Alphonso Partners With Variety To Document COVID Impact On TV Viewing

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We are pleased to announce that Variety has chosen Alphonso as its partner to document the historic changes in television viewership brought about by the COVID Crisis.

Alphonso is working in partnership with Variety and its Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP+), along with other leaders in the television data and analytics industry, to define and document the historic changes in viewing patterns brought about the COVID-19 crisis.

As a result of this, Variety has just published its Covid-19 Industry Impact Report, a data-intensive examination of how the pandemic has transformed media and technology across all sectors. For this report, we examined time spent viewing primetime across broadcast, cable, OTT/VOD from January to June as the U.S. navigated lockdowns, the absence of live sports, and states reopening.
 

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Our analysis for Variety shows just how much TV viewership has changed and evolved since shelter-in-place regulations began in March:

  • Cable news and premium cable news viewership increased in March, but as states began to open up and people started leaving their homes, cable news and premium cable saw a decrease in viewership
  • Overall, viewership across all platforms has declined as states started to reopen, but streaming remains above pre-pandemic levels
  • Traditional linear TV total-day viewership was higher in March-April than prime-time, whereas streaming and VOD saw an increase in prime-time viewership during this time
  • Cable sports viewership drastically declined due to the lack of programming. As a result, consumers shifted to streaming for their source of entertainment

Said best by VIP+ president and chief media analyst, Andrew Wallenstein, we’re experiencing “the best and worst of times all at once” but “there’s something almost comforting about seeing the numbers return closer to normal as we once knew it.” We look forward to our continued partnership with Variety to bring you and your business valuable insights as we navigate the impact Covid-19 will have on the television industry.