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August 13, 2009

TV's Apocalypse? Calming Words From the Radio Advertising World

The soaring popularity of the iPod and satellite radio brought with it widespread predictions of the apocalyptic end for radio (and therefore radio advertising). These predictions have since been shown to be premature. Or just plain wrong.

An outfit called Changewave Research is reporting results of a recent survey that show "a powerful shift occurring among Boomers away from traditional TV towards new types of online services and entertainment."

Specifically they say that "Boomers now spend more free time online (12.9 hrs per week on average) than they do watching traditional TV (11.8 hrs per week on average)".

And what's driving this trend? The survey result show that "by a five-to-one margin Boomers are watching less traditional television than they did a year ago. Among this group, 62% say it's because they're not as interested in what's on TV these days, and another 26% say they're spending more time surfing the web."

Changewave's research dug deeper into Boomers' thinking. Among the findings:

"Among traditional TV viewers, an astonishing one-in-five (20%) say they're likely to downgrade or cancel their current TV service package in the next 6 months. The likelihood of canceling is highest among Cable (22%) and Satellite subscribers (22%), and lowest among fiber-optic TV subscribers (7%)."

"We also asked Boomer respondents to tell us which one paid subscription they'd be most willing to give up, and again its TV Service (44%) that appears most vulnerable - scoring significantly worse than any other subscription service."

We wouldn't be surprised to see apocalyptic daggers being thrown toward TV after these research findings. Nor will we be surprised to see the dagger throwers proven wrong in the long run. No doubt TV entertainment will look differently in the future, but just as with radio people won't stop wanting their entertainment (when, where and how they want it). The advertising landscape will change, but advertising opportunities won't disappear. And those who engage direct response professionals will still fare the best.

Posted by Jeff Small & Brett Astor at 10:53 AM | Permalink