Networks Face a Bumpy Ride

By BRIAN LOWRY

Aug. 20, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A 1992 Bruce Springsteen song has finally become truly prophetic: If you can’t find anything you want to watch in the vast TV ether, odds are you really do have 57 channels and nothing on.

The fact that Nielsen Media Research estimates that the average U.S. household receives 57 channels--three times the number available in 1985--demonstrates the dramatic impact technology has had on viewing habits in just the last few decades, even as the TV industry braces for its collision with computers, the Internet and digital formats.

Recently issued data compiled by Nielsen and another media tracking firm, Statistical Research Inc., underscores how rapidly this explosion in the number of viewing options has occurred--ensuring that the thumbs and forefingers of couch potatoes, if nothing else, will get plenty of exercise.

New wrinkles on the old TV watching habit have appeared with astonishing speed. Consider videocassette recorders--a device essentially nonexistent in 1980 now found in anywhere from 85% to 90% of U.S. households. Meanwhile, any effort associated with changing channels largely disappeared thanks to the remote control, available now to 94% of viewers, up from fewer than three in 10 during the mid-1980s. In addition, roughly three-quarters of households are wired for cable or own a satellite dish, compared with 20% in the mid-1980s.

These trends have conspired to undermine the popular image of nuclear families gathering around a lone electronic hearth. Not only are there more channels to watch, but nearly three-quarters of homes contain two or more TV sets, freeing Mom, Dad and the kids to scatter to different rooms. Indeed, more than a third of children under 18 now have TV sets in their rooms.

All this represents a significant departure from the way people watched TV a quarter-century ago--back when only 43% of homes had more than one TV set, and families still assembled to watch Top 10 shows like “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son” and “The Waltons.”

For ABC, CBS and NBC, which once depended on people sticking with them almost out of sheer inertia, these figures at least provide some explanation for their ratings decline.

Granted, the networks have committed plenty of their own programming and scheduling blunders, but these sweeping changes have happened faster than you can say “The Chevy Chase Show.” Network executives thus find themselves in uncharted territory, with the combined share of the prime-time audience for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox down to 53%. In the early 1970s, before channels like Fox and the WB (as well as many of their executives) were born, the Big Three commanded more than 90% of viewing alone.

Though advances in TV-related technology have undoubtedly helped fragment the audience, nibbling away at the viewing pie, it’s more difficult to quantify how much broadcasters have contributed to their own misfortune--chasing people away with everything from longer commercial breaks to offensive or just plain crummy programming.

There has, for example, been a steady increase in time devoted to ads and on-air promotion to more than 16 minutes per hour. Last month Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s president of research and media development, conceded, “We need to have advertising, [but] at the same time, you don’t want to put in so much that it basically drives people to be flipping.”

Still, these are by no means only modern irritants, as demonstrated by a 1971 poll about TV, conducted by Louis Harris for Life magazine. The poll found widespread complaining among viewers about both the number and sound level of commercials, and two-thirds of those surveyed agreed with the statement: “Sometimes TV is an insult to my intelligence.”

If the latest Nielsen and Statistical Research Inc. data provide a reminder that television has undergone what amounts to a seismic technological shift since that pre-Watergate era, the future promises considerably more rocking and rolling.

The least-known variable involves computers and the Internet, which have grown at breakneck speed in penetration and usage since 1994. In that five-year span, computers have expanded from 25% to 47% of U.S. homes, and the percentage of people plunking away online has increased sixfold, from 6% to 35%.

Despite such figures, the news isn’t entirely bleak for existing networks. Though some early studies have suggested that Internet usage will cannibalize TV viewing, recent findings from Nielsen and Statistical Research suggest a more complex relationship in which the two can peacefully coexist.

“A lot of people are running around like the sky is falling, that people are going to stop using their TVs and move over to their computers,” said David Tice, senior project director at Statistical Research Inc., who doesn’t expect that to happen.

According to Tice, early research often resulted in false conclusions because the techno-geeks and high rollers who acquired home computers initially, before they became widespread, were less likely to watch a lot of television anyway. By contrast, the company’s latest survey suggests that people with computers consume more media in general, including TV-related consumption, from buying pay-per-view events to renting videos.

The major networks also cite data that suggests, with a few exceptions, the audience is essentially theirs to lose. This is because viewers--even those receiving as many as 70 channels--on average regularly watch no more than 16 of them. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox almost invariably remain part of that mix--serving as a sort of home base for viewers before they begin flipping elsewhere.

“The process is check the networks first and go from there,” said David Poltrack, CBS’ executive vice president of research. “People almost always start with the network, the exception being children, who start with Nickelodeon, and some men, who go to ESPN.”

As for what lies ahead, the next wave of technology will include such innovations as video on demand--the ability to punch up a movie or TV program based on your schedule, not the network’s--and personal video recorders, which will tape and set up a personal program menu tailored to individual tastes, in some instances excising commercials. Both have the potential to make this jumbled media puzzle even more confounding.

In fact, as fast as changes have occurred since Life examined TV’s first quarter-century in 1971, they may pale compared with the coming decade. As Statistical Research Inc.’s Tice put it, “I don’t know how anyone’s going to keep up with what’s happening over the next few years.”

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TV’s Shifting Landscape

Technology has brought seismic change to the TV business in the last few decades, and more lies ahead.

Trends in Television Ownership

Average Number of Channels Received Per TV Household

1985: 18.8

1990: 33.2

1995: 41.1

1998: 57

Source: Nielsen Media Research

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The convergence of TV and computers could lead the next series of changes in how we use television.