TVloop Blog

We’re excited to be announcing a new partnership today with SmithGeiger, one of the premier consumer research companies catering to the TV industry.  As I mentioned in a post yesterday, TV executives have a need for more accurate and dependable research capabilities than are currently available to them.  Just this week, the research chief at Turner Broadcasting hammered Nielsen and Forrester for their shortcomings.

Our partnership with SmithGeiger is not the panacea, but it should help fill the gap for TV networks and others in the industry.  We have access to over 16 million registered users in the TVLoop community which provides a huge audience for research purposes.  We’ll work with SmithGeiger to deliver a stimulus (video, images, etc) along with custom surveys to get key market data for our clients.  And the great thing is that TVLoop members love to tell us what they think.  To test the service, we launched two surveys last week: one geared towards general attitudes about the 2009 TV season and the other targeted at Lost viewers to get their opinion of the Season 5 premiere.  Because of the size of our community, we were able to deliver almost 800 completes for the general survey and almost 1500 for the Lost survey within a few days.

We were able to get some fantastic data from the surveys that just scratch the surface of what the new partnership can do for clients.  Here are some great nuggets, straight from the TVLoop community:

• 51% of viewers think the 2009 season will be better than the 2008 season
• Awareness of new shows seems to be a big problem for the networks - on average, less than half of respondents are aware of the new shows
• Lie to Me (FOX) and Trust Me (TNT) show the most promise with 54% and 46% respectively of those aware of the show are planning to watch
• ABC and FOX are set up to do well with returning shows with the four most anticipated being: Lost (22% planning to watch), Scrubs (24%), American Idol (29%) and 24 (15%)
• Scripted cable shows are holding their own with Psych (12%) and Monk (14%) standing out from the pack in terms of respondents desire to watch
• 92% of Lost viewers thought the season was as good or better than expected; 91% can’t wait for Episode 2 tonight
• 68% of Lost viewers watched the episode as it aired on ABC; 21% watched via DVR; 11% watched online
• In general, Lost viewers indicated that their primary means of consuming their favorite TV shows are: 54% as it airs on TV; 28% on DVR; 14% online; 1% on demand, and 3% via DVD.

Our SmithGeiger partnership and new survey tool will allow us to crank out this kind of data farily regularly, so I’m excited about the data we’re going to get.  If you have any questions about the partnership or want to inquire about being a client, feel free to drop me a note.