Quarter-over-quarter, there was a 10% decline in the daily average number of TV-viewing US households consuming linear at the end of the first quarter of this year, along with a 14% decline in total minutes viewed, according to Samba TV’s “State of Viewership” report. The UK, Germany and Australia also saw declines during the period, with Australia seeing a substantial 9.3% decline in linear reach, while the UK and Germany saw moderate declines of 1% and 3%, respectively.
The study revealed that every month since November has progressively seen lower daily average household tune-ins than the previous month in the United States. In November, about 56 million households tuned in to linear TV each day on average, a figure that dropped to 48 million in March. The number of minutes of TV consumed progressively dropped between November and February in the United States, but increased by 2% between February and March.
Dayparts in the United States, Germany, and Australia saw quarterly declines based on both average daily viewership and minutes of TV consumed. The UK was the outlier this quarter, with the daytime and overnight dayparts staying stable or increasing. The UK’s unique position was also reflected in the number of linear TV advertising impressions, which were up between the hours of 7 PM and 5 AM (including prime time) for Q1 2021 compared with Q4 2020.
The investigation also found that 81% of TV networks in the United States saw quarter-over-quarter declines based on average daily household tune-ins. The four major US broadcast networks (Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS) were all down quarter-over-quarter, with Fox taking the biggest hit at -22%. A similar trend was observed in Australia, Germany and the UK.
The “State of Viewership” report was based on approximately 45.1 billion hours of TV consumption across millions of households in the United States, UK, Germany, and Australia, with household viewership data gathered using automatic content recognition (ACR) technology on opted-in smart TVs.