Time Spent Viewing:
Another Way To Quantify the Value of Cable Viewing

by Dave Zornow

If your advertisers’ eyes glaze over when you talk about VPVHs, ratings, compositions and penetration, there’s another way to quantify cable viewing and demonstrate the unique value of each network. In fact, it’s as easy to understand as telling time.

Time spent viewing measures the average number of minutes per week viewers spend watching a channel. Although it is calculated by using a network’s average audience and its unduplicated cume audience, it tells you different things about a network which go beyond household ratings and VPVHs.

"We consider time spent viewing a measurement of viewer loyalty," says Ken Kagen, director of research for Group W Satellite Communications, the sales and marketing group for TNN, CMT, CBS Eye On People, and CBS TeleNoticias. "If people who watch TNN and CMT spend more time with these channels than viewers to other channels, it indicates that these viewers like what they see, and are not just "surfing" into the country channels out of pure curiosity. They seek, they view, they stay." And it logically follows that the longer viewers stay with a channel, the more likely they are to see the spots that run on that network.

Time spent viewing (TSV) tells a different story than what you usually see on ratings or VPVH one-sheets. In the fourth quarter of 1996, the top four ad-supported networks for Monday-Friday weekly prime time spent viewing were Nostalgia (97 minutes per week), the Cartoon Network (89 minutes), CNBC and Nick at Nite (both 84 minutes). Two of these networks boasted one of cable’s highest household primetime ratings (Nick at Nite delivered a 1.8, TOON checked in with a 1.1) and two showed more modest but respectable results (CNBC, .6 and Nostalgia, .5). But all proved to have a fairly high degree of viewer loyalty, meaning that those who did watch tended to watch longer than the other Nielsen measured networks. The remainder of the top ten time spent viewing networks for Monday - Sunday 8:00pm - 11:00pm were Lifetime, The Nashville Network and TNT (78 minutes), USA Network (74 minutes), Sci-Fi and TBS (72 minutes).

For total day viewing, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite lead all networks for the highest time spent viewing with each Nick-viewing household watching an average of almost six hours per week. The Cartoon Network came in second with just under five hours a week. Three networks scored three or more hours per week (TBS, 3:22, ESPN 3:11 and TNT, 3:08) for total day in the fourth quarter of 1996. The remainder of the top ten for TSV were USA (2:40), CMT (2:38), BET (2:34), A&E (2:31) and Home & Garden (2:27).

Does time spent viewing equate to loyalty and the likelihood of watching an advertiser’s spot? Paul Borgese, research manager of The Weather Channel thinks it does. TWC commissioned Nielsen to conduct a special study which counted the number of continuous minutes a viewer stays tuned to a network without channel surfing whenever a commercial comes along.

Borgese says that The Weather Channel ranked first (19.4 minutes) among all networks watched by "Weekend Navigators" -- Adults 25-54 with household income of $75,000 or more. And TWC ranked third among Adults 25-54 for length of tuning during weekday mornings 6am - 10am besting CNN, ESPN and Discovery in this December 1995 Nielsen study. Borgese says this type of study helps overcome advertiser misconceptions. "We’re not just a .2 network anymore," says Borgese. "We have a lot of compelling information and people are sticking with us for longer periods of time," he says.

You can calculate time spent viewing by multiplying the average audience for a network (AA in ‘000, in Nielsen parlance) times the number of minutes in a daypart dividing the result by the unduplicated audience (Average Weekly Cume in ‘000) for that daypart.

Here's an example:

15 hours * 37 (000) AA
343 (000) Cume Audience

= 97 minutes
= 1.6 hours

Nielsen cable network subscribers can find most of the numbers used to calculate these data in the NCAR book (Nielsen Cable Activity Report).

Time spent viewing is not a replacement for household ratings, demographic composition or VPVHs. But it can add another dimension to the cable viewing profile used by media buyers and sellers.