CBS Research boss David Poltrack attempted on Monday to calm down an entire entertainment industry over the downward trend of traditional TV ratings. The measurement veteran assured TV critics that as many (if not more) people are watching broadcast content — just not through the same avenues as before.
Poltrack even admitted feeling “great sympathy” for ratings giant Nielsen, which he believes will remain a step behind consumers for the next five years.
“Their world is changing very, very rapidly,” Poltrack explained to reporters in the Beverly Hilton ballroom at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “I think they’re doing the best job they can to keep up.”
The good news: a multiplatform shift seems to be slowing down, or at least becoming more normalized within the evolving business. Citing connected TV’s as the latest game-changing offering, Poltrack assured reporters that he doesn’t see any new disruptive technologies emerging over the aforementioned coming half-decade period.
Poltrack explained that it takes the industry about 12-18 months to measure these new technologies, which is exactly where we are with the popularization of connected TVs. That also means we’re pretty capable to handle tablets and smartphones today.
Poltrack’s colleague Mark DeBevoise — who joined his mentor on stage this afternoon — once-again pushed Live + 30 Day delayed viewing numbers as what CBS would like to see become industry currency. Of course, even that month-encompassing metric wouldn’t give journalists, executives and consumers a perfect snapshot into total viewership, the duo admitted.
“You don’t really want just one number,” Poltrack said, touting the “complexity” of big data as a good thing. And they had plenty of it during their graph-heavy presentation.
One newcomer that Poltrack and DeBevoise pimped is a company called Symphony Advanced Media. The Nielsen, Rentrak and Comscore alternative — which launches on Sep. 1 — found that 22 percent of millennial viewing occurs outside of Nielsen currency.
Expect to hear more about Symphony in the future, especially from CBS.
What all that comes down to is that “CBS feels infinitely optimistic,” per DeBevoise. And why not? It’s still America’s most-watched network, even based off the antiquated data the two want us all to avoid.