It’s time the digital zealots checked their facts and shut up about the demise of television, writes Dominic Mills. Here is the reality.
The world of multi-player gaming is not for me. Even so, I couldn’t help noticing heavy TV airtime by brands like Clash of the Clans, with its Asterix-and-Obelix-type heroes.
It’s also been splurging big-time in the US Super Bowl with this Liam Neeson ad too, probably at a total cost of around $4m.
What’s the big deal? Well, Clash of the Clans is one of those quintessential millennial gaming brands built, let us be clear about this, on social media like Facebook. And of course, Facebook too has been highly visible on TV this year in the UK.
So I wonder how many of those who regularly forecast the death of TV (as both a viewing and advertising medium) have noticed, and paused for thought.
If they have, they would be well-advised to take a look at the latest state of the nation report from BARB, published a couple of weeks ago.
It’s not for me to say why Clash of the Clans has switched significant amounts of budget to TV, other than to conclude that a) it’s a way to reach large amounts of people fast b) it’s sufficiently targeted for them to reach the people they want (many of whom are perhaps hard to reach through other media) and c) it works.
So what are we to make of the people who like to dance on TV’s grave.
I’d call them useful idiots. But the sage of adland, Jeremy Bullmore, has a better way of describing the effect of those he calls pioneers, zealots, fanatics and evangelists who, he says, “are invariably wrong in the scale of the revolutions they so confidently forecast.”
He continues: “The exaggeration, the hyperbole, the unbridled enthusiasm with which new ideas are heralded serve a valuable purpose, not despite being inaccurate but precisely because they are.”
The result, he says, is that the establishment (i.e. TV), fearful of obliteration, gives itself a rigorous quality check.
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In other words the threat of extinction causes established media brands to re-examine what they are good at, and focus on that.
Indeed, we’ve seen this many times over the years, not just in the post-digital area. Radio did not wipe out outdoor; TV did not wipe out radio or cinema; newspapers (sorry, newsbrands) did not wipe out magazines. They re-grouped, re-focused, and came out fighting.
And so on into the digital age. As Bullmore notes, who would have put money on the bicycle enjoying its best ever period of popularity a hundred years after the car was introduced.
Perspective, the ability to take the long view, matters, which is why I’d urge everyone to read this BARB document.
In case you haven’t got the time, here are a few nuggets of wisdom – all, as you might expect, backed up by stats.
1. The death of long-form spells trouble for TV
Short-form content is not taking over. It’s easy to believe, when there is so much hype about the latest YouTube sensation, that we are moving into an era of short-form, snackable content. Yes, we watch more videos on our mobiles and so on, but it’s incremental viewing.
According to Deloitte, some 360 billion hours of short-form content is consumed globally every month – about 3% of all screen-viewed content.
Put it another way, Psy’s Gangnam Style video, with 2.2bn YouTube views, has racked up 159m hours globally. Last year’s Strictly Come Dancing series, including results shows, was watched for 321m hours in the UK alone.
2. Declines in TV viewing can be explained by other phenomena…like weather
Remember 2014? Stats nerds will say that was the year in which, in Q1, TV viewing dropped 7.2% year-on-year. Digi-zealots will say that was the start of TV’s decline.
Er, no. Maybe it was the weather, that incredibly warm spring. During that period, the average daily temperature increased from 5.7% to 9.0%, and average daily hours of sunshine from 2.2 to 2.7.
Crunching the numbers, BARB concludes that for every degree Celsius in maximum temperature, viewing drops by 0.76%; and for every increase in daily sunshine hour, viewing drops by 0.7%.
So before anyone jumps to write-off TV, especially in the summer, it’s best to consult the weatherman.
3. Netflix is going to kill TV
Of course it is, isn’t it? Netflix subscriptions are powering ahead, up to 57 million globally and 14.1% of UK homes. And it’s only going to get worse, as digital natives (less likely to have a TV, or watch it) sign up in droves.
But maybe not. In fact, as the BARB data shows, the people who watch Netflix and other subscription VOD services are already big TV watchers.
In other words, it’s incremental viewing.
That’s because Netflix viewers are:
– 10% more likely to be cable subscribers, and 7% more likely to be Sky subscribers
– 9% more likely to have children
– 7% more likely to have three or more TVs
– 12% more likely to have at least one 50-inch plus TV screen.
Yes, they’re telly addicts. Netflix is just an extra.
4. There’s a whole generation that won’t bother with TV
Conventional wisdom has it that there is a whole generation – digital natives if you like – that increasingly won’t bother with TV. Certainly, this is causing more than a few palpitations at the BBC where non-TV owning households threaten the validity of the license fee.
But how bad is it? According to BARB, there were 1.07 million households with broadband but no TV (i.e. able to access TV-type content via a screen), rising to 1.1 million in 2014.
All told, that’s 4.3% of households, but when you look at the number of households with 16-24 year-olds in metropolitan areas with broadband but no TV (i.e students, young professionals) it rises to 12.4%.
But, is that overall 4.3% figure too bad? And what happens when this generation grows up, settles down and has families.
Certainly, there’s a whole cohort of digital natives now in their late 20s moving into this life stage now. As BARB’s data shows, there is a significant pick-up in satellite digital subscriptions as people move into the ‘young family’ life stage – from 40% penetration to 55%.
This suggests that, as people age, their TV viewing habits become more conventional, or as the zealots would put it, ‘old-fashioned’.
Another tick in the box for TV.
Of course, we live on ever-shifting sands, but the next time you meet someone who tells you TV is ‘so last century’, shrug your shoulders, say ‘whevs’…and hand them a copy of BARB’s Viewing Report.
