The online video and drama streaming sites like Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube are killing the old school traditional Television broadcasting services by investing billions of dollar in creating the more authentic, high definition, high budget, and excellent quality content. More and more of the TV audience is converting to the online streaming sites due to the presence of high-quality stuff and instant access to desired programs. The new generation is more attracted toward these online streaming sites as compared to the aged audience as teenagers and children seem to be more aware of the new technologies, and they tend to take advantage of high-resolution screens. Below is the comparison of different age groups for the context of TV viewership decline from 2012 to 2016, done by the Claire Enders who is chief executive of Enders Analysis.
In this analysis, you can easily see that the major decline happened in the viewership of children and teenagers. The adult has shown only 3% of the decline in the daily viewing routines; they seem to stick with their old TV viewing habits (“Will online streaming kill off traditional broadcasters?” 2017). TV broadcaster has to take some serious steps to counter this decline in their viewership.
Some of the TV broadcasters have come up with very appealing strategies to attract the younger audience and to counter the decline in the viewership of their channels. The companies like Time Warner Inc., 21st Century Fox Inc., and Viacom Inc. have devised the strategy of cutting the frequency of in-show commercials so the viewers could enjoy the uninterrupted broadcast. These companies have adopted this strategy to attract the younger viewers who seem to like the ad-free entertainment services (“Why TV Networks Are Cutting Back on Commercials,” 2015).
Production of more original and authentic content and airing them on peak hours is another way of catering to this issue. We have seen a total of 3 percent of increment in the production of original programming by the four major broadcasting networks NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX. These networks introduced a total of five new shows for airing them on prime time at the end of 2015. These new and original programs have replaced the re-run of old shows, and it is the fact that the audience of a re-run of a show is always lower than original no matter how good and popular the show was in its time. This strategy of network broadcaster was very productive in a sense that it at least decreased the rate of migration.
Network broadcaster has started to build their own production houses and stopped relying on the third party studios. NBC, Fox and ABC TV networks have started this trend to enhance the production quality. In the year 2015 alone ABC produced ten of its shown in its studios while FOX produced nine out of ten shows in-house. This migration from outsourced production houses to in-house studios was somewhat a risky process as in the case of a flop show; the network has the entire burden to bear. But on the other hand in case of a hit show, the network gets all the benefit.
According to UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland), there was the rise of around two percent in the production cost of some major TV broadcasting companies due to bigger casts, more and bigger sets, and more special effects. TV networks are pouring more money in casting famous actors in their original series to attract the viewership. For example, the Blindspot original drama by the NBC network had the budget of 59 million US dollars, and similarly, the show called “The Voice” has the most expensive budget of 62 million dollars. It shows the effort of network broadcaster to attract the young viewers by casting their favorite actors (Tietjen, 2015).
References
Tietjen, D. (2015, June 9). Content Wars: How Television Networks Are Fighting The Netflix Threat. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/denalitietjen/2015/06/09/content-wars-how-television-networks-are-fighting-the-netflix-threat/
Why TV Networks Are Cutting Back on Commercials. (2015, November 10). Bloomberg.Com. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/tv-networks-cut-commercial-time-as-viewers-become-numb-to-ads
Will online streaming kill off traditional broadcasters? (2017, February 22). Retrieved from https://www.raconteur.net/culture/will-online-streaming-kill-off-traditional-broadcasters
