Live Broad Casting Decreasing Viewership

Live broadcasting has been around for a while now with everyone having the experience of tuning in at least once in their lifetime. But live broadcasting is in fact a dying art. Viewership over the last decade or two has been decreasing with live news sessions, live award presentations and even live sports.

News outlets like CNN have seen a massive drop in viewership. Back in early 2022 the key demographic age for watching live broadcast on CNN during prime time was just 126 000 viewers. Where the average audience was a little 500 000 viewers a year prior in 2021. 

CNN has always been known to criticise the former U.S president, Donald Trump and have always portrayed him as a horrible individual and how he shouldn’t be president. But CNN benefited the most from Trump being president because during Trump’s presidency and during the two election periods, CNN viewership peaked. It’s one of those things where CNN loved to hate Trump and they would piggyback off of his success like becoming president by denouncing everything he does to gain viewership due to the majority of the population hating Trump.

Speaking about profits with CNN there profits have also hit a low. Their profits for 2022 were only projected to hit 956.8 million which is the first time in years their profits have been below 1 billion dollars. 

A reason for the lower viewership that you cannot deny is the trust within the media. There has been a significant lack of trust in the media. Especially with the Trump presidency nobody knows what to believe due to Trump accusing many media stations of “fake news”. The significant political polarisation could potentially make the fake news ideaology grow.

To put more perspective on all the different news stations, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are down an average of 19 percent viewership in the first half of 2022. To be more specific on CNN, in the first part of 2022 their viewership was down 47 percent and MSNBC down 33 percent. 

Even cable as a whole is dying. The number of cable subscriptions in U.S households has declined. From 47 percent of U.S households in 2019 having cable to now only 42 percent of households in 2022 having cable, that is a 5 percent decline in 3 years. People who have cable are switching to video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus.

Even watching award ceremonies like the Academy Award ceremony viewership has significantly dropped. Back in the year 2000 viewership for the Academy Awards was at 46.3 million viewers tuning in. And then from the year 2000 to the year 2017 viewership changed in 30 and low 40 million viewership range. Then all of a sudden in 2021 probably also due to the Covid pandemic viewership for the Academy Awards hit only 10 million and then last year in 2022 viewership was only at 15 million. Viewership has declined over 30 million people in 20 years. A reason why people aren’t as willing to tune into these awards is because it is just the elite patting themselves on the back and they have lost their ability to relate to the average individual. 

Even sports are taking a hit in viewership. In 2020 the NBA saw a 18 percent decrease in viewership while in 2022 the regular season games for the NHL saw a 19 percent decrease in viewership when compared to the statistics in 2021. As well for the Super Bowl viewership has declined especially with people between the ages of 18 and 49. From 52 million people between the ages of 18 to 49 tuning in to watch the Superbowl to only 34 million in that same age group watching the Superbowl in 2021. 

But overall the Superbowl is still one of the biggest tuned in sports games in the world. With still 208 million people tuned in to watch the Superbowl back in 2022 and with the amazing commercials the Superbowl will by no means die out anytime soon. 

While looking at the grand scheme of things it is clear that TV and live broadcasting is slowly dying. The way of the future is with video streaming services like Netflix and even more social media platforms like Youtube, Instagram and even Tik Tok holding billions of users which is much more than millions that live broadcasting is pulling in. But by no means is cable or live broadcasting completely done, the networks still have millions of total viewers and visitors to keep it going, and it will still be around for a while longer.