• by David Kaplan , December 8, 2004

Despite the seemingly endless amount of other entertainment options, television viewing has never been higher, a report put out by Time Warner's Turner Research asserted at a press conference Wednesday.

Comparing average hours viewed per-person, per-week, Americans seemingly watched 10 percent more hours of TV in 2004 than they did in 1999--or 31 hours compared to 28.2, said Jack Wakshlag, Turner's chief research officer.

And when it comes to the battle of cable versus broadcast, Wakshlag is predicting that this will be the third straight year that cable grabs a greater share of household viewing. Wakshlag estimates that cable will end 2004 with a 52.9 percent share, versus a 43 percent share for broadcast.

And going further into next year's predictions, Wakshlag offered up more doom and gloom for Turner's broadcast rivals.

"Last November will be the last sweeps period when broadcast will out-deliver cable," he said, pointing to a 51.7 share for cable and 46.3 share for broadcast this year.

"Faltering ratings for NBC and FOX are dragging down broadcast," Wakshlag said, pointing to a percentage change in average prime-time ratings for the first 11 weeks of the season that showed both nets down 8 percent.

He then ran through a litany of other bad news for broadcast, such as ad dollars continuing to shift to cable--a 7 percent shift since 2000. Still, Wakshlag's figures do show that broadcast has a healthy lead in that department, holding a 70 percent share of ad dollars to cable's 30 percent.

Nevertheless, it was hard to ignore other ominous figures for broadcast. Compared to last year, five of the seven broadcast networks were down, with the biggest drop among persons ages 18 to 34 at 5 percent. In addition, so far this season, broadcast has lost 1.7 million households, while ad-supported cable gained 2.7 million, Wakshlag said.

Aside from broadcast's apparently negative portents, Wakshlag took on an advertisement from Fox News that said Time Warner's CNN "claims to be No. 1" by using "deceptive measures [by counting] channel surfers."

Looking at adults ages 25 to 54, both Fox and CNN each have 13 gross ratings points, Wakshlag said. "But CNN has more reach--5 percent to Fox's 3.9 percent--while Fox News has more frequency-- 3.3 percent to CNN's 2.4 percent. Fox's ad is misguided and misleading when it calls CNN viewers channel surfers. CNN's reach translates to viewer schedules. And that is important to media buyers."

As for the other Turner properties, TNT and TBS, Wakshlag said that the former "wins total day with adults 18 to 49 and 25 to 54 for the second year in a row," while "TBS wins total day with 18 to 34 among full-time networks for the eighth straight year."