November 19, 2012

The Remarkable Dominance Of Live TV


Here in the science wing of The Ad Contrarian Worldwide Headquarters our never-ending battle against the forces of ignorance and trendiness sometimes forces us to publish some actual facts. You remember those, right? Those were the things we used to rely on before the online crowd introduced us to "metrics."

For the benefit of the few who are still interesting in understanding what's really happening in the world -- and because no one loves you like I do -- I have taken the trouble of producing some graphs or charts (I can never figure out the difference) that demonstrate how live television continues to  dominate the media landscape.

The following have been produced from Nielsen's 2012 Q2 Cross-Platform Report which was released within the past few days and, to a substantial degree, discredit just about everything our chattering media geniuses have been predicting for the past 10 years.









Just imagine for a moment that the internet had been invented before television. Then look at these charts in that context. Can you envision how intensely the "shiny new object" crowd would be telling us to dump the web and be all over TV?

And whatever you do, don't show these graphs to Bill Gates...
From FoxNews.com, January 2007
Bill Gates: Internet Will Revolutionize Television
DAVOS, Switzerland —  The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday.
"I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had"
We're laughing, Bill, we're laughing.