Research
Out of home TV: Not just men in bars
By Kevin Downey
Apr 9, 2007, 01:10

Media buyers have long known that a lot of television viewing takes place outside the home, and beyond the reach of Nielsen Media Research’s tracking system. One step into a busy saloon tells them that.

What they didn’t know was just how much such viewing takes place and where. And they didn’t know what people were actually watching when they're watching TV away from their homes.

Now there are some answers, thanks to a new study from Arbitron, the radio ratings service.

The topline results: 88 million people, or 35 percent of the television audience, are watching TV outside their homes each week, according to a telephone survey Arbitron conducted last fall with 2,500 people over the age of 12. Most of this viewing isn’t included in Nielsen Media Research ratings used as currency in negotiations.

On average, these viewers are watching more than two hours of TV outside the home each day.

About 20 percent of survey respondents say they watch sports outside the home, while 19 percent watch local news, 18 percent tune into regular TV series, 15 percent watch network or cable TV news, 7 percent watch financial news and 5 percent say they tune into awards shows.

The results are surprising on several levels, and one is the sheer magnitude of the away-from-home viewing audience. Another is the breadth of that viewing beyond the expected places.

“The perception in the industry is that out-of-home viewing is taking place among groups of men watching sporting events in bars and restaurants,” says George Brady, senior manager of Arbitron TV Services. “It’s not just men in bars.”

In terms of where they watched TV outside the home, respondents were told to choose one or more places: 70 percent said they watched at someone else’s house, 30 percent at restaurants and bars, 19 percent at work, 13 percent in hotels or vacation homes, and 33 percent somewhere else.

But another big surprise is the source of the research, not Nielsen, which tracks TV viewing, but Arbitron, whose purview is radio.

It comes out of Arbitron as it prepares to roll out its Portable People Meter, a mostly passive multimedia measuring system that panelists clip onto their clothing as they go about their day. Though Arbitron will use the PPM to measure radio listening, the original idea was to track a range of away-from-home media usage, including television, relying on signals picked up by the PPM when it comes in range of a particular medium equipped for tracking.

Originally, Nielsen was involved in the PPM test as Arbitron's partner but eventually backed out, and Arbitron later decided to drop television tracking and just track radio. Years earlier, in fact, Arbitron had tracked TV as a Nielsen competitor then got out of the business.

Arbitron decided to do the study based on data flowing from the PPM tests.

“The test data we’ve been getting from the PPM has been showing significant amounts of [TV] viewing taking place away from home,” says Brady. “In order to qualify that quantitative number, we thought it was important to do this type of study to understand where people are watching, the frequency of viewing and the types of programming they’re watching.”

One criticism of this study is that it was conducted shortly after Thanksgiving, a holiday season when many people are on vacation and watching more TV than they normally would, potentially skewing the results.

Meanwhile, Nielsen has been working on its own to widen the universe of TV viewing it tracks, after years of pressure from media buyers and advertisers to expand the range and depth of its reporting.

In January, Nielsen began measuring for the first time viewing in college dorms, and the effect has been to raise ratings for younger-skewing shows like ABC’s “Men in Trees.” Says Jordan Breslow, director of broadcast research at MediaCom: “With Nielsen including college kids away from home, we’ve seen a nice lift in viewership among [adults] 18-24.”

Nielsen also now measures DVR-recorded viewing in addition to live viewing, and in May it will begin issuing so-called commercial ratings, or ratings for actual ads versus the shows they air in. Delayed viewing and commercial ratings are expected to become the currency upon which ad prices are set in next year's upfront market.

But at this stage, the away-from-home viewing tracked by Arbitron won't figure into negotiations, as much as it would benefit the TV networks.

“We’ve known for years that out-of-home viewing takes place,” says Breslow. “But we don’t have a built-in measure so we really can’t count the out-of-home audience, although it may be added-value if the networks or TV producers can convince buyers that there are out-of-home viewers.”