Nielsen: Daytime Is The New Prime Time

After eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic, daytime TV viewing has become a “second prime time,” according to Nielsen, due to the continuing growth of kids viewing and at-home workers' TV and internet consumption.

For example, in October, professional and managerial workers increased total TV time by 21% between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m (26 additional minutes per day) versus the same period a year ago. (Nielsen defines total TV time as live, time-shifted, internet-connected device, or game console.)

For an entire typical work week -- Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. -- workers are now consuming TV a total of two hours and 10 minutes more than they were a year ago.

The highest-performing hourly time periods during the day are the noon, 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. hours.

In addition, with more kids doing virtual at-home video schoolwork, this audience has also grown in TV and internet usage.

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On a daily basis, in October, TV usage was up 40% to 80% for kids 6-11 and 12-17 during the hourly periods of 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. On a weekly basis, TV usage grew 50 minutes for kids 2-5; three hours 25 minutes for kids 6-11; and two hours among kids 12-17.

And not surprisingly, there is much higher daytime internet-connected usage for kids. For example, internet-connected device use rose anywhere from 100% to 160% higher for kids 6-11 and kids 12-17 in Monday to Friday hourly time periods, 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m. and 2 p.m.

Likewise, professionals/managers have witnessed higher daytime internet-connected device usage -- up 40% to 60% from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m on a typical workday.

1 comment about "Nielsen: Daytime Is The New Prime Time".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, December 1, 2020 at 10:48 a.m.

    Wayne,the folks at Nielsen should stop using percent change as an indication of scale. For example in a recent release they claimed that young adults were gravitating to TV News. And , yep, TV news viewing by 18-34s had more than doubled while the amount of news content consumed by those aged 55+ increased by only 40%----these are rough figures but anyone who is interested can check Nielsen's website to get the exact projections.. So,obviously, TV news is now the place to go if you are targeting 18-34s, right? Wrong! If one looked at the numbers in Nielsen's table the 18-34s had, indeed increased their weekly news consumption by more than double---going from a mere 1 hour to over 2 hours. And the 55+ group, which started at around 10 hours per week only rose to about 14 hours. So which one increased the most? You guessed it--the 55+ group beat the 18-34s by about four to one.

    The same point applies to the "new prime time" namely, daytime TV. Does anyone seriously think that the networks will now alter their program strategies and launch their big budget dramas and sitcoms in the daytime hours, where,of course, they would have to triple their CPMs to break even---because of the lowered ratings. Of course not.

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