With streaming taking the front of the TV hype stage, it’s time to take a more objective look at traditional TV.
The average adult, according to Nielsen/Marketing Charts, spends 5 hours and 21 minutes per day consuming video content. That is nearly a full-time job watching video screens for the average American adult (nearly 37.5 hours per week or 81 days a year). That number is all video viewing — traditional TV, connected devices, computer screens, smartphones, tablets …
So for traditional TV you can sum up how it is doing in one word: older. People 50 to 64 watch an average of nearly 5 hours of traditional TV per day. People 65 and older watch 6 hours and 39 minutes per day. The numbers drop dramatically for ages 35-49 (2 hours 43 minutes) and for ages 18-34 (1 hour and 12 minutes). There has been a percentage loss year over year for all age groups except 65-plus.
For traditional TV, Gen Xers and boomers are the core audiences. What we don’t know is: As 12-to-34-year-olds age, will they turn to traditional TV or stay with connected devices? This cohort is spending more time with connected devices than traditional TV to begin their video watching. Older boomers did not grow up with connected devices.
You may say that it’s time to get off traditional TV because it is not reaching enough younger audiences. However, here’s a word of caution: The 50-plus audience accounts for more than half the consumer spending in the U.S. In other words, the 50-plus group buys more than half the new vehicles, they have strong earnings power, they shop online, they buy 70% of medical supplies and prescription drugs and 51% of food.
Time is important and so is money. Traditional TV still has both.
Mark Mathis III is chief creative & strategy officer, partner and cofounder of AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising.
One-Minute Marketer® 
I’ve worked at 5 TV stations around the country, so my children (35-40 years old) grew up knowing programs, network affiliations, on-air talent & local advertisers. None of them now watch traditional TV, preferring streaming services & connected devices. Their children have no local station viewing habits. If I look at my local stations’ subchannels, I see recycled nostalgia, home improvement & court programming, all geared for us boomers. Even the primary stations have nothing for younger demographics to build viewing habits. (OK, MeTV does give me early morning old cartoons that I could possibly share with grandchildren, but then I’d have to explain Joe Namath & Medicare ads.) While boomers & GenXers still have money to spend, as we age into fixed incomes (or deal with low wages) spending becomes critically finite. And we’re pretty well set in our brand identifications. Beyond local newscasts (and who in the older age brackets doesn’t already have at least 1 local station’s news/weather app on their phone to free us of 5, 6 & 10 pm schedules?) traditional TV will have to look for other ways to get the messages out, such as OTT & other digital & social methods. Even newspapers are dipping their toes into OTT, trying to play catch-up as they still are stuck in subscription-based, low click-through Facebook & web posts. Meanwhile, my grandkids will become more savvy about online buying because they are exposed to little else.
[…] People are still watching traditional TV. […]