Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne and his team published a fascinating set of charts yesterday about the long, slow decline of old-fashioned broadcast and cable TV, and the number of ad dollars chasing the dinosaur medium.
There has been a 50 percent collapse in broadcast TV audience ratings since 2002, Swinburne says.
Part of Swinburne's case is that TV audiences have declined, but because those audiences still remain relatively large more ad dollars have continued to target them. (It's a classic "supply vs. demand" issue: as the number of big, unfragmented audiences declines, they become more valuable.)
At the same time, TV companies have relied more and more on subscription revenue rather than ad revenue to make their numbers.
The result is that the TV business is financially healthy — even as fewer people pay more to watch it.
Swinburne is bullish on media stocks overall. He doesn't see "cord-cutting" — the act of doing without TV altogether — as a significant force, yet. "We believe lower-than-average Pay TV penetration in the under-30 demo is largely based on income level," he writes.
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
10 comments:
There aren't as many "Good shows" on now as there were back when I watched 4 antenna channels in black and white. Maybe that's the reason.
People can't afford the bills. They keep going up and up. When people need to cut expenses this is the first thing to go. They will do without cable before they will phones. Many people are just not happy with what is on tv these days. Nothing but trash. I would rather watch reruns of shows from years ago.
So the few that do have cable will make up for it just like our property taxes going up to pay for teachers pensions.
I hardly watch t.v. so I could care less about what's on it. Most of it just melts your brain to begin with.
Talk to someone who watches t.v. a lot, then talk to someone who doesn't.
The difference is quite clear. They have been programmed to believe everything they see on the tube.
A lot have lost their ability to think independently and use logic.
Hey 5:37, teachers give up seven percent of their salaries unvoluntarily for the pensions. Do the math with the compound interest, if you can...
Come the first of April, when my two year contract is up, satellite and lan line will be vacating our house!! That savings will be about two tanks of gasoline!
Ad revenue down? What do you see 90% of the time when surfing the channels - ads, ads, ads, ads. What do you see when attempting to watch one of the few good programs on, ads, ads, ads, ads! They run 10-12 ads rapid fire several times in 30 minutes. I really believe that in one half hour program there is more time spent on ads than on the program. Jeapardy "30 minutes of questions and answers", I bet there isn't 15 minutes of questions and answers.
That's backwards. Viewership is down because it costs too much.
Comcast has no competition, they run a three tier monopoly and the city allows this. Where do you think the franchise fee on your cable bill goes?
Delmar does the same thing with Comcast, for many years at a time. Municipalities need to stop doing this and let there be competition. Comcast threatens they'll pull their equipment out if the towns don't agree to their multi-year franchise agreement but if they'd just think about it, they'd realize there's NO way Comcast will do that, they can't afford to! Then, there's nothing stopping the other cable companies from piggy-backing on the existing systems already in place! Wake up elected officials! You're screwing over the very people you supposedly represent!
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