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.

AdvertisingAge recently posted a feature in their 3 Minute Ad Age video segment that showed the Turner Broadcasting’s research chief taking the gloves off and laying into Forrester for shady research and Nielsen for it’s measurement process.   You can go directly to the video here.

First and foremost, I’m happy to see that I’m not the only one that has trouble understanding the Nielsen ratings when it comes to Live, Live+3, Live+7, LiveSD, etc.  Aside from needing a mathematics degree from MIT to understand what I’m reading, the almost contant publishing of new data and metrics makes it almost impossible to determine which shows and networks are truly doing better than their counterparts.  It’s no wonder broadcasters are seeing a dip in advertising revenue as someone then has to explain this stuff to your average consumer products marketing manager when they decide where to spend their budget.

So hats off to Jack Wakshlag for taking these research companies to task.  His gripe about Forrester revolves around a report they issued stating that the DVR was going to completely alter the business models of network TV.  The industry, Wall Street, and everyone else panicked and Wakshlag states that the report was based on faulty data.  From a recent survey of Lost viewers, we found that 21% watched via DVR while 68% watched the episode live as it aired on ABC. The remaining 11% watched it online after the fact.  So Wakshlag’s complaint may be well founded.

Regarding Nielsen ratings, I don’t know where to start.  I review the ratings reports as often as I can to see if there are any interesting nuggets to pick out for the blog, but they can be difficult to interpret and even harder to explain.  And Wakshlag makes a fantastic point that there is a lot of underlying behavior that goes into the ratings that cannot be explained by Nielsen.  Why do viewers watch the shows they watch? Why do they return the following week? Why do they start or stop watching a new or favorite show?  All of those things are better explained using research methodologies that Nielsen can’t deliver with their ratings panel of 14,000 viewers.  Stay tuned to tomorrow for an explanation of some better options.

One of the great things about having over 16 million registered users across 200 plus online communities dedicated to TV shows is that we get a ton of data about what our users are doing.  The TVLoop Movers and Shakers Top Ten List is a pretty simple measurement of the shows that added the most users to their respective communities in the previous week.  And the good news is that you don’t need a PhD in mathematics from MIT to understand how our list is put together.  The more users a show added to it’s community, the higher on the list it will be.  So without further adieu, I give you the Top Ten from the week of January 18, 2009:

There are a few surprises on the list, but the big one is The L Word which continues to strenghten it’s foothold in the top five after returning to the air a few weeks ago.  Others, including Lost, Scrubs, and The Simpsons also recently returned to the air after a hiatus which explains the renewed interest in those shows.

When comparing the TVLoop Top Ten to the Nielsen Top 2 from the same week, only 24 and Grey’s Anatomy are on both lists.  Part of the reason could be because of the NFL games and American Idol that dominated the ratings last week, but it’s also related to the online buzz vs broadcast ratings that we documented here back in December.  Many of the shows that get big ratings don’t necessarily have the passionate fans and borderline cult-like following as is often the case in the TVLoop Top Ten.

While the Addicted to Lost application on Facebook showed fantastic numbers, the non-TVLoop world is showing mixed results for the Season 5 premiere of Lost.  Below is a graph from AppData that shows the monthly active user numbers for Lost showing an 80% increase over the last few weeks:

At the same time, we have some early results from a survey indicating that 93% of the fans of Lost thought the premiere met or exceeded their expectations.  So clearly fans of the show were very pleased with the results.  Here are some additional data points from the TVLoop community:

• 400 comments on the premiere episode page
• 286 ratings for the premiere
• 15,535 season 5 premiere quizzes taken
• 8,481 fan chains sent to friends
• 1,489 fans donated their Facebook status to Lost

But according to Nielsen ratings, the season 5 premiere is off 25% compared to the premiere of season 4.  On top of that, series premiere Lie to Me outdueled Lost in their head-to-head matchup by well over one million viewers.  While it’s still very early, that can’t be good news for ABC which is likely banking on Lost to take the lead in the second half of the TV season.  It will be interesting to see how the DVR numbers come in to see if Lost can build up some momentum leading into episode 2 next week.  From my standpoint, I couldn’t be happier as I thought the season premiere was fantastic.  It opened up a whole new set of questions, but that’s what keeps the show interesting for me.

AlwaysOn released their 2009 OnMedia 100 today and we’re happy to say that Watercooler is one of fourteen community plaftorm companies on the list.  At first glance, we’re the only entertainment and sports targeted company out of those fourteen.  To see how others are viewing the news, Vator News has a great blog post about release as well.

Being recognized as one of the top 100 private companies in the online marketing space is something we’re very proud of.  Receiving recognition from the media, clients, and peers continues to provide validation that we’re making the right decisions and getting better every day.  We still have a ton of things we want to do to the TVLoop and FanSection communities to make them the go-to place for entertainment and sports, but it’s nice to know we’re on the right track.