Big 3’s Remote Attitude

If yours is an average home, you take the remote control (94% of you have one) and flip through 45 channels seeking something to watch on a television that will be turned on more than seven hours each day.

Actually, it’s probably one of two or three TV sets in the house. You’ll tune in a bit longer each day if you’re a woman. Meanwhile, men are more apt to find a game they want to watch on cable or an independent station. Even teenagers--the group least likely to be caught watching TV--hang out in front of one an average of three hours daily.

Oh yes, and for the first time during an average hour of prime time, nearly as many of you are watching cable as are watching the three major networks.

These changes in the way people watch television, as monitored by Nielsen Media Research, have happened gradually, but the departure from a few years ago is striking.

Since 1990, the number of channels received by an average home has increased 50%; in fact, 12% of homes have access to at least 70 channels. More than four out of five homes contain VCRs, another figure that has risen steadily.

Nearly three out of four households contain at least two TV sets, and half of those possess three or more, meaning the image of Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky sitting down to watch together is mostly a thing of the past; rather, Mom, Dad and the kids scatter into two or three different rooms to view programs targeted particularly to them.

Given this proliferation of options, it seems inevitable that viewing of ABC, CBS and NBC--once virtually the only games in town--would diminish. Nevertheless, some within the television industry wonder whether the shift is happening faster than expected and if the networks are doing enough to slow that viewer exodus.

The latest alarm is sounding thanks to the major networks’ recent prime-time audience levels, which have fallen to what some see as appalling lows. In the weeks since the NBA basketball playoffs ended, ABC, CBS and NBC have accounted for a mere 40% of viewing on an average night (and just short of half the audience even with Fox included in the network tally).

As recently as five years ago, the Big 3 alone drew 54% during a similar period. At that point, Fox programmed only four nights a week, the UPN and WB networks didn’t exist, there were fewer cable channels and the Internet was a vague concept to many of those who now spend the hours once allocated to television on their computers.

Some television veterans fear the networks are fiddling while Rome burns, paying too much attention to day-to-day competition among themselves without addressing the larger issues of changing audience patterns.

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For example, while cable networks roll out splashy original movies and specials during the summer, most of the networks--bowing to financial pressures--still use those months to “burn off” episodes of canceled series while rerunning their more popular shows.

Cable, meanwhile, continues to flourish year-round, thanks largely to the introduction of new channels, each slicing off a few thousand more viewers from the potential audience. As producer Gerry Abrams, co-chairman of Evolve Entertainment and a former CBS executive, put it, the networks’ loss of audience to these fledgling competitors is “like getting pecked to death by ducks.”

Tim Brooks, senior vice president of research for the USA Networks, said he had been projecting that basic cable channels would equal aggregate viewing of ABC, CBS and NBC by next summer. Based on June’s results, however, and on the fact network ratings are traditionally weakest in July and August, Brooks thinks that milestone may occur this year.

“This could be the summer in which cable for the first time has more viewers in toto than the Big Three do,” Brooks said.

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For their part, network executives recognize the fundamental shift taking place but insist that it’s premature to press the panic button, despite the historic lows to which they’ve sunk this summer.

Larry Hyams, vice president and director of audience analysis at ABC, calls the shift in viewing habits “a gradual evolution” that represents a steady nibbling at the network audience rather than a full-scale bite.

In addition, the drop in summer viewing has generally been constant since the early 1980s, with network ratings dropping about 30% from their levels during the regular TV season, September through May.

Although some contend that the glut of reruns during the summer doesn’t recognize new competitive realities, network executives point out that original programming hasn’t performed particularly well either. Viewers are accustomed, they say, to tuning out in droves from Memorial Day until after Labor Day, when lifestyle patterns shift again.

Still, the decline in network viewing is year-round, raising the chicken-and-egg question as to whether depressed summer viewing has a carry-over effect, conditioning people to more willingly sample alternative channels and lose the network habit.

“The history has been [that] fewer people come back every fall,” said USA’s Brooks, noting that the networks didn’t generate a major viewing spike even in May, when they trotted out a steady barrage of major miniseries during sweeps. “That doesn’t suggest good things for their next big burst in the fall.”

The networks place some blame on the messenger, Nielsen. The ratings service hasn’t kept pace with the many ways and places people now watch television, ranging from a portable TV on the beach to catching a favorite daytime soap at work, said Preston Beckman, NBC senior vice president of program planning and scheduling. If all this were taken into account, he said, the networks’ ratings would be higher.

The lament is one that Nielsen--while working to address such concerns--has politely suggested the networks didn’t use when they dominated the television landscape.

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Grim as the Nielsen numbers may be, the networks find room for optimism. They each still reach a wide national audience, an increasingly unique marketing position as ratings splinter, allowing them to garner a disproportionate share of advertising dollars.

The population also keeps growing, so even with a smaller percentage of available viewers, the networks attract millions of people every night.

Research also shows that people watch only a few of the channels available to them with any regularity. Although the average home receives more than 40 channels, the residents in them view only about 11 of those channels at least 10 continuous minutes during an average week. And yes, the four leading networks are, invariably, among that group.

The focus now, therefore, remains on marshaling forces toward September, when programmers roll out their fall lineups, which will feature more than three dozen new series, and when UPN and WB are included in the mix.

Even with ratings down, people know there is a premiere week, executives say, which puts the networks back in the spotlight.

“I do believe that in spite of everything, just as the swallows come back to Capistrano . . . people come back” to network television, Beckman said.

Such an assertion may overlook that some people--especially men with an appetite for sports--seem to have lost their willingness to commit to a TV series. Assuming viewers come back to sample network programs, they also do so knowing that they have all those other channels to which they can quickly turn if the new offerings don’t captivate them.

“Viewers still turn to the networks first in September, then they make their viewing choices,” ABC’s Hyams said. “Basically, it’s the networks’ audience to lose.”