Summer TV Viewing Sees Another Double-Digit Percentage Decline

• by Wayne Friedman , 6 hours ago

Summer TV viewing is showing no improvement in declining viewership among virtually all networks.

Only Fox, MTV, Comedy Central had much to cheer about in July -- the only TV networks showing gains in that month versus the same month a year before, according to MoffettNathanson Research.
Prime-time TV was down 12% during the month to a Nielsen C3 18-49 viewership of 16 million -- with broadcast losing 10% and cable networks down 13%. June's total TV prime-time ratings were down 9% and May lost 5%.

The Nielsen C3 metric is the average minute commercial rating plus three days of time-shifted viewing.

Total day viewership posted slightly worse results, falling 13% to an average 10 million total C3 18-49 viewers -- with broadcast losing 8% and cable off 15%.

Fox benefited from the World Cup in July -- posting a 5% gain to average 836,000 18-49 C3 viewers in prime time. ABC was down 6% to 838,000, while CBS went 15% south to 744,000 and NBC lost 17% to 997,000.

Viacom's Comedy Central added 16,000 total day 18-49 C3 viewers in the month and its sister network MTV added 4,000 more. But Viacom also had some big losers.

Among the top 25 cable networks, Nickelodeon was down 93,000 and Nick-at-Nite was off 89,000.
Looking at overall TV cable network groups, Fox did the best among the losers -- down 4% to 1.1 million prime-time C3 18-49 viewers for all its networks, while Discovery dropped 6% to 2.5 million. Viacom sank 8% to 2.3 million, A+E Networks was 10% lower to 998,000, and NBCUniversal was off 14% to 1.6 million.

The next four were Time Warner, dropping 16% to 1.8 million; all independent networks, also giving up 16% to 910,000; AMC Networks declined 17%  to 522,000, and Disney-ABC sank 28% to 640,000.