Commentary

Big TV Awards Show: Are Consumers Seeing Through All The Glam?

by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 20, 2016

Another big TV event sees some lower ratings. This year’s Emmy Awards sank to 11.3 million viewers, an all-time low.

Still, Nielsen Social says there was 1.4 million unique social media contributors and 2.7 million interactions for the awards show on ABC.

Meanwhile, the longtime established cable TV lobbying group -- the NCTA, the National Cable Television Association -- now looking to be a more-encompassing group, announced a new name with the same initials: “NCTA – The Internet & Television Association.”

In both cases, it’s all about getting bigger -- or at least looking that way.

Still, I agree with my friend Adam Buckman of MediaPost’s TVBlog, who writes that “this annual televised celebration of [the] industry almost always comes across as gross showing off.”

Do viewers see this desperation — that shows like the Emmys aren’t really about entertaining viewers, or anointing specific creative, so much as reminding TV viewers that they make great product?

Consumers have obvious media alternatives, and it's challenging to keep them paying attention to programming and advertising content.

The former cable TV group, the NCTA, has been realizing this for some time. Two years ago, NCTA rebranded its big annual conference, which was called The Cable Show, into “INTX: The Internet & Television Expo.”

No surprise that a number of TV advertising/business groups -- the TVB, the VAB, and the NCTA -- all looked to expand their purview to bigger media platforms. After all that is where the growth has been moving.

If consumers are seeing the desperation of some TV promotional efforts on-air, does this mean TV business executives are mulling the same? The transitioning of legacy media businesses isn’t over. So hold back on awarding any celebratory hardware.

2 comments about "Big TV Awards Show: Are Consumers Seeing Through All The Glam?".

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Doug Garnett from Protonik, LLC, September 20, 2016 at 2:25 p.m.
I wonder if there's a perspective thing here. Adam Buckman's “this annual televised celebration of [the] industry almost always comes across as gross showing off” is actually quite fun for many viewers.
I'm also interested in the converting of those social numbers. "Streams" end up getting cut by massive factors in order to be compared with TV. Wonder what the similar might be for those big looking (but are they really?) social numbers.
Reply

Steve Beverly from Union Broadcasting System, September 21, 2016 at 2:07 p.m.

People who continue to be glued to the Emmys are the more intense viewers and the ones who will tweet constantly just as hardcore football fans following their favorite teams.

Truth is: if the networks are insistent on keeping it on Sunday nights opposite the NFL, those numbers are still going to sink. Go to Tuesday or Wednesday or move the Emmys back to the spring, where they long dominated decades ago.

The Emmys became a huge turn-off for certain elements of the audience as far back as 1992 when the show was turned into a liberal Democrat "take that, Dan Quayle" broadcast.