Ran into former CTV CEO Ivan Fecan last week at the Air Farce book launch. The most powerful man in Canadian television is keeping a low profile these days. He snuck almost undetected into the back of the CBC atrium to catch Don Ferguson’s speech and grab a few free Tim Bits. It was the wavy white hair that gave him away.
Fecan looks fit and happy so I have to take him at his word that he is giving this whole crazy TV world a big fat pass for now.
I asked him what he has learned about TV in recent months approaching it for the first time in a long time strictly as a consumer. Here’s what he said: he can’t believe how much content he consumes now on mobile devises. Those cool liitle iPads are the bomb.
Fecan’s remark resonated this week as a couple of reports came out charting TV ratings beyond the usual real time head counts. John Solberg at FX put out a release showing that, when you tally everything up, American Horror Story was the No. 1 series premiere ever at his network and that episode three topped episode one’s take.
Comparing Live+Same Day data to Live+Seven Day, the premiere of the series went up 54% in adults 18-49 and 49% in adults 18-34. “As the DVR universe grows, it is becoming increasingly clear that the reporting of Live+Same Day ratings fails to tell the full story,” goes the release. The seven day total shows 3.14 million 18-49-year-olds watched the premiere on FX in America.
Then there’s this report that Netflix and other video streaming dominates Internet traffic during TV’s prime time hours. The report suggests 60% of all downloading traffic in North America occurs between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. More evidence that people are surfing on demand rather than being tied down to network schedules.
1 Comment
Live viewing still counts far more to advertisers, so until that changes I’d take whatever PR spin the networks want to put on ratings with a grain of salt.
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