• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 14, 2016

Don’t believe the headlines: TV viewing is up. You just need to expand your vision to a wider panoramic viewing.

Turner Broadcasting says when you look at premium video on all screens -- traditional linear TV, subscription VOD services, laptops, and mobile -- TV programming viewership is up. Not by crazy amounts -- but higher nevertheless.

Late last year Turner released research showing 2015 witnessed 3% growth in viewership for both the 18- to 49-year-old demographic and for 18- to 34-year-old audiences. The 50 and older demo grew 4% in viewership.

Howard Shimmel, chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting, said you need to cobble together a number of TV-video measuring services from Nielsen, comScore, Rentrak and Omniture to get to those numbers. Fair enough.

But monetization? That may be something else. Premium TV producers will tell you they aren’t always able to get their full revenues for that viewership -- from advertisers, or from possibly other places.

Turner should go a step further -- something TV Watch has alluded to for some time. Drop the whole number of viewers thing, and focus on stuff we can understand: money.

In this regard, specific talk should be about dollars that were gained or future estimated revenues -- perhaps gained from the likes of Netflix, or from U.S. syndication license fees, or international program license fees.

We should also have a category for missed revenues -- stuff that has fallen through the cracks -- for each show, for each network. That would be the stuff networks believe Nielsen doesn’t account for -- but should. Ambitious? Sure. But let’s dream.

From time to time, CBS would refer to the likes of “CSI” or “NCIS” as “billion-dollar” franchises. All that offers up a somewhat clearer picture. Maybe we could find out what these shows did in comparison to previous years.

Crazy? How come we know that Walt Disney’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” pulled in $1.8 billion in global box office revenue; that Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World” tallied $1.7 billion; or that Fox’s “Avatar” holds the record at $2.8 billion?

Somehow these reported estimates -- which come via strong guidance from the studios -- have little problem making it into the press -- for a consumer audience, no less! We should also do that for TV.

Networks now love to project their shows' TV-video viewership after an episode's first run -- through three days, seven days, or up to 35 days. Why not project how much TV advertising revenue is expected?

Think this is too-specific financial information --- something competitors can use against you? Don’t worry. If you have something of real value, you’ll find customers -- and maybe even some viewers.