13 May 2015 515 words, 3 min. read

5 trends that threaten old broadcasters

By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab PhD in marketing, director of IntoTheMinds
Old-fashion medias have never been more threatened than today by new consumers’ behaviors. Television channels are certainly in the middle of the storm and must quickly adapt to consumers aged under 30. Read further to discover 5 trends that will […]

Old-fashion medias have never been more threatened than today by new consumers’ behaviors. Television channels are certainly in the middle of the storm and must quickly adapt to consumers aged under 30. Read further to discover 5 trends that will re-shape the business models in the coming years.

Trend 1: television is not King anymore

Recent studies show that younger watchers between 14 and 25 prefer watching TV on a computer rather than on a TV set. Will the flat screen in your living survive ? Not sure … the trend is towards using computer, tablets and smartphones. Like for landlines and cell phones, we may well evolve towards a Society where mobile devices will replace TV sets for a more versatile use.

It’s just a question of time and of adoption by older generations. How disruptive is that? Like in many other industries, younger generation invent new usages and threaten business models

Trend 2: streaming is King

The time of broadcasting is behind us. Take a closer look at this word: broadcasting. Everyone watches the same at the same time. Whether you like it or not, you have no choice than to watch it. Streaming has changed all that and Gen Y and Z want to compose their own programs. Believe it or not, this trend is massively adopted by older generations too and the trend is reversed only for people above 50. The latter still prefer watching “old school” TV.

Trend 3: Fast forward threatens advertisers

Replay and VOD (Video On Demand) are just two technological innovations that contribute to modifying behaviors. This technology has been introduced by cable TV companies which have been surprised by the negative effects. The fast forward function has been adopted to skip TV ads, hence making the advertising messages even less effective. This in turn has led companies in FMCG and retail to decrease their investments. As a consequence, broadcasters have seen their advertising revenue decrease … not really a good news when you consider their 50-year old business model where advertising had to compensate production and diffusion costs.

Trend 4: information captured on social media

The 14-25 generation is watching TV less than older generations. Consequently they have to look for other sources of information. Whil TV remains a source of information for 28%, Facebook and Twitter come in second place with 26%. Guess which media is coming last … newspapers of course (7%). In the latter category, the quest of survival has never been so crucial (see for instance the Premium initiative launched by Le Figaro in France). With 1.4b people on Facebook, don’t you think that it can become the next standard for online information? Actually, it could be much more than that. But we’ll talk about Facebook’s strategy in another post.

Trend 5: Binge watching

Can you imagine that 42% of the 14-25 generation practices binge watching at least once a week ? In other words, almost half of that generation spends at least one evening watching several episodes of a serie. Guess who is the big winner: Netflix of course ! With the rise of American series like Game of Thrones or House of Cards, classic broadcasters can do little.

Photo: shutterstock


Posted in big data, Marketing, Research.

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