Some Media Reading

There have been a few reports, publications and press releases recently that are worth highlighting.
The BBC has published its latest monthly iPlayer Performance Pack detailing results for July 2010. I always find this is worth a read.
It’s interesting to note that requests for BBC iPlayer dipped a bit during both June and July. While the weather is almost certainly a contributing factor (and we’re obviously not all into watching programmes on our laptops in the garden), this was during the period of the World Cup which ate up much of the primetime schedule. Even when ITV was showing games, the BBC tended to counter with repeats and non-essential programming.
The slide on page 11 of the report makes for interesting reading too. It details average weekly use of the iPlayer. It breaks out radio, TV, and users of both. So in the week of 26 July, 4.3m users (or more particularly, “user agents”) used the TV functionality, while 1.3m used radio. 0.4m used both. That means an awful lot of people are using TV but not using radio – 9% in fact. Whereas around 31% of radio users also use TV. Seeing how that 9% changes over a longer period will be something to watch out for.
That said, people who listen to radio listen for much longer than television. In July radio users averaged 184 minutes, whereas TV users average just 69 minutes.
Top Gear continues to be the most popular show with episode 3 of the most recent series getting 1.273m requests. This was the episode that clashed with the World Cup Final…
I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is the most popular radio programme with three episodes filling up the top three places each getting about 100,000 plays. I’m always surprised how many people listen to Chris Moyles on the iPlayer, since it’s surely a show you need to listen to live? Yet it fills half the top 20 places.
The other notable radio performer was the World Cup quarterfinal between the Netherlands and Brazil. Because it took place in the afternoon, 69,000 people heard it streaming online.
There’s plenty more to look at in the report.
Deloitte has commissioned another report into TV to accompany the Mediaguardian Edinburgh Television Festival. Perspectives on Television in Words and Numbers is well worth a read as there’s lots to digest.
The headlines from this research centered around the fact that 86% of viewers watching pre-recorded programmes on PVRs always skip through the ads. Interestingly, this made the press release, but not the final report.
Instead the report digs deeper into how people used and trusted different media during the election, with television easily winning out. As other reports have also made clear, we’ve not yet really had our “internet” election.
The report goes into greater detail about television on demand, with a growing number of respondents claiming that this is important – significantly so amongst 18-24 year olds, the majority of whom consider this important. (As an aside, why does Sky still consider giving me access to the Sky Player an extra I should consider myself lucky to have? For the last couple of summers they’ve provided access to Sky Sports, for which I pay a subscription. And now I should consider myself fortunate to have it until the end year.)
The report shows that relatively few people are using their laptops, netbooks or smartphones to comment contemporaneously with live broadcasts of TV shows. Yet, this is surely only going to rise. Using Twitter or Facebook to comment on live shows like the X-Factor only makes them more unmissable to those who like those shows (In the case of X Factor, that absolutely does not include me. Indeed, I’m thankful that Tweetdeck has a filter option that lets users remove Tweets with certain keywords).
While the TV advertising is demonstrated has having the most impact, it’s got to be worrying that as PVR ownership increases, fewer of those ads are going to be seen. Which brings us onto…
Product placement! While this is something of a step into the unknown for UK broadcasters, we’re familiar with the very obvious branding in films (what action film doesn’t partner with a mobile handset provider these days?) and imported TV like 24’s Cisco kit and American Idol’s blurred Coke glasses. The report quotes some American research that suggests recall can increase by 20% through product placement.
The BPI announced that music revenues were up 2.3% in 2009. That’s right up! The BPI puts this increase down to innovation in the digital world and finding new revenue streams.
If you look at the full release, you’ll see that although the overall revenue from Trade Income has increased by 1.4%, it’s secondary revenues that have increased the most at 6.6%. Of that secondary revenues, “more than a third” of it comes from broadcasting and performance revenues (PPL announced pretty decent results earlier in the year).
While the development of new revenue streams is to be admired, it’s interesting that even in these tougher times, revenues continue to rise in the music industry.
Finally, there’s the big one. Ofcom’s annual Communication Market Report. Weighing in at well over 350 pages, it’s a canter through all areas of the media. I’ll just pull a few points from the radio section and highlight them here.
Ofcom noted that while commercial radio’s revenues have fallen 22% over the last five years, BBC Radio expenditure has risen by 26%. And despite the overall number of listeners increasing over the last five years reaching an all time high, the amount of time spent listening has diminished with commercial radio being especially badly hit over the last five years.
Those numbers would suggest that during a period when radio revenues decreased, perhaps less was invested in programming with a resultant fall in listening. I think it’s arguable that radio is investing more in programming now – albeit not necessarily at a local level.
It’s worth noting that in reporting podcast listening based on MIDAS results, Ofcom hasn’t taken into account methodological changes in the most recent MIDAS survey. This results in a dip in podcast listening if you look at the numbers Ofcom shows in their chart (Fig 3.4 on p193). You only have to look at the reported podcast listening numbers from stations like Absolute Radio and the BBC to see that this isn’t the case.
Fig 3.5 in the Ofcom report shows that 16-24s remain an audience for radio to be concerned about, with only 32% of listening time spent on live radio in this age group compared with 69% for all adults (Source: Ofcom research, June 2010).
Fig 3.36 (P223) is worth noting. It highlights just how well commercial radio does in Scotland, whereas BBC Local/National radio in Northern Ireland is especially strong.
While 66% of people have now heard of DAB, only 17% of people said that they intended to buy one in the next 12 months. It’s going to take a few more cheaper radios (like the announcement of a new sub-£40 Pure radio yesterday) to actually get them to commit though.
Satisfaction is amazingly high – both with the choice of stations, and what’s carried on them. 93% of people are satisfied with thier station selection and 94% are satisfied with what’s carried on them.
There’s a lot in here, even if much of it has previously been reported. It’s definitely worth a browse.


Posted

in

, ,

Tags: