When the levee breaks on this golden age of TV, what does that look like?

That’s the trend that’s both hard to measure, and also enormously concerning for networks and content providers, absolutely.

This is interesting. The Beeb is going to do Netflix/Amazon style series dumps. Presumably this means reviving the plan to offer iPlayer as a paid service overseas.

They actually did this last summer with “The Living and the Dead”. Seemed quite unusual at the time but maybe they were using it to test the numbers.

Hoo boy.

I find this very hard to believe. Except that people stream mostly onto TVs, that’s really obvious.

I am deeply curious what Nielsen’s source for these metrics is.

Well, Nielsen have started doing streaming numbers. But I thought they didn’t measure non-TV audiences.

Original article. Nielsen now also measures SVOD. From that article:

Nielsen has been capturing SVOD content viewing data since 2014.

Sure, I assumed that if they were reporting data that they were measuring it somehow. But I’m still wondering how. I’ve long been skeptical of their approach to TV viewing data, but streaming in theory should be easier to analyze in toto without having to extrapolate from a theoretically representative base. If they have access to that data. But the article makes it sound like they only have what 8 particular studios - and not the streaming services - provide. So I’m still skeptical.

Edit: yeah, reading the article @Ginger_Yellow linked, which is from last week, they’re just now going to get actual data from Netflix as opposed to a self-selecting opt-in thing that excludes mobile devices and international customers (among others) so I would treat their current findings with extreme levels of skepticism.

Have they ever posted anything on their methodology?

Also, welcome to 2006, Nielsen.

Welcome to 2017, still the authority on viewing metrics, whether you believe them or not. That’s the FOX SVP for research, who is a ratings guru in the biz quoting that article on twitter. If you’ve got metrics that show Nielsen is wrong, show your data. People will pay you millions for it.

I mean, I’m sure that when Jeff Bezos mass-canceled a whole bunch of existing original content programming on Prime, he did it for something something reasons, because Amazon hates money or something.

Anyway, I guess now I know how people who present climate change evidence to FOX News audiences feel…;)

So the upshot of this is that original content that is stream-only (Netflix, Amazon) doesn’t get much viewing?

Basically, yes. I would assume that a further extraction would be that original content viewing tends to congregate on certain shows (like Orange Is The New Black, Stranger Things, Marvel stuff, the Handmaid’s Tale) but lots of other stuff just goes completely ignored by larger audiences.

I see this in part as a problem with stream-only content. You have to opt-in to see it. The networks (CBS, NBC, et al) put out crappy shows that get some viewers simply because the show they want to see bleeds into the crappy show they don’t care about, but they don’t bother to change the channel. I never bother with a lot of original content because it doesn’t interest me and/or I know I can always stream it at a later date.

The authority on TV metrics. But the streaming services have built in metrics, hard and fast data, and based on the article linked just a post or two above yours, Nielsen doesn’t, or certainly hasn’t, had access to them. That appears to be changing, but that doesn’t mean that what’s being said in the interview you linked is accurate now.

Of course, it also could be. But without knowing where their info is coming from or how it’s being sourced…

What does SVOD include? Is it all streaming services?

If those metrics are super off base, you’d think some other companies with a vested interest (i.e. Netflix) would challenge those numbers.

Per the Bloomberg article linked above:

(“The company” being Netflix, if that wasn’t clear.)

Netflix is banking on original content (i.e., license-free content) as a long play. Network TV must treat airtime as one of its most precious resources—tine airing old content is time you’re not airing new content and risks users tuning to other channels. In contrast, VOD doesn’t face that problem. A huge library is a wonderful draw for new subscribers and being able to perpetually grow that library without sustaining ever-growing perpetual licensing fees is huge for Netflix, particularly since they’ve gone global and the fees would be crushing.

Assuming the Neilsen numbers are accurate, I suspect Netflix is more than fine with it. There’s certain viewership they not chasing at all, such as “contempary” content such as news and sports programming, which must surely make up a huge percentage of viewing time. It’d be more interesting to see what percentage of the produced content viewing VOD has captured.

Interesting. Maybe the VOD audience is the future and the broadcast audience is the past?

Amazon lost a lot of money year after year pursuing their current market position. I can see businesses hard-chasing the VOD market despite Nielsen.

I’ve only read the OP in this thread, but I think the end of Net Neutrality would have a big effect on the market. Service providers would probably limit you to shows on their own network, and network-agnostic services like Netflix would become much more expensive.