It’s official – some have deserted trad TV

Google revealed yesterday that a small but significant proportion of its users have completely cut the cords to their televisions and no longer watch traditional television at all. Sam Gutelle at Tubefilter reported:

An ensuing report reveals that nearly 10% of viewers who watch Google Preferred channels on desktop computers don’t watch traditional TV. In addition, the majority of those viewers do not visit Hulu or the official streaming portals of the four major TV networks.

Google Preferred is a velvet-roped VIP enclosure for the top 5% of its most popular channels – Machinima, Pewdiepie etc. It’s probably not a bad representative sample of its user-base, although Google acknowledges it skews to the more fanatical/loyal end of the spectrum.

Another analysis of the report found that these cord cutters are more likely to be younger, heavier viewers on mobile devices and more likely to want to purchase stuff online than the general online population.

Ignoring the promotional nature of statistics released to draw ad buyers’ attention from Yahoo and Facebook and drive up CPMs, what does that mean for network television?

Some will be watching network TV-produced long form video on other platforms and channels not stigmatised by Google’s sniffy term “full-episode players supported by advertising” by which they mean ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and Hulu. So Netflix et al aren’t included in the 10% statistic.

But it’s not good news for network TV, whose commercial model is already being undermined by cable companies’ inevitable slide towards a la carte viewing and 2 years of modest decline in pay-TV subscriptions. If the Google data isn’t seriously skewed, it means that a much larger proportion of younger viewers are exclusively consuming short-form or ad-free video. It’s not just Fox News with an average viewing age of 68.8 that has a problem. All the networks have older viewers, which means there’s a time bomb ticking underneath them

What’s clear from this data is that the demographics of your viewers could seriously damage your health in the long run.

For more posts in a similar vein, check out the clipdash blog