In Simulmedia’s ongoing analysis of second-by-second television viewing data, we’re learning more about how people choose the programs they watch and how they watch the programs they choose. Some of the most surprising insights we’ve uncovered relate to people’s loyalty to programming.
Approaching loyalty through our personal television watching experience, we start with the programs to which we are loyal, the programs we eagerly await each week. In light of our attitude toward those programs, we can’t help think that everybody that watches our programs is like us, that our programs’ audiences are as devoted as we are.
Extending to other programs, we think that all programs have a similarly loyal audience. All these other programs that we’re not watching, they have their loyal audiences. Other viewers are making dates to watch these programs and are eagerly awaiting their start times.
Dominant promotional strategy bolsters this perspective on television viewing. Networks focus their marketing efforts on their loyal “core” audience - typically a demographic. By concentrating their promotional arsenal in their own programming, networks endeavor to extend their core audience’s viewing to the next program. If network’s loyal core audience is consistent and large, then the standard promotional strategy makes sense.
It turns out that we’re wrong.
Program loyalty is the exception, not the rule. Only a minority of a program’s viewers is faithful and watches every installment. Most of any program’s audience is just passing through. They tune in to a program once or twice in the course of a season, and then go their merry way.
Source and long text : Simulmedia
