“Our advertising continues to increase,” says Tassler, chairman of CBS Entertainment, when looking at its live airings plus seven days of time-shifting. CBS is also seeing higher retransmission revenues. Tassler was speaking at the Television Critics Association meeting here.
Although CBS is deriving more revenue from other sources, “[TV] ratings are still important,” she says. Considering all TV-video platforms -- time-shifting, digital and otherwise -- “more people are watching CBS now than 11 years ago.”
One of its shows, “Scorpion,” can regularly add 6 million viewers after its live TV airing.
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Although ratings have dipped, Tassler says the good news is that there are many different ways of measuring a TV program’s appeal -- including social media -- which can be valuable to the network. In addition, Tassler says, the marketplace continues to become complicated: “Our customers are also competitors.”
Last season -- looking at just traditional TV viewing during the September to May -- CBS averaged a Nielsen 2.3 rating among 18-49 viewers looking at live program ratings plus seven days of time-shifted (L7) data -- just 122,000 18-49 viewers behind NBC.
Overall, CBS averaged 11.3 million viewers in L7, up from 10.76 million a year ago. CBS continues its top position among 25-54 viewers -- the twelfth time in 13 seasons.