linear was 100%. Now if they want, they can stream or watch linear TV. The fact that that choice has reached 30% of the time in no way teaches us that it is on some inevitable rise to 100. Rather the opposite. It has determined the %age that streaming will achieve. Basic understanding of basic statistics.

- And, of course, we are back to what the streaming is inevitable crowd always misses. This is not a product that is being rolled out, like a Tesla or something, where it will take years to get production up to meet demand. Anybody that wamts any streamer just needs to make a few clicks on a computer and they have it. And linear remains supreme and obscenely profitable.
 
They used the book system for decades without much apparent controversy. Some misreporting in one household might be nulled out by misreporting in another. Didn't they start using something called a "people meter" some years ago? Would that work with a variety of inputs from TV services?
They read satellite and cable boxes...that what the telephone line on the satellite box was really for ..
 
And therein lies the weakness of Nielsen ratings. There is no way to know who is watching what and how often with guaranteed accuracy if they receive their TV via an antenna. While Nielsen touts roughly 119 million viewing households in their blurbs they have never revealed exactly how many are Nielsen members nor what the breakdown is between satellite/cable, and antenna viewing. We were members at one time and it's really a joke. At that time you got a booklet and you were supposed to write in the booklet what you watched and when you watched it etc.. So if you didn't want folks to know what you were really watching you could just write in "PBS". Who's going to know you were really watching reruns of "My Mother The Car"?
Nielsen households with antennas are included in their population. I am sure they have something better now, but when our house was included about a decade ago, they were able to monitor all sources, including antenna. IIRC, they hooked up to the optical out on our newest TVs at the time.
 
Kibitzing about the flaws in Nielsen’s system has been going on for a long time. It doesn’t matter. Most of the criticisms are valid. There are lots of holes in it.

It doesn’t matter. THIS is THE number that the industry has agreed upon.
 
Yea - Nielsen has dropped the books in favor of monitoring devices. Now it just listens to what you are watching / listening to and records that information.
They don't have to listen to anything. If your devices are connected to the internet they simply send that information to their computer and it stores it.