Audience flow

The audience flow is a percentage of how many viewers on television or listeners on radio could be transferred from the last broadcast to the next.

General

Audience flow refers to the movements of the television viewers during successive programs. Audience flow can be used to quantify audience loyalty, one of the most important goals of program planning . It is therefore used as a program planning tool and is one of its most important tasks. For this purpose, successive programs (“program sections”) are programmed vertically in such a way that successive programs fit together as well as possible in terms of content and with regard to the target group addressed. The goal is to optimize the audience flow so that viewers do not leave the station by zapping or return to it. Examples are the court and talk shows that are broadcast one after the other in the afternoon , the TV series in the ARD's early evening program, or the successive crime series on a single station.

During prime time , around 50% of viewers will be inherited to the next program on the same station, as long as the programs match and there are no frictions. Due to the significant decline in viewers of political magazines , the ARD decided in September 2011 to move the magazines broadcast on Mondays to Tuesday so that they could benefit from the popularity of the soap opera In all friendship as part of the audience flow . It can be assumed that audience loyalty is higher if there is no change of genre between two consecutive programs. The television broadcasters therefore try to create the most "smooth" transitions from one program to the next and to maintain the greatest possible homogeneity of the programs. Viewers tend to stay with the broadcaster if there are no commercial breaks, no long credits are broadcast, but there is a quick transition between the programs. In the wake of an upstream soap opera, the decline in viewers of political magazines during “prime time” is less.

history

The rating agency CE Hooper , which has since been liquidated , had begun in September 1945 to measure the radio stations ' listener movements ("flow") from one station to another and to continuously refine the methods to a rating by August 1946 . In January 1950, Hooper and Nielsen Media Research split the market, with Hooper still allowed to measure the local radio stations and rose to become the market leader. Hooper called the radio listeners and asked them which station they were listening to, which program they were watching there and who was the sponsor of it. The American National Broadcasting Company (NBC) pioneered audience flow on television . Its concept consisted of attracting viewers' attention and keeping it through seamlessly overlapping programs. NBC introduced the distinctive bracket elements with the breakfast television ( Today ; from January 14, 1952) and the late night show ( The Tonight Show ; from September 27, 1954).

Commercial break

The interruption of a program by commercials also leads to wandering, because over 50% of TV viewers and radio listeners switch off as soon as advertising comes; only 9% do not change programs by zapping. In order to improve the audience flow , the broadcasters have switched to replacing the hinge advertising blocks (an advertising block between an ending and a beginning new program; often as "countdown advertising") almost completely with interruption advertising (advertising block during a program). However, the commercial break churn rule does not always apply. An attractive series can cope with being interrupted by advertising after it has started because the viewer's interest prevents it from switching off or ensures a return; on the other hand, a lesser-known series on a smaller broadcaster could no longer recover from an early commercial break.

An inevitable and growing problem for private broadcasters is not switching off, but the distraction of viewers by advertising. As a third factor, besides switching off and switching, there is also occupation with other media, primarily computers or smartphones.

Self-promotion for certain programs (so-called “ teasers ”) is also used in the immediate vicinity of the advertised program to try to keep viewers from zapping.

Demarcation

The inheritance effect describes the viewer overlaps of two programs that follow one another. A specific program is specifically watched until its end, but viewers remain on the channel for the next program (“lead-in effect”). Conversely, if the device is switched on too early, viewers wait for the beginning of a program, but end up in the ongoing program, which they follow to the end (“lead-out effect”). The Tagesschau is accordingly “lead in” for the following programs in prime time, on RTL the soap opera Gute Zeiten, Bad Zeiten . If the program planners now position a less viewer-worthy program between two attractive programs, they can benefit from both effects and possibly attract more viewers than they would otherwise have.

The phenomenon of audience flow differs greatly between private television and public broadcasters . In the latter case, the program mandate is a hindrance to optimal use of the audience flow effect.

literature

Katharina Kuchenbuch / Reiner Auer: Audience Flow on ZDF, ARD, RTL and SAT.1. An instrument to support program planning, in: media perspektiven 3/2006, pp. 154–170, available online at: http://www.media-perspektiven.de/uploads/tx_mppublications/03-2006_Kuchenbuch.pdf (last accessed on November 9, 2010).

Individual evidence

↑ Sandra Fösken, No more avarice , in: absatzwirtschaft No. 07/2004, p. 70

↑ ^a ^b see above V .: The most important television technical terms, in: Horizont Austria No. 23/2007, p. 24

↑ Oliver Castendyk, program information of the television stations in the EPG - also a contribution to the interpretation of § 50 UrhG , in: ZUM 2008, 916, 919

↑ Michael Lerotick, audience loyalty and audience behavior , 2010, p. 5

↑ Insa Sjurts (ed.), Gabler Lexikon Medienwirtschaft , 2010, p. 36

↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from January 22, 2013, Der Fluch des Sendeplatzes

↑ Katja Lantzsch / Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen / Andreas Will (eds.), Handbuch Unterhaltungsproduktion , 2010, p. 185

↑ Uli Gleich, determinants of media use , in: media perspektiven 9/2006, p. 490-494, p. 490 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 229 kB)@1@ 2

^ Advertising News and Notes , in: New York Times, September 17, 1945, p. 24

↑ Billboard Magazine, August 17, 1946, Diaries Report Ear Source , p. 8

↑ Warren Sack, Future News: Constructing the Audience, Constructing the News , June 1994, p. 6 ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 184 kB)