Blind Date, You’ve Been Framed and Barrymore are part of a dying breed of mainstream entertainment programmes, according to a new report. Traditional Saturday night schedules are looking tired and repetitive as fragmenting audiences move towards niche, specialised programming offered by pay-tv broadcasters.
This is the result of research and analysis into the entertainment genre by the Human Capital group. Their findings reveal a constancy in entertainment viewing; over the past ten years the genre has remained static, which an average person watching thirty minutes peaktime entertainment programming each day. A radical shift can be seen, however, in the types of entertainment viewers find attractive.
In 1992 “traditional” entertainment including classic British sitcoms, long-running game shows and Saturday night variety programmes accounted for 71% of all entertainment viewing. “This group now makes up just a third of entertainment viewing”, said Tim Ewington, a founding member of Human Capital. “In its place a new generation of ‘for me’ entertainment programmes has emerged, shows with 3-5 million that are loved by specific groups in the audience.”
Eleven new clusters of programme and audience type have emerged, replacing the mass audiences which used to be commanded by entertainment hits. Thus while traditional viewing continues to make up 47% of all entertainment viewing, it now falls into four distinct categories.
“Mainstream” is the original mass programming cluster, which can still be sexy (Millionaire) but is generally tired (You’ve Been Framed); a “Comfy Armchair” viewer likes classic entertainment – “comfortable” programmes such as Dad’s Army and This is Your Life; “Dads As Lads” are family men who watch indulge unfulfilled desires with shows like Pornorama, and UK Raw; “Challenge TV” viewers are game show junkies. Each of these groups have a more downmarket bias.
The biggest growth area in terms of entertainment is that of comedy; 38% of entertainment viewing is of this type and five categories have been identified. “Comedy Central” (The Royale Family; dinnerladies) and Cambridge Comedy (Blackadder; Have I Got News For You?) have an upmarket bias and “Cambridge Comedy”, “Next Generation Perrier” (Big Train; The Fast Show) and “Post-pub TV” (Bang Bang It’s Reeves and Mortimer; Something for the Weekend) tend to have a male bias.
The final group “Girls Night In” includes Friends, Streetmate and Singled Out in its line-up.
The final categories are youth based and make up 15% of all entertainment viewing: “Boys ‘R’ Us” viewers watch Robot Wars and South Park; the “Barbie Pop” category targets young girls with shows like Sister, Sister and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It is these categories, brought up in multichannel homes, which are leading the desertion from traditional entertainment scheduling; half of children’s entertainment viewing now comes from pay-tv broadcasters and the shift looks set to continue.
Human Capital: 020 7681 7788
