Sponsor (Apr-June 1959)

New light on video's summer dip Special Nielsen tabulations explode some common advertising assumptions about viewing in hot weather ^ Nighttime study shows almost as many homes watch tv weekly during the summer as during the winter Sunn' sinuii assumptions about summer viewing are flue to be knocked for a loop by some new Nielsen research on the subject. The research makes clear that admen can no longer impress a client h\ lightlv tossing off such phrases as "Summer viewing i> down a third, j on know." Though this statement is true in a limited sense, the newly-released Nielsen data underlines some startling qualifications anent the summer dip. Item: In a typical summer week, almost as many different homes watch nighttime tv as during a typical winter week. Item: Heavy summer viewers watch almost as much as hea\\ winter viewers at night. Item: The all-important large families, repository ol so much buying power, tend to view heavily in the summer as well as the winter. These facts come out of tabulations performed by Nielsen for the first time. They answer a number of questions about summer tv that timebuvers and researchers have been asking themselves for some time. Since the material has not been widely circulated among Nielsen clients. SPONSOR presents the summer stud) in its entirety below. The Nielsen studv is based on a comparison of nighttime viewing during the 2-8 March and 3-9 August weeks last year. Detailed tabulations during the first week of March are an annual affair with the research firm and are the source of much basic data on the dimensions of video (as well as radio I . Last fall Nielsen's I). C. McGlathen tossed a batch of piiiiiiiiiin iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin WEEKLY SUMMER AUDIENCE DIP 4% AVERAGE MINUTE AUDIENCE WINTER SUMMER TV HOMES REACHED 000 INDEX 55.5°0 23,588 100 368% 15 824 66 WEEKLY CUMULATIVE AUDIENCE WINTER TV HOMES 94.2°0 REACHED 000 AVC HRS PER WEEK INDEX 40.035 100 SUMMER 90 9°0 39.087 24.75 100 17.02 69 Percent oj tt homes reached during « typical summer week is l'< less than figure during a typical winter /<(■<■/.. special Vielsen research reveals 38 punch cards into the firms huge IBM maw to get comparable data showing how the U.S. audience reacted to t\ during the summer. The first basic figures worth noting are that tv's weeklj audience during the summer rubs right against the winter ceiling. Specifically, while tv reached 40 million homes during the March week, it also reached 39 million homes during the \ugust week. In terms of the total I .S. tv universe, this reads as follows: during the winter 94.2' < of all U.S. tv homes watch t\ at one time or another during a week s time while during the summer the figure is 90.9%. This is a decline of only \c/( . (See chart in lower left-hand corner. I True, average hours per home were down about 30' < . The weekly figure during the winter came to nearh 25 hours, while the summer total was a little over 17 hours. The question has often been asked whether certain homes stop watching entireh during the summer while others maintain w inter \ iew ing levels or whether \ iewing goes down across the board. The answer apparently is that t\ homes generall) tend to watch less. But the storj doesn't stop there. Averages hide a great deal of information. Obviously, all homes don't watch t\ the same amount of time. Some watch less, some watch more. Does the intensit) of viewing \ary in a pattern similar to winter.'' To get this answer. Met dathei v paired the winter and summer audiences hv quinliles. \ quintile is 20% of the total, nothing more. I'he winter audience was broken down into five equal pari and the part were ranged in order of intensit) of viewing. The same was done for the summer audience. Thus McGlather) could compare the lightest viewing 20' ! during the winter with the lightest viewing 20'. during the summer and so on down the line. It should be noted that the light-viewing quinlile during the winter doe not ncees , -arilv contain the same group of home as the light-viewing quintile during the summer, etc. (See chart on bottom of opposite page. I Comparing the two audience is SPONSOR 1 Venn. 1959