Oddly, children's channels in Poland, including Nickelodeon, have not yet seen a ratings increase, even though schools in the country have been closed due to the viral outbreak.
From Deadline:
TV Ratings Climb As People Rediscover Live Linear Viewing Amid Coronavirus-Imposed Stay At Home
March 8 marked the start of Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Normally, the switch is associated with a Live+Same Day ratings slump for the broadcast networks, especially in the 8 PM hour, as people stay outside longer.
But this year, the week of March 8 marked the turning point in the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., when the threat became real as new cases in the country started skyrocketing and the World Health Organization declaring it a global pandemic. By the end of last week, most companies had instituted work-from-home guidelines, many schools were closed, and restaurants, movie theaters and gyms started to shut down.
As a result of people following the new “social distancing” guidelines and spending more time at home, the typical Daylight Saving Time slump was nonexistent this year. What’s more, broadcast networks have been posting across-the-board, week-to-week, Live+SD ratings increases the likes of which we had not seen in ages, and which had been considered a thing of the past amid the proliferation of streaming.
This past Monday, NBC’s The Voice, an 8 PM show, leaped a whopping 38% (five tenths of a rating point) week-to-week among adults 18-49 (1.8 vs. 1.3) and 1.1 million total viewers (9.67 million vs. 8.73 million) to deliver the highest-rated and most watched Monday or Tuesday edition of the singing competition in a year.
Last night, NBC’s Ellen’s Game of Games, also a 8 PM program, climbed 44% (four tenths) in the demo and added 1.6 million viewers for its best L+SD marks in more than a year. The network’s This Is Us rose three tenths in the demo on Tuesday, while CBS’ Bull and Bob Hearts Abishola posted season highs Monday.
Streaming had been tipped as a major beneficiary of the current mandate for staying home, but viewers — and many of them younger — are also checking out traditional TV.
Primetime PUT (People Using Television) levels among total viewers were up every day last week, with strong week-to-week gains on both Saturday and Sunday night. Monday’s HUTs (Households Using Television) levels were the highest for a Monday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 13).
Daytime and late-night usage levels were also have been up. For instance, since last Friday, Nickelodeon’s portfolio of linear networks have been up 16% with kids 2-11 compared with the prior four weeks.
Ratings experts expect viewing levels’ growth to continue as more people stay home amid expanding restrictions, including quarantines, around the country.
As for any long-term effect, it is too early to say whether younger viewers who discovered appointment viewing on broadcast TV will come back when the outbreak is over. But for the time being the ratings uptick may be the only good news for the networks, which are facing losses from the suspension of most major sports, unfinished seasons as many series shut down over COVID-19 fears before wrapping production, and a pilot-season washout.
Update (4/9) - Currently, there is a significant spike across ViacomCBS Networks Africa's brands in viewership and engagement. This trend indicates that the fastest growing channel on TV viewing during the Covid-19 pandemic across the total available audience in South Africa is Nickelodeon, a dedicated children’s channel. Interestingly, this genre has seen a 71% growth in viewership, coming second to news at 89%. This serves as a testament to the power of family viewing often in favour of the younger audience channels, especially during this difficult time. The path to purchase clearly is a negotiation between parents and their children and younger generations are winning!
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From TheWrap:
Nickelodeon [...] has seen a 20% surge in TV ratings since Monday, [...]
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From MediaPost:
Kids' Viewing On The Rise In The Time Of COVID-19
Reversing some systemic ratings declines, national TV kids' networks have seen gains over the last week, as more children are now home from school due to COVID-19 concerns, according to two different TV research companies.
Nickelodeon is up 7% to 560,000 total day Nielsen-measured viewers for the week ending March 15, while NickToons is up 16% to 110,000 viewers, Boomerang is 5% higher to 89,000 and TeenNick is up 22% to 77,000.
WarnerMedia’s The Cartoon Network -- the second-biggest kids' network -- is down slightly by 2% to 291,000, while Nick Jr. is down 2.4% to 240,000. Disney XD is flat at 69,000, while Universal Kids is up 17% to 34,000 and BabyKids is up 6% to 33,000.
Traditional linear TV networks have seen declines in viewing for years due to growing digital platforms, including YouTube.
Samba TV -- which culls viewing data from smart TV automated content recognition technology -- says that over the same two-week period, TeenNick has seen total time spent on its network by 171%, while DisneyXD is 68% higher, Nicktoons is 66% higher, Nick Jr. has added 32%, and Disney Channel has grown 27%.
Samba TV has a measurement panel of millions of U.S. homes and measures the time spent watching TV across more than 190 networks from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm local time.
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From CBR.com:
Coronavirus Quarantine Causes Spike in Live TV Ratings
With more people staying at home due to coronavirus, television viewership is reaching massive highs across the country.
The quarantine issued in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a sizeable increase in live TV ratings.
According to Deadline, television networks have seen a massive spike in ratings since last week, when the spread of the disease led to a massive response from government bodies. Schools, places of business and other workspaces began shutting down in order to help curb the spread of the disease and people in general began practicing "social distancing" in order to avoid further infection.
There is a clear correlation between the rise in ratings and the fact that the general populace has been spending more time indoors. NBC's The Voice saw a massive 38% jump among viewers in the 18-49 age demographic on Monday night, while another NBC competition show Ellen's Game of Games jumped 44% on Tuesday night. The CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola and legal drama Bull also posted season highs for both shows on Monday. The children's channel Nickelodeon has seen a 16% rise among the 2-11 age demographic since last Friday.
Broadcast networks are in serious need of the high ratings. With multiple sports leagues cancelling their seasons and with production being shut down on shows across the country, television networks are facing serious loses in the face of the pandemic. Current competition continues to be streaming services, which have also seen a rise in viewings.
Ratings experts speculate that the increase will continue to grow as long as the quarantine and restrictions over the disease remain active.
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From Kidscreen:
What are kids watching on lockdown?
PAW Patrol and Star Wars: The Clone Wars are among the most in-demand shows for the past two weeks across Europe and North America.
The past two weeks has seen a massive push towards physicial isolation across Europe and North America, forcing billions of kids to be kept home from school. And while schooling continues for many, there’s also been a spike in home viewership. What’s topping kids’ viewing lists? LA-based Parrot Analytics has found that PAW Patrol is dominating screens in Europe, while SpongeBob SquarePants is most popular across North America.
According to UNESCO, 87% of the world’s children are out of school right now with nationwide closures in more than 160 countries. And kids TV channels are seeing a spike in viewing according to Nielsen—some as high as 58% in the US.
How does that translate to online? Parrot Analytics measured social media interactions, social video views, online research and piracy numbers using a weighted algorithm, to determine demand for the average show (demand being how frequently it’s talked about online or pirated.)
Between March 11 and 23 in Europe, the number one most in-demand show was PAW Patrol (22.35 time more demand than the average show), followed by Peppa Pig (21.27 times), SpongeBob SquarePants (15.15 times), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (pictured, 14.57 times), Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir (13.98 times), Masha and the Bear (12.53 times), Gravity Falls (10.32 times), Steven Universe (10.11 times), My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (9.67 times) and PJ Masks (6.59 times).
Meanwhile, in North America, SpongeBob SquarePants still reigns supreme, like it did for the first three months of the year, at 88.43 times greater demand than the average show. While the top-10 shared some similarities with Europe, such as Steven Universe (60.68 times) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (54.09 time), it also featured a lot of anime, including Dragon Ball Z at number four (40.97 times), while Europe had no shows featuring the Japanese art-style in its top-10 list. Other anime titles on the list included Pokémon (35.46 times) at number six, Avatar: The Last Airbender (30.78 times) at number nine and Naruto: Shippuden (29.71x) at ten.
The rest of the North American top-10 was rounded out by PAW Patrol (35.5 times), Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir (33.52 times), Sesame Street (31.87 times).
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From MediaPost:
There's Still Opportunity In Media Landscape
I’m sure you have seen your own media usage change over the last week or two, now that you’re holed up at home. You’re watching, reading, browsing more.
Traditional TV and cable TV are reaping the benefits of a captive audience consisting of homebound young adults, frazzled parents and bored kids.
Reports Deadline: “Primetime PUT (People Using Television) levels among total viewers were up every day last week, with strong week-to-week gains on both Saturday and Sunday night. Monday’s HUTs (Households Using Television) levels were the highest for a Monday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 13). Daytime and late-night usage levels were also have been up. For instance, since last Friday, Nickelodeon’s portfolio of linear networks has been up 16% with kids 2-11 compared with the prior four weeks.”
Video platforms have also seen significant audience upticks. Per Cheddar: “Americans streamed 85% more minutes of video in March 2020 than in March 2019, according to new Nielsen data.
- The average person has spent 36% more minutes streaming TV and movies in the last four weeks.
- Binge watching (or watching 3+ episodes in one sitting, per the Hulu English Dictionary) has climbed more than 25% over the last two weeks."
Awesome: More eyeballs, so more opportunity to advertise, right? Nope. The Meyers Report writes: “While 89 percent of advertisers have been disrupted by COVID-19, only a third have canceled a campaign outright. The rest are changing their media mix and/or looking to shift their spending into the second half of the year. Despite the shifting of current media dollars, fully 81 percent of advertisers expect to cut ad budgets significantly this year, and 68 percent expect to spend less next year because of the pandemic.”
Some of that makes perfect sense. It’s hard to advertise for products or services that have been impacted by the pandemic, or to audiences that have more pressing matters than thinking about buying a new car or electric toothbrush.
But it’s worth remembering a few important lessons from past economic downturns. Here is a blast from the past, as reported in 2009: “Companies whose ad spending didn't vary according to economic cycles -- based on an analysis of Ad Age data on global ad spending -- also tended to increase their stock prices an average of 1.3 percentage points annually ahead of others from 1986 to 2006.”
So what does all this copy/pasting I just did tell us? First of all, budget cuts and shifts are understandable, especially if you are not able to serve (the majority of) your customers as you used to prior to the shutdown. But at the same time, a hard “cut and run” may not be in your best interest, if you think your business will still be standing when the economy re-emerges at the other end of the tunnel. If you can’t sell a product or service right now, it’s perhaps the time to reinforce your brand values and consumer appreciation.
And if you are still selling or servicing, for you, too, this is the time to benefit from high supply and lowered demand in the media market. There might be real opportunities for advertisers looking for some presence.
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From Variety:
More Screen Time During Lockdown? Not for These Kids Cable Channels
Even if parents are going batty trying to keep their little ones entertained while cooped up at home during this pandemic, they’re not necessarily plunking the kids in front of the TV — not linear TV at least. Meanwhile, certain streaming services are seeing a lift in interest, underscoring the next generation’s shift in television viewing habits.
For the week of March 23-29, viewership of ad-supported kids’ linear cable networks — a group that includes Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney XD and others — slid 3% from the comparable week in March 2019, according to Bernstein research analysts, citing Nielsen figures. And that year-over-year decline actually marks a major improvement: prior to shelter-in-place measures being implemented, weekly viewership of those channels among 2- to 11-year-olds had been plummeting an average of 25% since the start of 2020.
“Even though the rate of decline significantly decelerated, it’s still in negative territory even though time available in front of TV is arguably as large as it can be,” wrote Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger on Monday. “It’s very likely that kids’ linear TV continues to lose significant share vs. other forms of entertainment, namely [subscription video on demand] services and video games.”
For comparison, looking at viewership metrics that span the entire day (which is how kids cable network viewing is tracked), broadcast network viewership rose 9% and cable tune-in increased 2%, said the firm. (By their usual primetime-only measurements, broadcast was flat vs. last year, while cable slid 10%, with ESPN in particular taking a massive knock from the lack of live sports on TV.)
By Juenger’s count, the week of March 23 was the second week that major U.S. metropolitan areas felt the impact of stay-at-home coronavirus guidance, though most states didn’t issue official advisories until at least mid- to late March — California ordered residents to shelter in place beginning March 19, Illinois on March 21, New York on March 22, Washington state on March 23, Virginia on March 25, and Texas on April 2, for instance. Nielsen data from the first week of April should show an even fuller picture of how much linear TV people are watching while in lockdown mode.
Attempts at homeschooling aside, parents have options for keeping preschoolers and grade schoolers from bouncing off the walls. The last few weeks have seen museums, zoos, educational organizations and entertainment outlets alike offer up a bevy of distance-learning resources to keep kids preoccupied while in the house. National Geographic, for one, launched NatGeo@Home, while PBS Kids created a weekday newsletter filled with suggested activities. Nickelodeon rolled out a multiplatform initiative, #KidsTogether, that includes short-form videos of, say, SpongeBob practicing social distancing.
Last week’s viewership stats mean that even with the nation’s children home from school for the time being and the New York Times allowing that parents can “Just Give Them the Screens (for Now),” linear cable is in a challenged spot.
Cartoon Network viewing fell 6.2% from the prior-year for the week of March 23. ViacomCBS-owned Nickelodeon saw a 15% year-over-year drop in viewership and Nicktoons slid around 12-13%, while Nick Jr. popped nearly 25%.
The dip in the former two Nick channels can arguably be chalked up to the platform and not the content: In March, Nickelodeon’s “The Legend of Korra” and “Danny Phantom” were among the children’s series with the highest volume of streams and time spent on subscription streaming service CBS All Access, alongside “Bob the Builder.” And Nickelodeon’s Noggin app saw 11% month-over-month growth in paid subscribers in March and a 40% jump in free trial sign-ups.
CBS All Access, which just a few months ago ventured into the kid programming space (including originals), tells Variety it has seen a more than 30% month-over-month increase in both daily average streams and time spent watching children’s programming in March. “Polly Pocket,” “Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventure” and “Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?” are seeing their “largest percentage growth to date,” per a spokesperson for the service. (Overall, All Access says March was its most-streamed month in existence.)
Meanwhile, Disney Plus is seeing a bump in interest as well. While the five-month-old streamer has not released viewership data, Google Trends shows a spike in searches for the service on March 13 — the day that the Walt Disney Co. announced that it would release the movie “Frozen 2” to the streaming service three months earlier than planned, in order to offer “some fun and joy during this challenging period.” (Netflix declined to comment on its viewership trends over the past month.)
But it’s not all bad news for traditional cablers. At least for Disney, a focus on its new streamer doesn’t seem to be detracting from its linear cable presence; Disney XD viewership notched up over 5% the week of March 23 — a reversal in trend from the weeks leading up to that.
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From Forbes:
ViacomCBS’ Downward Spiral Is Accelerating As Talk Of Unraveling Grows
Just a few months ago, Shari Redstone was basking in the triumph of a lifetime. After decades of lawsuits, bitter sniping, cruel insults and brutal boardroom warfare, the 65-year-old billionaire’s daughter had wrested control of her father’s media empire from a coterie of powerful enemies, putting a newly merged ViacomCBS under her control.
Newly ensconced in her father’s old office, 52 stories above New York’s Times Square, Redstone—once belittled as a “daddy’s girl”—had battled her way to a legitimate claim of being the media industry’s most powerful woman. Six months later, that victory lap has turned into a strenuous uphill climb. And the coronavirus pandemic has just handed her a large bag of rocks.
“The merger was a huge mistake,” says Craig Huber, of Huber Research Partners. “They should have sold Viacom many years ago, rather than saddle CBS with it.”
The combined businesses issued their first report card in February, delivering a loss from continued operations of $273 million on revenue of $6.9 billion, a 3% drop over the prior year. They’ve also lagged behind their peers in launching a subscription streaming service that could compete with Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Warner Media’s HBO Max.
Future reports were not expected to be much better even before coronavirus lockdowns put a freeze on entertainment and sports businesses. Then came the cancellation of the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament and with it ad revenue of more than $1 billion, which would have been divided between the two rights holders, CBS and Turner.
“The underlying problem here is that, despite $28 billion in revenues, the company generates a paltry amount of free cash flow,” the research firm MoffettNathanson wrote in a report published March 27. “It is mind-boggling to figure out where the cash flow is actually.”
It’s not likely to be found soon. The Paramount film studio can’t make movies right now, nor can it collect revenue from showing those that it has produced since theaters are largely closed. Furthermore, veteran media analyst Harold Vogel wrote last week that the company’s $18.7 billion of debt at year-end was “too high for comfort,” with $800 million of it coming due in the next year. “Cash flow in support of this debt is a relative trickle of what it ought to be at this stage,” he wrote.
Pressure is mounting for management to act. The problem is there are few good options.
ViacomCBS shares plummeted 18% the day after the February earnings report came out and have fallen another 48% since. Valued at about $25 billion after the merger, the combined businesses are now trading at a market capitalization of less than $10 billion. There are plans underway to sell off its book publishing arm, Simon & Schuster, but many are advocating the sale of far larger assets, like Showtime Networks or Paramount (whose titles include Top Gun, Mission Impossible and Star Trek), to shore up its balance sheet.
Neither is likely without a struggle, considering how former CEO Philippe Dauman fell out of favor with Sumner Redstone when he suggested in 2016 that Sumner sell a piece of Paramount, reportedly at a valuation as high as $5.5 billion. Any major transaction would also require signoff from Shari Redstone, who spent years fighting to combine and ultimately control the businesses.
“That was always Sumner’s issue, is that he fought so hard to put everything together that he never wanted to take it apart,” says another former Viacom executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I think that Shari probably feels the same way.”
In addition to the woes at Paramount, cable networks Nickelodeon and MTV, once at the pinnacle of cultural relevance, are bleeding viewers. As of February, Nickelodeon had lost 44% of its audience in the past five years; MTV has also hemorrhaged viewers and revenue and is working to rebuild. The profitability of CBS’ legacy networks (almost entirely Showtime) dropped 8% in 2018 and 22% in the first nine months of 2019, according to MoffettNathanson, while last year it increased production volume by 30%, a move the research firm called “largely ill advised.”
On ViacomCBS’ February earnings call, CEO Bob Bakish admitted that Showtime was a “working capital headwind for the company” in 2019, but emphasized that he planned to improve cost efficiency across the business.
ViacomCBS declined to comment for this story.
Adding to cost pressures are the upcoming negotiations for the rights to air NFL football on CBS and a network carriage deal with Dish, the U.S. satellite network, both critical gets. CBS has a 10-year NFL agreement that expires in 2023 and may need to be renegotiated sooner, a scenario with “no good outcome,” according to Huber. Either it will lose out on the right to air games—a disaster—or it will pay huge fees, which will further eat into margins.
Meanwhile, past deals by CBS to provide some of its premium content to Netflix, including NCIS and Criminal Minds, “likely played a role in their own demise,” according to MoffettNathanson, by limiting the appeal of CBS All Access, the company’s flagship streaming service, which has 16 million paying subscribers.
The bright spots are few. Management shake-ups have slowed and Redstone has a seemingly solid partnership with Bob Bakish, a Viacom veteran who took over as CEO in 2016. Pluto TV, the ad-supported streaming service Viacom bought last year for $340 million expects to end 2020 with 30 million (unpaid) monthly active users, compared to at least 28 million current subscribers at Disney+ and over 167 million at Netflix, which are collecting monthly fees from all of them. Hulu, also controlled by Disney, has more than 30 million paying subscribers. Still, ViacomCBS enjoys sustained cultural relevance overseas with the likes of Nickelodeon and MTV, including in Europe and South America.
Help could come from a viable new film franchise that could challenge Disney’s Marvel and Star Wars franchises, or the DC Comics superhero films from Warner Bros., for instance. Or one of the networks could find a breakthrough television show. But ViacomCBS is already spending $13 billion on new programming, roughly the same spend as Netflix, which is now calling the shots in Hollywood. In recent years Netflix has put out groundbreaking content like Stranger Things, Marriage Story, Tiger King and Narcos.
The company could also stem some of the bleeding by merging CBS All Access with a competitor like NBCUniversal’s Peacock or Hulu. The conglomerate has a more existential problem, though, being a “pigmy among giants,” according to Vogel, which has left it looking like a sitting duck for a well-funded buyer like Amazon, Apple or Netflix, or even a hedge fund that may see value in buying the whole thing and chopping it up for parts.
Said one large ViacomCBS shareholder in a February email to Forbes: “Almost certainly the sum of the parts valuation here is well in excess [of] like double the public market value of the stock.”
“The realization of Shari’s quest to merge Viacom and CBS is now completely irrelevant,” adds a former board member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “What the company needs to do urgently is to shore up its weak financial position by eliminating its dividend, following Disney’s lead in cutting executive compensation, and selling assets. The survival of ViacomCBS as a viable media player, or even as a viable company, is at stake.”
The largest recipient of those dividend payments is National Amusements, which is already facing liquidity pressure. Primarily in the movie theater business, it has been largely shut down to avoid the spread of coronavirus. According to S&P Global Ratings, which downgraded the firm’s credit rating earlier this month, National Amusements is “dependent on its dividend income to service its debt.” S&P adds that the company “could face a potential liquidity crisis if theaters remain closed beyond August.”
The fate of National Amusements is critical. It holds a 79% voting stake in ViacomCBS. Sumner—96 and ailing—has an 80% stake in National Amusements, which will be divided in two on his passing. Half will go to half for the benefit of his descendants, whose trustees will include Shari and her son as well as others with long ties to members of the family, including divorce lawyers for Sumner and his former wife, Phyllis, and a National Amusements executive. The other trust will be for the benefit of Phyllis.
Shari Redstone is showing no signs of backing down. She purchased $2 million worth of ViacomCBS shares in the last two months and, as she told us in September when discussing her battle for the family business, not one who worries much about outside opinions: “No matter how hard or challenging it got, I tried to keep my head down, fight for what was right and not read the press.”
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From CBR:
While kids' linear cable channels have been seeing a steady decline, network-associated apps have seen an increased viewership. Nickelodeon's Noggin app has grown 11 percent from month to month in paid subscribers with a 40 percent jump in free trial sign-ups.
When it comes to overall viewership, streaming platforms have seen an uptick as they begin to offer more and more children's programming. CBS All Access and Disney+ have seen gains from shows and films such as Polly Pocket, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? and Frozen 2.
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From MediaPost:
For the most recent week, kids TV networks --such Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Disney XD, and others -- are down 5.5% in impressions, this after a 8.7% and 4.9% additions in previous weeks.
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From The Hollywood Reporter:
Something for Everyone: Specialty Cable Networks Thrive During Quarantine
Channels ranging from TLC to Nickelodeon have seen their audiences grow with millions more potential viewers at home.
Channels ranging from TLC to Nickelodeon have seen their audiences grow with millions more potential viewers at home.
Over the first three episodes of its current season, TLC's 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days was averaging 2.76 million viewers on Sunday nights.
In the four subsequent episodes — the first of which coincides with the early da widespread stay-home mandates during the novel coronavirus pandemic — the show has averaged 3.37 million viewers, a growth of 22 percent. The April 12 edition clocked in at 3.5 million viewers, out-drawing everything on cable that day.
TV usage has surged during the coronavirus quarantines, with millions more potential viewers at home than would be under normal circumstances. While numbers have leveled off some after an initial surge, total TV usage is still up by more than 25 percent compared to the first week of March, before stay-home orders went into effect in much of the United States.
The larger viewer pool has led to increased ratings across the TV landscape, from network evening news to Netflix. Specialized cable networks have seen their audiences surge as well, with a number of them experiencing double-digit growth in recent weeks.
90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days has grown its audience every week it's been on this season and is on pace to be the most-watched season of any show in the franchise, thanks in no small part to the jump in viewers the past four weeks. It's indicative of the viewer rise across niche networks, from its Discovery stablemates Food Network and HGTV to kid-focused channels like Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. Below is a snapshot of how several networks are performing in recent weeks.
Comfort Food
From March 16-April 7, ratings for Food Network were up 19 percent vs. the same time a year ago in the network's key demo of adults 25-54, and up 27 percent vs. the previous weeks.
Daytime and weekend viewership has grown at an even higher rate, with weekdays rising by 38 percent over their 2019 levels and a huge 63 percent over the pre-quarantine weeks. On weekends, viewing is up by more than 40 percent vs. both last year and pre-virus levels.
The cabler has also changed up its daytime programming some, offering marathons of some of its popular franchises in addition to the instructional shows that usually make up the bulk the of daytime slate.
Corporate sibling HGTV, meanwhile, has seen its weekday afternoon viewing grow by 27 percent over the prior six weeks, while weekends are up 15 percent.
Gaming the Old-School Way
Game console use is up considerably since early March — and so is viewing of game shows via the Game Show Network. GSN, which airs a mix of original and classic shows, has seen its total-day audience grow by 87,000 viewers — a jump of 30 percent — since March 16, compared to its first-quarter average. Primetime is up by 127,000 viewers, a 34 percent gain. GSN is in about 64 million homes.
More News
Network evening news and cable news channels have soared in recent weeks, with the former accounting for some the most-watched telecasts across all of Nielsen-rated TV in the past month.
The gains have extended to BBC World News, which is in about 40 million homes in the U.S. It's not rated by Nielsen, but independent analytics company 605 estimates that the channel's total-day household ratings rose by 36 percent in March, compared to the previous month, while primetime ratings spiked by 36 percent. In the key news demo of adults 25-54, ratings were up by more than 40 percent, per 605.
Those improvements outpace the gains for all other cable news channels, save for CNN, during the same period. On average, according to 605 data, cable news household ratings rose 25 percent in March for total day and 17 percent for primetime.
History Marathons Score
History Channel programs a lot of marathons during daytime hours and on weekends, from Pawn Stars to Hunting Hitler. The strategy has paid off during quarantine, with daytime viewing up 12 percent over the past four weeks compared to the first-quarter average and weekends up 16 percent.
The gains have spilled into primetime as well, where docuseries The Curse of Oak Island drew its biggest audience in more than a year — 3.6 million viewers — on March 31. New non-fiction series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch averaged 2.1 million same-day viewers over its first two episodes, History's best nonfiction debut in two years.
What the Kids Are Watching
Some of the biggest gains in TV usage in the past month have come among kids who are no longer attending school — kids under 12 had up to 50 percent more screen time during school closures.
Those numbers are reflected in ratings for Nickelodeon and Disney Channel: Nick and Disney are both up by more than 30 percent in the past four weeks vs. the month before that among their core viewers.
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In Russia, although kids are at home, ratings for kids channels, including Nickelodeon HD, Cartoon Network and JimJam have seen ratings decrease.
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From CBR.com:
Kids Aren't Watching Cartoons on Cable - Here's Why
With schools closed, kids should be watching TV more than ever, yet ratings on networks like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon are down compared to last year.
Americans have been diligent in their efforts to stay home during the age of social distancing. That goes for adults and children alike while offices and schools across the country remain online-only. As parents start to realize why they weren't already homeschooling their kids, the temptation to set them in front of the TV and let them numb their minds on cartoons has been steadily growing. Despite this, cable networks directed at kids like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon have seen a decline in ratings compared to the same weeks last year, according to a recent report by Variety. With a decline in viewership during a time like this, cable execs are likely feeling the pressure of a potentially dwindling business.
Cable networks have been fighting for survival for a few years now, as competition from internet-based media services grows. However, cable has always relied on networks that serve a niche audience to support their various channel packages. One of the arenas in which cable has retained it's dominance is children's programming.
Kids don't represent the key demographic of consumers that most advertisers are trying to reach. There's a limit to the amount of products that can effectively be marketed to children, as cynical as it may sound. As a result, only a fraction of media is built specifically for a younger audience. For a time, Saturday morning was the only slot during the week where television as directed specifically at kids. However, a lot has changed since then.
The growth of cable saw the rise of networks entirely devoted to children's programming, and they ran every day of the week. Now, streaming has started to catch up. Netflix has been beefing up its animated offerings for awhile with original series ordered from DreamWorks TV. The service also offers parental controls for different profiles, similar to what cable has been offering for years.
Netflix is far from the only service encroaching on cable TV's territory, however. The launch of Disney+ shook up the entertainment industry earlier this year. With the service came thousands of classic titles aimed at younger audiences, including series from Disney Channel and classic animated films from Walt Disney Animation.
Aside from Disney, ViacomCBS has seen significant growth with its CBS All-Access service. The streamer -- which so far has had only limited success because of its original series, Star Trek:Picard -- gained traction due to the availability of classic Nickelodeon shows on the app.
Even the preschool demographic is turning toward streaming, with Netflix in particular embracing shows targeted at this age group. In turn, this dulls another edge of kids' networks, which rely on their morning and early afternoon programming blocks to reach children who are too young to be in school.
Although the news that children's programming isn't flourishing on cable may initially seem surprising, it appears that it's more of a reshuffling of where kids are watching their shows rather than a decline in overall viewership. In other words, this likely doesn't spell doom and destruction for Disney's children's entertainment empire.
What at first seems like an indictment on these networks failing to provide good content for their target audience is actually a reflection of greater changes to the landscape of the entertainment industry. It doesn't matter if Nickelodeon's audience starts watching more CBS All Access or if Disney Channel viewers switch over to Disney+.
That said, the news is definitely concerning for cable providers, which continue to lose their leverage as studios attempt to cut them out of the picture. Cable across the board has been impacted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the continued rise of streaming services. The loss of live sports, which is a major draw for cable subscribers, has a serious impact on the viability of cable television. We're quickly approaching a time when cable in its current form will no longer exist, and the stay at home ordinances around the country seem to be accelerating that change.
Kids aren't watching their cartoons on cable, but for parents, the good news is that they still have plenty of content to keep them busy between their online classes.
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From The Media Online:
Nickelodeon fasted growing channel
Nickelodeon [Africa] [...] has become the fastest growing channel on TV during the COVID-19 pandemic across the total available audience in South Africa. This serves as testament to the power of family viewing often in favour of the younger audience channels, especially during this time with parents at home with children 24/7.
We have seen some brands switching up their marketing efforts with the understanding that the purchasing power of households is often a negotiation and the young ones yield enormous influence over the decision-making process.
This trend presents an opportunity for brands to innovate their advertising investments to various target markets across the multiple platforms and this even includes speaking to parents on kids’ channels. Individually and collectively brands need to serve customers with reassurance, unity and encouragement through responsible campaigns that resonate with audiences in their new reality.
For those who want to remain relevant and leave a lasting impression on consumers, that resonates long after the lockdown is over, we have to keep the innovation pipeline moving. These unprecedented times undoubtedly call for adjustments to your model that encourages being bold in taking calculated risks that yield long term reward and impact.
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From Digiday:
With schools shut, kids linear TV ratings are on the up
Children’s linear TV ratings have been in a slump for years as children’s viewing habits shifted to online streaming, social and gaming platforms. But with tens of thousands of schools shutting their doors across the U.S., many kids are whiling away some of their endless hours of free time in front of the TV. It’s a welcome boost for kids cable networks who will be hoping they can extend the short-term ratings spike into long-term brand loyalty.
Total day viewing of The Cartoon Network on Monday and Tuesday this week was up 58% versus last week, according to Nielsen data compiled for Digiday. Elsewhere, viewing of the Disney Channel was up 43%; Boomerang was up 31%; Nickelodeon experienced a 25% lift in viewers. The data incorporates any viewers over 2-years-old.
Viacom’s Nickelodeon, the most widely watched kids TV network — averaging around 630,000 viewers on Monday and Tuesday this week — reacted to the coronavirus outbreak by bringing its summer schedule forward a few months early. The programming is mostly focused on older children who are now at home from school. As part of that schedule, Nickelodeon is airing two new animated shows daily, “The Casagrandes” a spinoff of its popular show “The Loud House,” and “It’s Pony,” a British cartoon. Nickelodeon is also airing binge-watch marathons of established shows such “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “PAW Patrol” and “Henry Danger.”
To be sure, the lift in viewing is from a low base and U.S. linear TV ratings are up across the board over the past couple of weeks as people spend almost all of their time indoors. That said, in a sector beset with cord cutting challenges and amid such an uncertain economic environment, owners of kids channels will be eager to grab at small victories when they can find them.
It’s not just the children’s channels on linear TV experiencing a ratings boost, the trend extends to OTT platforms, too. Viacom’s ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV marked a 10% lift in viewership of kids programming week over week, according to the company.
Data from measurement firm SambaTV, which analyzes data from smart TVs, found TeenNick experienced the largest increase this Monday to Wednesday (Mar. 16 – Mar. 18) versus last week, with total time spent watching the network increasing 171%. DisneyXD (up 69%,) Nick Toons (up 66%,) Nick Jr. (up 32%,) and the Disney Channel (up 27%,) all marked gains in daytime viewing.
“Viewership patterns are shifting significantly as households with school-age children increasingly turn to their television to access educational content and family friendly programming,” said Jeffrey Silverman, director of data science and analytics at Samba TV.
With no live sports on TV, the ratings lifts might encourage some advertisers to consider including kids TV channels in their media plans to make up for a small proportion of the lost ad impressions. But there aren’t many advertisers that have a crossover in those audiences. And many marketers are currently turning down the dial on advertising or are undergoing coronavirus-related supply chain constraints.
“If you think about kids’ advertisers, toys and food should hold up pretty well, theoretically, in a recession — if anything they are more important during at a pandemic as [people] need things to do at home and food to eat,” said Rich Greenfield, partner at research firm LightShed Partners.
Experts said it seems unlikely kid’s TV networks will be able sustain this level of viewership once the coronavirus pandemic reaches a level of normality, schools reopen and children have less time to spare. But this unusual circumstance could prove to be an important period of brand marketing before viewing trends back to the way they were before the pandemic hit.
“One of the challenges many kids brands face is effectively a share of voice,” said Richard Broughton, research director at Ampere Analysis. “How do kids find your content in a very cluttered media landscape when the first port of call is being brought up with tablets as babysitting devices and maybe defaulting to online brands.”
The thinking goes that kids who enjoyed the quality of the content they watched on linear TV may then attempt to seek those brands out online later down the line.
“If you think about the limited time in a media day for a child, they may be unaware that there’s reasonably high quality programming on broadcasting channels that they’re missing out on. It could turn into short-term or mid-term resurgence for these brands,” said Broughton.
The enforced and extended school break is also prompting broader networks to reassess their schedules. The Weather Channel is airing hourly educational short videos targeting young people from elementary school age through to college students, MediaPost reported. Italy’s state broadcaster RAI has increased its kids and teens programming across its mass-market channels, according to Variety. The BBC in the U.K. is also planning to show more educational content.
Broadcasters’ hands have also been forced into schedule revamps due to the lack of live events and because many production companies have suspended filming. And with less compelling content on linear TV due to the hole in the schedule left by major live events, viewers be even more inclined to switch to streaming and on-demand platforms to trawl through their vast catalogs of content. Greenfield predicts the increase in younger viewership on Netflix, YouTube and Twitch during the coronavirus outbreak will dwarf that of linear TV in terms of absolute numbers of viewers added.
“TV viewing is definitely going up meaningfully,” said Greenfield. “That said, I don’t think this is changing long-term consumer behavior … once you’ve lived through on-demand TV, there’s no going back and the amount of services coming is growing by the day.”
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From the ViacomCBS Newsroom:
Screen time for children is also on the rise.
- Nickelodeon and Disney ratings are both up by more than 30% (as of April 15) among core viewers in the past four weeks, compared to the month before. (The Hollywood Reporter)
- CBS All Access, has seen a more than 30% month-over-month increase in both daily average streams and time spent watching children’s programming in March. (Variety)
- Nickelodeon’s Noggin app saw 11% month-over-month growth in paid subscribers in March and a 40% jump in free trial sign-ups. (Variety)
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From MediaPost:
Linear TV Kids Viewing Still Down During COVID-19 Stay-At-Home
While linear national TV kids viewing cut its losses from a year ago due to the current stay-at-home situation, viewing is still down year-over-year by nearly 10%.
Bernstein Research says kids 2-11 linear TV viewing dropped 8% for national kids TV networks in April, according to a Nielsen analysis, versus the same month a year ago.
This is an improvement over regular 20% declines from 2018 and 2019. In April, it notes, Nickelodeon kids viewing was hit particularly hard versus all kids national linear TV viewing -- down 19%.
“We cannot imagine a stronger testament to the strength of the secular trend toward the death of kids linear TV networks,” writes Todd Juenger, media analyst at Bernstein Research. “Even with kids literally locked in their homes, with nothing but time to fill all day long, viewership of kids networks still declined year over year.”
Media analysts say that streaming and other digital usage by kids -- and many other viewing groups -- continues to climb.
With these continuing losses, he muses, future pay TV packages might look to a “tiered” structure for kid TV networks -- that is, with consumers paying extra monthly fees for kids networks.
He notes two dynamics at work: one, that only 40% of U.S. households “even have the presence of kids,” and two, “the data shows that within those households, a small and declining percentage of them are ever watching these networks.”
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From Media Play News:
‘Stranger Things’ Back Over ‘Star Wars’ on Parrot’s Digital Originals Demand Chart
Netflix’s “Stranger Things” returned to the top spot on Parrot Analytics’ digital originals rankings the week ended May 23.
A “digital original” is Parrot’s term for a multi-episode series in which the most recent season was first made available on a streaming platform such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu or Disney+.
“Stranger Things,” which was No. 3 the previous week, had 61 times more demand in the United States than the average TV show in the market based on average daily Demand Expressions, the proprietary metric used by Parrot Analytics to measure demand for TV content. Parrot changed its charts to reflect the relative demand metric in a given week, rather than the objective raw expressions number.
The previous week’s most in-demand digital original, the Disney+ animated series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” slid to No. 2 after four weeks in the top spot. It was 60.7 times more in-demand over the average.
Another Disney+ “Star Wars” spinoff series, the live-action “The Mandalorian,” slipped to No. 3 with 51.9 times average demand.
The DC Universe animated series “Harley Quinn” rose two spots to No. 4 with 40 times the demand.
The superhero series “Titans,” a chart mainstay from the DC Universe streaming service, dropped to No. 5, drawing 39.3 times the average demand.
The biggest leap onto the top 10 was Netflix’s “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,” climbing to No. 10 from No. 28 the previous week. It had 29.2 times average demand.
The top overall TV series was Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” with 86.3 times average demand. “Stranger Things” was No. 6 on the overall TV list.
Media Play News has teamed with Parrot Analytics to provide readers with a weekly top 10 of the most popular digital original TV series in the United States, based on the firm’s proprietary metric called Demand Expressions, which measures demand for TV content in a given market through a wide variety of data sources, including video streaming, social media activity, photo sharing, blogging, commenting on fan and critic rating platforms, and downloading and streaming via peer-to-peer protocols and file sharing sites. Results are expressed as a comparison with the average demand for a TV show of any kind in the market.
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Nickelodeon Portugal was the most watched pay-TV kids channel in Portugal between weeks 20-21, averaging 33,1 thousand viewers daily - its highest ratings ever!
More Nick: Nickelodeon Launches #KidsTogether--A Global Prosocial Initiative to Help Kids and Families Stay Informed and Engaged With Activities; Noggin to be Offered Free to Kids in Need in Partnership with National Head Start Association and First Book
NickALive!'s full coverage of how coronavirus is affecting Nickelodeon can be found here.
Originally published: Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 00:52 GMT.
Original source: Deadline; Additional source: Google, Google Translate.
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