Author: Brett

The pain at Viacom Inc.’s VIAB -1.74% children’s cable network has spread to its grown-up channels.

Just as Nickelodeon is showing signs of pulling out of a severe ratings slump, trouble has emerged at a couple of Viacom’s other key networks.

Comedy Central’s prime-time audience fell 19% in the four weeks through Oct. 21, while MTV’s viewership declined 32% in the same period, according to Nielsen.

Signs of slight ratings erosion were evident at both channels earlier this year, but the recent numbers show a much greater decline. So far this year, Comedy Central’s average daily viewership is down 10% while MTV’s is off 18%. Nickelodeon’s audience, meanwhile, is down 23% for the year to date although the drop-off in September was narrower than in previous months.

Many big cable and broadcast networks have seen sharp ratings declines in recent weeks, amid a broader drop in overall television viewing. Time Warner‘sTWX +0.11% TBS and Comcast CMCSA +3.30% Corp’s USA are both down 13% in the four weeks through Oct. 21, for instance.

Some in the TV industry say television viewing is fragmenting among different outlets, such as on-demand and the Internet. Such viewership isn’t measured as part of traditional TV ratings, which makes it harder to sell ads on these outlets.

Viacom, whose portfolio of channels includes VH1, CMT and Spike, has been particularly hard hit by the audience drop-off. Fourteen of the 16 channels in the MTV and Nickelodeon families had viewership declines in September, according to Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Todd Jeunger, citing Nielsen data.

MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon are of most concern to investors. The three account for roughly 50% of Viacom’s operating profit, estimates David Bank of RBC Capital Markets.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204005004578081250039467718.html

Few brands are as clued in to what Gen Y is thinking as is MTV, with its sweet spot of 18 to 24. But increasingly, the company is trying to suss out what is on the minds of the youngest Millennials — those between 12 and 17 — not to mention how the older wave is navigating such gloomy employment prospects. We asked Alison Hillhouse, VP at MTV Insights, fresh off a research blitz, to share what’s coming from this next wave.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/185388/mtv-youngest-millennials-flee-to-twitter.html#ixzz2A8syLg8g

NEW YORK (AP) — A new Gallup survey, touted as the largest of its kind, estimates that 3.4 percent of American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

The findings, released Thursday, were based on interviews with more than 121,000 people. Gallup said it is the largest study ever aimed at calculating the nation’s LGBT population.

The report’s lead author, demographer Gary Gates of the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, said he hoped the findings would help puncture some stereotypes about gays and lesbians while illustrating the diversity of their community.

“Contemporary media often think of LGBT people as disproportionately white, male, urban and pretty wealthy,” he said. “But this data reveal that relative to the general population, the LGBT population has a larger proportion of nonwhite people and clearly is not overly wealthy.”

It’s an unseasonably warm summer day, and Jason Kilar is “in the zone,” as he puts it, buzzing around his Santa Monica, California, headquarters, putting the final touches on a massive redesign of Hulu, the streaming TV and movie service he runs. Despite the heat, and despite a deadline that is only weeks away, the boyish 41-year-old CEO looks calm and collected. (He always looks this way, actually.) He’s dressed in his uniform of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt peeking out from under an über-starched button-down, and his thick turf of hair is cut in what looks like a $17 mow from Fantastic Sam’s. As he natters on about the new site, walking me through its tray-style layout and a feature that lets you pick up exactly where you last left off watching a show, it’s easy to see why people liken him to a grown-up Boy Scout. “This morning we had a 45-minute debate on the amount of gradient on the sticky header!” Kilar boasts, standing in a cluttered warren of darkened offices from which members of the design team periodically emerge, blinking like moles. Kilar’s obsession with user experience–one source says it borders on “maniacal”–is a large part of why Hulu has created a service that customers have deemed “brain-spray awesome.”

http://www.fastcompany.com/3001736/hulu-struggles-survive-influence-its-parent-companies

One of the early hits of the fall television season tells a story of a world that suddenly goes dark. That show, NBC’s “Revolution,” is starting to look a lot like a metaphor for the broader world of TV.

Television viewing of both cable and broadcast networks among adults under age 50 fell for the first two weeks of the new fall season, Nielsen data show, a much weaker start than the industry experienced last year.

The major broadcast networks lost an average of 15% of their viewers in the 18-49 demographic compared with the first two weeks of last season. In that same group, viewership of ad-supported cable channels dropped 1%, according to Nielsen.

The figures show less of a decline among people over 50, indicating that overall television audiences are getting older. Among all adults, the declines at broadcast networks were 11% while cable’s overall audience rose 4%.

While it is still early days, and the figures don’t account for some delayed viewing on digital video recorders or video on demand, the data amount to unhappy news for the TV industry.

Viewership tends to be higher in the early part of the TV season, tailing off in the second half after football ends and networks start showing more reruns.

The viewing slump suggests traditional television is being hurt by intensifying competition from online video outlets such as Google Inc’s GOOG -0.51%YouTube and Netflix Inc. NFLX +0.66%

The networks, meanwhile, stress that many TV watchers are simply watching less live programming and instead recording it with digital video recorders. Nielsen hasn’t yet released figures that include viewing delayed by up to three days. But in a report on Thursday, Nomura Securities analyst Michael Nathanson said that historically programs viewed up to three days after air date tend to see audience increases of 3.8 percentage points over standard ratings, which include only same-day viewing.

“There is little doubt that early 2012/13 network results have been disappointing,” Mr. Nathanson added.

Ad buyers said they are watching the ratings drops closely, to see if the declines persist. “It’s only two weeks into a 36 weeks season,” cautioned Brad Adgate, a senior researcher at Horizon Media.

Still, most advertisers are protected from depressed ratings by provisions in their contracts that require networks to provide additional ad time if audience levels don’t meet certain guarantees.

The early results are promising for at least one network: NBC. Its 18-49 audience is up 11%, hinting at a nascent comeback for the network after years in the prime-time doldrums. NBC has been elevated by “Sunday Night Football,” the highest-rated show on television, as well as the third season of its singing competition “The Voice,” which has so far outshined its rival on Fox, “The X Factor.”

“The Voice” has additionally provided a strong launching pad on Monday nights for NBC’s new post-apocalyptic drama “Revolution.”

NBC is a unit of Comcast CMCSA +1.82% Corp, while Fox is a unit of News Corp.,NWSA +1.04% which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Worst hit have been News Corp.’s Fox and CBS CBS +0.77% Corp’s CBS, each down around 25% in the 18-49 demographic that is most important to advertisers. CBS continues to be the top-rated network but it has pulled one of its four new shows, comedy “Made in Jersey,” from its Friday night time slot, the first such move by a broadcast network this season. Two of its other new shows, “Vegas” and “Elementary,” have done well.

A few networks are still in the process of introducing their lineups, so the ratings for the weeks of Sept. 24 and Oct. 1 are just the first snapshot. ABC, for instance, didn’t debut “Nashville,” its most anticipated show, until this past Wednesday. ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co. DIS +0.40%

Some big-name cable channels have also experienced sharp declines in the 18-49 demographic, with a 41% decline at MTV and a 27% drop at Comedy Central, both owned by Viacom Inc., VIAB +0.15% and a 13% drop at News Corp’s FX. Meanwhile, cable news channels like Fox News, CNN and MSNBC have drawn larger audiences as the presidential election approaches in November.

“If nothing else,” added Michael Morris, an analyst at Davenport Research & Co, “this race will be a lot tighter than it has been in awhile.”

Tumblr is a shadow figure in the social-media world. Quantcast calculates that Tumblr receives 44 million visitors each month, but the three-year-old social blogging platform still ranks behind Facebook(Nasdaq:FB), Twitter, and Pinterest in popularity with users—and with advertisers.

Companies need to be able to measure the results of advertising campaigns for a platform to provide real value. With Tumblr’s announcement Thursday it has named Austin-based Union Metrics its official analytics tool, Tumblr is now a legitimate competitor for a business’ advertising dollars.

http://upstart.bizjournals.com/companies/media/2012/10/08/tumblr-analytics-makes-site-legitimate.html