1. Scripps Tries Pushing Antenna Use

Scripps, which, as you will learn in next month’s TVREV Special Report on Local TV, owns 61 local stations, rolled out a combo DVR/antenna device this week that gives users access to 50 hours of DVR storage (remember DVRs?) as well as access to a couple of dozen FAST channels.

The device, from Scripps-owned Tablo, costs $99 without an antenna, $109 with one. It comes with an app that lives on connected devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV, hence the ability to offer FAST channels.

Throw in all of the available subnets (something else you can learn about in the report) and, if you live in my particular section of New Jersey, you will have access to 117 channels.

While all this may initially sound rather compelling, the real question is, does anybody actually want it?

Why It Matters

Over the air reception in the U.S. has been HD for some time now and yet, as per 2022 data from Nielsen, only around 15% of U.S. households make use of an actual antenna.

That’s partly because reception in the U.S. is still somewhat iffy (we are a big country with lots of obstacles between people’s homes and broadcast towers) and partly because one of the reasons people cut the cord is they find they are mostly watching SVOD services, with a smattering of FASTs thrown in.

Streaming is also an option for potential cord cutters who still want to watch local TV news, as a significant number of local broadcasters have migrated their news shows, both to the FASTs and to services like STIRR and NewsOn. In addition, there are free apps like LocalNow and Haystack that also provide local news.

Despite the shift towards streaming, there is still a market for over-the-air TV and the diginets that come along with local broadcast stations. Those viewers though are largely low-income and/or rural and one reason they still watch over-the-air is because they don’t have access to broadband, either due to cost or because they live in areas where high-speed broadband is still not available. 

These viewers are why the diginets are popular, but given that the Tablo device needs an internet connection, they are probably not the market for it.

Interestingly enough, many of the people we spoke with for the report mentioned that they thought the new Infrastructure Bill would bring about a significant decrease in over-the-air viewing. The theory is that the bill will bring high-speed, low-cost broadband to people who currently lack such service. At the same time, local broadcasters are moving more and more of their content to streaming. The result is that these over-the-air viewers will then switch to streaming, which offers a much wider array of viewing options, many of them free.

One more note on this: Certain broadcasters have been pushing Next Gen TV hard for the past five years or so, and yet Tablo, interestingly, does not yet support it. That’s a telling sign as to the slow adoption of the technology, both from consumers and from TV manufacturers, and why many of the people we spoke with for the report were skeptical about its current prospects.

What You Need To Do About It

If you’re Scripps, this is a product in search of a solution. It’s a great fit for more affluent cord-cutters who want access to their local network affiliates and don’t mind paying extra for a DVR. The problem is, that’s not a huge market.

Your best bet is to continue to look at ways to move your news programming to streaming and to develop your own syndicated programming that you can use on both broadcast and streaming. With over 60 stations, you definitely can achieve some economies of scale.

If you are a viewer who does, in fact, fit into the aforementioned category, then definitely check out Tablo—it seems to be getting excellent reviews.

2. The VAB Is Beefing With Nielsen Again

Nielsen recently announced that it was going to be using Amazon’s viewership data to measure certain programs, Thursday Night Football being the most notable. The data would be used to estimate viewership, which in turn would affect ad rates.

This led to some pushback from the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB).

The gist of the VAB’s complaint was that Nielsen was tipping the scales in favor of Amazon to the detriment of the broadcast and cable networks it represents.

So not that Nielsen shouldn’t be doing this, but rather, that they shouldn’t only be doing it for Amazon.

Which is a valid point, only it skirts around the key issue here which is that the networks all make their data available through the somewhat newly formed JIC (Joint Industry Committee) and Nielsen and the JIC are not playing nicely together.

Why It Matters

The networks are all in an odd position.

Yes, they are correct that what Nielsen is doing is not exactly fair. 

But the odds of Nielsen making use of their first-party data is most definitely affected by the fact that it is only available via the JIC.

This is not the JIC’s fault, nor is the JIC a bad idea. 

It’s just that Nielsen and the JIC don’t see eye-to-eye on a number of issues, and that puts everyone in an awkward position. 

So there’s that.

There’s also the fact that to the outside world, the TV industry’s complete inability to agree on measurement seems like a relic of a bygone age.

And as more and more TV viewing happens on streaming, it will be.

Even today, hearing all the brouhaha about the ratings of the various cable news shows seems like a throwback to an earlier era. A fact that is driven home by how low those actual ratings are, especially when compared to 10 or 15 years ago.

Once streaming becomes the de facto way viewers watch TV, then all of the mishegoss around ratings will go away.

Unfortunately, we may have to wait a good 10 years or longer for that to happen, so we’re stuck with this mess for a while, as the industry tries to reconcile something that is easily measurable (streaming, because it’s digital) and something that is not (traditional broadcast and cable.)

To be clear, it’s not as if anyone is suggesting that Amazon or other streaming companies grade their own homework by providing their own unchecked viewership stats. It’s that they want them to provide their viewership logs to measurement companies like Nielsen, iSpot, Videoamp and Comscore so that they can verify them and make use of them.

Big difference.

What You Need To Do About It

This is an easy one. 

Everyone needs to just grow up and start playing nicely together.

One of the biggest complaints brand advertisers have about TV—streaming TV in particular—is they don’t understand how it is currently being measured and how to compare linear and streaming. They don’t have the time to mess around with dozens of marginally different measurement systems that prevent them from doing anything vaguely resembling apples-to-apples comparisons and so they just opt out. 

Internecine battles like this do no one any favors and just help to further the impression that TV measurement is a wet hot mess. 

Nielsen needs to be able to work with the various networks the same way they work with Amazon and other digital-first players. If that means figuring out how to work with the JIC, then so be it. I can guarantee them, the profit will outweigh the pain, whatever solution they eventually work out.