By John Altenbern, CJ&N President
This time of year the Midwest presents special challenges. Saturday morning, as a steady trickle of water came down my garage wall from melting ice dams on the roof, I resigned myself to watching a slow-motion domestic disaster unfold. Water always finds a way in.
Just 24 hours before, I was looking over January Nielsen ratings from a CJ&N client which had been knocked off Dish TV for the entire month. The funny thing was, the ratings were just as solid as the month before when the station’s signal was going out to Dish customers. Did the month-long standoff for retransmission fees really have much impact on viewing? It is hard to make the case that it did.
That has big implications for satellite and cable companies as well as stations which depend so heavily on retrans revenue.
These days, consumers find ways to watch what they want, no matter what obstacles come up. Retransmission disputes are the tip of the iceberg. Just like the water from the melting ice on my roof, people find a path to viewing. And just like that water, it can’t be stopped.
Telling my CJ&N colleagues about this prompted a conversation filled with stories of “workarounds” they or friends use to access valued programming: Shared accounts, out of state satellite log-ins, cable provider apps and obscure services. Want to see a special show or sports event? Ask around; one of your friends has likely figured out a way whether they are cable or satellite subscribers or not.
And if you really can’t access a show you’d like to see, there are indications that many people are OK with saying, “So what?” There is always something else available somewhere that is just as interesting to watch.
Take your TV hat off for a moment. Put yourself in the shoes of Jane & Joe Public in Utah. Since last August, a retransmission dispute with DirectTV has knocked KSL-TV/Salt Lake City off the service.
I assume many loyal viewers in Utah have figured out how to stream NBC programs in the meantime, or perhaps they watch the local news over the air or on KSL’s apps which work on Roku, Amazon and Apple TV. Others maybe decided they don’t receive NBC anymore and it’s just not an option. They’ve moved on. DirecTV loses subscribers and KSL doesn’t have any DirecTV money coming in. But for viewers, life continues, and there is no shortage of content to consume.
If that loss of distribution leverage and revenue sounds scary to you, man the lifeboats because the trend is only going to speed up. Stations and distributors both need to conduct new and different kinds of research to better understand where consumers are willing to go and what they will do to get the content they want.
Creating valuable programs that viewers seek out is only part of it. We need to better understand the new paths consumers are taking and how it impacts the local TV business. We are in the midst of an unprecedented consumer disruption, and if we don’t start understanding it and taking some action, we’ll be swept away in the change.
That leaky roof? It’s going to be a flood soon, not a trickle. Get in touch with me to discuss how we can help you with new research insight. jaltenbern@cjni.com
