Attentiveness and loyalty to a program are positively correlated, as explained in an early blog post.B Viewers who enjoy a show will watch a large number of minutes in a given episode and then return for future episodes, while viewers who do not enjoy the show will exhibit low attentiveness when they are watching it and will likely not return for additional episodes.

One interesting consequence of the relationship between attentiveness and loyalty is that the future viewing behavior of an important segment of a showbs viewers can be predicted by simply analyzing data from a single episode, such as the series premiere.B Viewers of the series premiere will return for a predictable number of future episodes based on their attentiveness to the premiere.B This information could be used by advertising sales teams looking to sell sponsorships based on expected future ratings.

To further investigate these ideas, we selected several new programs on broadcast networks and divided viewers of the series premieres into groups based on the number of minutes of the premiere that they watched.B For each of these series premiere attentiveness groups, we looked at the number of additional episodes watched during the season.B The results support the original hypothesis of a positive correlation between attentiveness and program loyalty.B The results were fairly constant across programs, and are shown for one program in the graph below:

Viewers who watch only a small portion of the series premiere are far more likely than other series premiere viewers to tune in to zero additional episodes during the season.B Viewers who watch a large percentage of the series premiere, on the other hand, are much more likely than other series premiere viewers to return for a large number of additional episodes.B The graphs below combine data from the several programs to summarize these observations:

One key variable to consider is the relative distribution of low, medium, and high attentiveness viewers within a series premiere or other episode.B In the programs analyzed, viewers qualified for the highest attentiveness category if they watched 42-60 minutes of the hour-long premiere.B On average around 55% of series premiere viewers were placed in this category.B If a certain series premiere yields a high attentiveness group that is significantly larger or smaller than the 55% baseline that we have found, marketers and advertising sales teams might choose to act accordingly.B A very large high attentiveness group, for example, would suggest that viewers will be unusually loyal to the program, which might mean that fewer promotions need to be run.

What is still unclear is whether marketing should be targeted toward high-attentiveness viewers or low-attentiveness viewers.B Are the high-attentiveness viewers going to tune in to future episodes regardless of promotion?B If so, perhaps the low-attentiveness viewers would be a better target.B Further study would help clarify these questions.

Data based on a nationally-projectable DIRECTV dataset from TNS Media Researchbs InfoSys data product.

The New York Timesb Stuart Elliot covered NBCbs marketing tactics (a lot of radio).B San Francisco Chroniclebs Tim Goodman opined on production studiosb response to Leno, how theybll wish disaster on NBC as punishment for a strategy that marginalizes their contributions to the television ecosystem.B Fellow Jack Myersb MediaBizBlogger and media curmudgeon Charlie Warner has a three-part series on what hebs learned from the premiere.B Other outlets have relayed The Leno Showbs ratings, commented on the above commentary, and foretold further disruption as the competing networksb prime time programming comes online.

The days after a show has premiered in its new timeslot are an opportunity to observe how television viewers have adjusted their choices of what to watch.B Focusing on a particular new program, for those viewers who have chosen to tune-in, what kind of programming were they watching in the weeks leading to the premiere and how many are demonstrating loyalty and tuning in multiple times?

Looking at those viewers who tuned in to the first week of The Jay Leno Show reveals indicators of some program preferences that youbd expect and some that would surprise.B The two charts below examine the programming airing at weeknights at 10PM that the Leno audience viewed prior to the September 14 premiere.

The first chart reveals televisionbs emerging long tail.B The chart shows the percentage of the Leno audience that watched any of 650 different programs airing at 10PM on weeknights across broadcast and major cable networks in the weeks of August 31 and September 7, ranked in descending order by the percentage of the Leno that tuned-in.

Only 10 of the 650 programs attracted 5% or more of the audience that went on to view at least one episode of The Jay Leno Show during the week of September 14.B Of the 10, 9 of the programs were on NBC.

The next 30 programs each attracted 1% of more of the Leno audience.B Half of those next 30 programs aired on ABC, led by 20/20 and Primetime news programs.

The second chart examines the relative likelihood of the The Jay Leno Show audience to have tuned in to various programming in the two weeks leading to the premiere.B It shows the top 25 programs by Rating Index, a ratio of the program rating among viewers of at least one episode of The Jay Leno Show and the overall program rating.B A Rating Index value of 100 indicates that the Leno audience was no more or less likely to have viewed the program as the general viewing population.

The top 8 programs by Rating Index are, as one might expect, NBC programs.B The audience that had tended to watch NBC at 10PM continued to watch after Leno premiered.

Interesting entries in the top 25 programs by Rating Index are Bravobs Flipping Out and PBSb Great Lodges of the National Parks and Wild River: Colorado.B Leno viewers were nearly 3 times more likely than the typical viewer to have watched those programs. The Bravo entrant to this list is likely the result of cross network promotion.B The crossover of audience genre affinity to explain the connection with Leno and the PBS programming is worthy of more scrutiny.

The degree of loyalty to The Jay Leno Show is similar to observations of loyalty to other programming: low.B The chart below examines viewer loyalty to Leno at 10PM.B Of the viewers who watched any of the Leno Show during the week of September 14, a majority, 65%, tuned in to one episode.B Only 5% of Leno viewers tuned in four times in the programbs premiere week.

Audiences arrive to a program, watch some part of it, and depart likely never to return.B Networks bownb a viewing audience the same way that you bownb the breeze that comes through your homebs open window.

Viewers sampled programs before The Jay Leno Show aired at weeknights 10PM on NBC, and viewers will sample programs after the September 14 premiere.B To make the most of the rest of the Fall 2009 season, program marketers will do well toB understand which viewers have a proclivity to sample and which viewers have a proclivity to return to programs.

This idea of availability plays a key role in promotional campaigns for TV shows.B If a marketerbs message reaches people who donbt watch TV when the program is scheduled to air, there is the potential for wasted impressions and low response rates.B By focusing messaging on people who are available, marketers can improve the performance of their marketing campaigns and increase viewership for their programs.B We find that casual viewers of a program tend to be available when the program airs, and could be driven to watch additional episodes via well-placed promotions.

A previous blog post looked at program loyalty and concluded that blow loyaltyb viewers (people who watch only one episode during the season) would be ideal targets of promotion.B Most shows have large numbers of low loyalty viewers, as shown in the table below.B The implication was that these one-time watchers had attention that was bfor sale,b and that effective promotions could increase the number of episodes that they watch.

The analysis did not consider, however, whether these viewers were actually available for additional episodes.B It is hard enough to compete with the huge variety of programming available on TV.B If the low loyalty viewers tend to not even be loyal to the daypart, and tend to be doing something besides watching TV when the relevant programs air, it is likely that their response rates to promotions will be low.B In other words, itbs much easier to drag a channel surfer over to Rescue Me than to convert someone who tends to be away from the television during that time.

We looked at the availability of the low loyalty audiences of three specific programs, and in all three cases, over two-thirds of the audience was in front of the television for at least three additional episodes of the relevant program.B These low loyalty viewers have high daypart loyalty, even if their program loyalty is low.B This combination of battention for saleb and availability means that these viewers are indeed ideal targets of promotion.

Additional analysis could focus on the optimal way to reach these viewers.

As a fan of digital video recorder and on-demand technologies and an active manager of my Netflix queue, Ibve pondered the relative lack of attention that these alternate modes of television viewing garner.B Both Nielsenbs Three-Screen and the Video Consumer Mapping studies mark time-shifted and actively selected content viewing as a sliver of the attention that goes to traditional linear television.

What is it about the linear television viewing experience that is so compelling that people forego the increased control and time-efficiency afforded them by their DVRs and on-demand offerings?B In its near-future portrayal of viewersb willingness to pay the ultimate price for the perfect video entertainment, David Foster Wallacebs Infinite Jest contains insights to this question.

Published in 1996, Infinite Jest is set after the extinction of all broadcast television and the advertising it carried.B Televisions have been replaced by teleputers, or TPs, high-definition video displays with Internet connectivity and built-in read-only cartridge players.B Itbs as if Netflix has taken over the entertainment world.B Video content consumption is almost entirely on demand.B Linear TV programming b or, in the parlance of Infinite Jest, bspontaneous disseminationb – is marginalized, preferred only for major sporting events and lower-rent fitness shows.

Lurking in the background of the 1,000-page plus tome is a video of such potent entertainment value that its viewers, both accidental and active, are immediately enraptured and enslaved.B The viewers will literally choose death and dismemberment over turning away from the video.

Intrigued by the challenge posed by the virtual book club Infinite Summer, I picked up Infinite Jest as a summer reading project.B Though I had read it not long after its original publication, I wanted to review the text through a lens focused by my experience at Simulmedia and to experience the online community built around the book club.

In the passage below, Orin Incandenza, a tennis prodigy turned pro football punter, responds to a wheelchair-bound, Quebecois assassin posing as a survey-taker while another female assassin hides under his, Orinbs, hotel room bed covers.

On page 599, the fake survey-taker asks, in French-Canadian-accented English, what Orin misses.

Orinbs gaze now was up at the ceilingbs acoustic tile, the little blinking disk of the hallbs smoke detector, as if memories were always lighter than air.B The seated man stared blandly up at the throb of Orinbs internal jugular vein.B Orinbs face changed a little.B Behind him, under the blankets, the non-Swiss woman lay very calmly and patiently on her side, breathing silently into the portable O₂-mask w/ canister from the purse beside her, one hand in the purse on the Schmeisser GBF miniature machine pistol.

bI miss TV,b Orin said, looking back down.B He no longer smiled coolly.

bThe former television of commercial broadcast.b

bI do.b

bReason in several words or less, please, for the box after REASON,b displaying the board.

bOh, man.bB Orin looked back up and away at what seemed to be nothing, feeling at his jaw around the retromandibularbs much tinier and more vulnerable throb.B bSome of this may sound stupid.B I miss commercials that were louder than the programs.B I miss the phrases bOrder before midnight tonightb and bSave up to fifty percent and more.bB I miss being told things were filmed before a live studio audience.B I miss late-night anthems and shots of flags and fighter jets and leathery-faced Indian chiefs crying at litter.B I miss bSermonetteb and bEvensongb and test patterns and being told how many megahertz somethingbs transmitter was broadcasting at.bB He felt his face.B bI miss sneering at something I love.B How we used to love to gather in the checker-tiled kitchen in front of the old boxy cathode-ray Sony whose reception was sensitive to airplanes and sneer at the commercial vapidity of broadcast stuff.b

bVapid ditty,b pretending to notate.

bI miss stuff so low-denominator I could watch and know in advance what people were going to say.b

bEmotions of mastery and control and superiority.B And pleasure.b

bYou can say that again, boy.B I miss summer reruns.B I miss reruns hastily inserted to fill the intervals of writersb strikes, Actorsb Guild strikes.B I miss Jeannie, Samantha, Sam and Diane, Gilligan, Hawkeye, Hazel, Jed, all the syndicated airwave-haunters.B You know?B I miss seeing the same things over and over again.b

b&

The man tended to look up at him like people with legs look up at buildings and planes.B bYou can of course view entertainments again and again without surcease on TelEntertainment disks of storage and retrieval.b

Orinbs way of looking up as he remembered was nothing like the seated guybs way of looking up.B bBut not the same.B The choice, see.B It ruins it somehow.B With television you were subjected to repetition.B The familiarity was inflicted.B Different now.b

bInflicted.b

bI donbt think I exactly know,b Orin said, suddenly dimly stunned and sad inside.B The terrible sense as in dreams of something vital youbve forgotten to do.B The inclined headbs bald spot was freckled and tan.B bIs there a next item?b

In describing what he misses about TV, Orin describes exposure to and participation in a framework of which he feels he has a complete understanding.B He likes that his responses to blow-denominatorb programming are prescribed and predictable.B He states a preference for the familiar over the new.

When the fake survey-taker reminds Orin that he can access those familiar programs and commune with his bsyndicated airwave-hauntersb whenever he pleases through his entertainment subscription service, Orin remarks that the fact of his actively choosing the familiar disrupts his enjoyment of it.B Similar to his taking pleasure in the bad grammar and volume modulating tricks of direct response advertising, he would rather be bsubjected to repetitionb and uses the word binflictedb, connotative of pain and torture, to mark the source of his preference.

To understand why people prefer the linear feed over their DVRs and on-demand content, I think about those bemotions of mastery and control and superiorityb that broadcast TV enables in its viewers.

Several months ago we examined program loyalty for live viewing within a specific geographic region and observed that less than half of a showbs viewers during a season, on average, will watch more than one episode of the show.B Even American Idol, with its famously loyal fan base, has over a third of its ratings driven by viewers who will only watch one episode during the season.B We concluded that these one-time viewers would be ideal targets for promotion.

The findings are similar when time-shifted viewing is incorporated into the analysis.B Program loyalty, defined here as the percentage of a showbs viewers who watch at least two episodes during the season, is not affected much by time-shifted viewing.B Some viewers move from the non-loyal to the loyal crowd when DVR data is counted, but there are other viewers excluded from the original analysis who suddenly become part of the non-loyal crowd in the new analysis.B All in all, a showbs loyalty score is basically the same whether we include or exclude DVR data.

The graph below shows Average Tune-in plotted against Loyalty for a select group of programs.B For each show, the blue dot represents live-only viewing, and the orange triangle represents live plus time-shifted viewing.B Note that the orange triangles are always higher than the blue dots, since including the DVR data will always lead to higher tune-in.B In terms of program loyalty, however, there is not a consistent trend whereby incorporating DVR data will always increase or always decrease the amount of loyalty to a show.B As before, slightly less than 50% of a showbs viewers, on average, watched at least two episodes of a show during the season.B American Idol once again has the most loyal fans, with around two-thirds of viewers watching at least two episodes this season.B Rescue Me again has the least loyal following.

Note: Data from TNS Media Researchbs DirecTView.B Time period: All 2009 episodes of the showbs current season or most recently completed season.B DVR viewing tracked for seven days following the original airing of each episode.

B

B

B

Conan ObBrien was recently promoted on NBC from bLate Nightb at 12:37am to bThe Tonight Showb at 11:35pm, taking over for Jay Leno and leaving a bLate Nightb void that has been filled by Jimmy Fallon.B This programming switch gives us a unique opportunity to investigate program loyalty vs. daypart loyalty in our quest to better understand viewing habits.

bTonight Showb always outdraws bLate Night,b but has done so by an even greater margin than normal following Conanbs move from 12:30am to 11:30pm.B We witness a bConan Effectb in which Conan fans watched an additional 0.5 episodes of bTonight Showb per episode of bLate Nightb following the programming change.

The concept of loyalty clearly plays a role in viewing habits.B Genre, program, daypart, and network loyalties, among others, all affect how viewers choose their programs.B The Conan case allows us to isolate program and daypart loyalty and investigate which one plays a more important role in viewing habits.

We first located people who had watched bLate Night with Conan ObBrienb in January 2009 (the last full month of the program) and then segmented these viewers based on frequency of viewing the program.B We then looked at the viewing habits of these specific segments across three different programs: bThe Tonight Show with Jay Lenob in January 2009, bThe Tonight Show with Conan ObBrienb in June 2009 (the first month of the show), and bLate Night with Jimmy Fallonb in June 2009.

NBCbs bTonight Showb consistently outdraws bLate Night,b since bTonight Showb is at a more desirable hour and generally has a more popular host.B The y-axis of the graph shows bTonight Showb tune-ins per bLate Nightb tune-in.B All values are greater than 1, since nearly any segment of viewers will watch more than one episode of the 11:30pm show for each episode watched of the 12:30am show.

The graph further demonstrates, however, that the preference for bTonight Showb over bLate Nightb became even more extreme following the programming change.B The green bConan Effectb area shows that following Conanbs move to 11:30pm, the different segments watched an additional 0.5 episodes of bTonight Showb for each episode of bLate Night.bB This area is delineated by two lines: the blue line, which shows that the different segments watched between 1.75 times and 1.1 times more Leno than Conan in January, and the red line, which shows that these same audiences watched between 2.25 times and 1.25 times more Conan than Fallon in June.

The red line is consistently higher than the blue line (except for one specific loyalty group with a small sample size), indicating that the preference for bTonight Showb over bLate Nightb became more extreme in June compared to January. This difference is statistically significant, as the 95% confidence interval for the difference between the two lines does not contain zero (which would indicate no difference).

For the NBC Late Fringe audience, program loyalty seems to matter more than daypart loyalty.B A preference for Conan (or perhaps a dislike of Jimmy Fallon) caused viewers to shift their television consumption across time toward the program that they liked the most.B In June, they watched an additional half-episode of bTonight Showb for each episode of bLate Night,b compared to their viewing pattern in January.

Our goal is to drive viewership through data-driven promotions, and we feel that a better understanding of our viewers will improve our targeting and response rates.B The Conan case is just one example, but further study could validate the program vs. daypart conclusion and suggest new directions of study.B Perhaps we can reach an audience more efficiently and cost-effectively by placing spots on popular shows during off-peak hours, rather than on primetime shows for which the audience hasnbt shown much interest.B We could also try to separate program loyalists from daypart loyalists, which would help guide the appropriate promos to show to each group.B Viewers are pulled by various forces when choosing a program, and clearly a preference for certain programs plays a strong role, perhaps even stronger than the showbs time of day.

Disbelief and dismissal characterize many of the responses to our findings.B Citing their own and their peers’ television viewing habits, people assert the highly directed nature of their viewing and declare their loyalty to a curated selection of television programs.B With the exception of live sporting events, they engage their TiVo or cable company’s digital video recorder to record their favorite programs for time-shifted playback at their convenience.

We’re sure that people do do that.B We do that.B We’re also sure that most people watch a lot more television than just the programs to which they’re loyal.B We call this difference between all TV viewing and viewing favored programs the Loyalty Gap.

We can understand the reluctance to accept our findings on loyalty.B It’s expected and perhaps natural for our reports of low levels of loyalty to conflict with people’s view of the world.

We’re social creatures.B We need to connect with others.B Projecting our need to connect on media, we identify ourselves by the television programs we choose and seek others with similar preferences.B The challenge of identifying and connecting with others around the more solitary act of inattentive viewing keeps us from looking past our loyalty and recognizing the amount of time we spend channel surfing and sampling programs.

Data from the Video Consumer Mapping Study fits this model.B The study found that people tend to underreport the amount of television they watch.

Television viewing duration and reach is in the upper right of the graph.B From the graph, survey respondents reported viewing over 240 minutes of television daily but were observed watching around 330 minutes.

Around 90 minutes of daily television viewing are lost on our consciousness.B People watched television for those 90 minutes but have failed to include it in their estimation of the time spent watching.

With a gap of that magnitude, people’s reluctance to accept our observation of low loyalty makes more sense.B People are likely to recall viewing the programs to which they’re loyal but may tend to neglect additional time spent watching TV.

Another data point in the Video Consumer Mapping Study, one that’s affirmed by Nielsen’s Three Screen Report, conflicts with people’s reports of highly directed, DVR-intensive viewing.

The amount of time people spend watching DVR playback is dwarfed by live TV watching.B As a percentage of all TV watching, live and timeshifted, DVR playback is 5.4% in Nielsen’s study and 4.6% in the Video Consumer Mapping Study.B Put another way, according to Nielsen’s study, people watch nearly 19 times more live television than timeshifted television.

The imbalance of live to timeshifted television viewing is a stark contrast to reports of heavy DVR utilization and the implied higher degrees of program loyalty.

People are loyal to a selection of television programs, but the data indicates a Loyalty Gap.B Viewers allocate attention, sometimes without realizing it, to a lot more television programming than that to which they are loyal.

For the past three months in my new start-up, Simulmedia, we have had a team of data analysts, behavioral biologists, and statisticians using TNS Media Research’s InfoSys TV system to analyze anonymous, aggregated set-top-box data records representing recent viewing histories of approximately 350,000 households in the Los Angeles market to better understand how people watch television. The insights we’ve been able to glean already have been pretty extraordinary, but one really stands out: Television viewers watch significantly fewer episodes of each program that we had anticipated. Program loyalty is the exception, not the rule.

We selected a number of top shows from broadcast and cable networks and calculated a “loyalty score” for each program. Surprisingly, we discovered that a relatively small number of folks who watched a particular show this season, watched two or more episodes. The show with the highest loyalty score — “American Idol,” unsurprisingly –B garnered a loyalty of only 65%. Thus, only 65% of the folks in our sample who watched “American Idol” this season watched it more than once. “Lost” came in at 52%, “Gossip Girl” at 50%, and “Mad Men” at 33%. On average, only 46% of folks who watched a particular program in our sample watched two or more episodes.

Maybe this isn’t news to many of you, but we were surprised. Why does this seem to contradict conventional wisdom, largely based on panel- and sample-based research? Probably because panels can project, for example, that a particular episode had an audience of 10 million viewers, with 75% of those viewers from a particular demographic group — but they can’t tell you that two-thirds of those folks are different from those who watched the show the week before.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the DVR (digital video recorder). The set-top-box data we analyzed did not include DVR viewing. However, since neither Nielsen nor advertisers value that viewing very much — given DVR ad-skipping — the linear viewing reality that program loyalty is the exception, not the norm is also part of the economic reality of television today.

What does this mean for television companies and advertisers? I think it’s now incumbent on players in this market to dig into viewer data. Anonymous set-top-box data and analysis is now available from a number of sources and firms. There is no longer an excuse not to know what TV viewers really do. Now is the time to find out, and adjust business practices according to reality, not just history. What do you think?

(This post originally ran on MediaPost’s Online Spin on May 28th, 2009.)

Loyalty varies significantly across shows.B FOX’s American Idol has the most loyal audience in the sample, with 65% of viewers watching at least two episodes this season.B On the other end of the spectrum, just 26% of Rescue Me (FX) viewers watched at least two episodes of the show.B The average Loyalty Score in the sample was 46%, indicating that fewer half of viewers watched a given show more than once.

In other words, even for a show like American Idol with a perceived loyal and devoted following, over a third of the rating on a given night is driven by viewers who will not return for any additional episodes.B For less popular shows, the phenomenon is even more extreme.B Three-quarters of Rescue Me viewers, and two-thirds of Mad Men (AMC) viewers, watched exactly one episode this season.B As indicated in the previous loyalty post, these one-time viewers have attention that is “for sale” and are ideal targets of promotion.

B

Data from TNS Media Research’s InfoSysTV.B Time period: First episode of the show’s current season (or most recent season if the show is not running currently) through February 2009, except for Rescue Me, where time period is the first five episodes of the season that started in April 2009.B Reruns are not factored into the analysis.

Approaching loyalty through our personal television watching experience, we start with the programs to which we are loyal, the programs we eagerly await each week.B In light of our attitude toward those programs, we can’t help think that everybody that watches our programs is like us, that our programs’ audiences are as devoted as we are.

Extending to other programs, we think that all programs have a similarly loyal audience.B All these other programs that we’re not watching, they have their loyal audiences.B Other viewers are making dates to watch these programs and are eagerly awaiting their start times.

Dominant promotional strategy bolsters this perspective on television viewing.B Networks focus their marketing efforts on their loyal “core” audience – typically a demographic. B By concentrating their promotional arsenal in their own programming, networks endeavor to extend their core audience’s viewing to the next program.B If network’s loyal core audience is consistent and large, then the standard promotional strategy makes sense.

It turns out that we’re wrong.

Program loyalty is the exception, not the rule.B Only a minority of a program’s viewers is faithful and watches every installment.B Most of any program’s audience is just passing through.B They tune in to a program once or twice in the course of a season, and then go their merry way.B We touched on this subject in a previous post on primetime loyalty, and further analyses of individual programs have reinforced the pattern.

And if we hadn’t been looking at set top box-level viewing data, if we had analyzed per-program demographic composition in time series, we never would detected the sizeable churn in program episode viewing from week to week.B Looking at panel-based data, we would have seen the same or similarly demographically composed audience tuning in to each episode and failed to see that the larger part of a program’s ratings is attributable to transient viewers.

This makes more sense as we go beyond how we feel about our favorite programs and think through the implications of broader trends in television watching.B The fact is that we watch a lot of television.B The latest installment of Nielsen’s Three Screen Report has the average U.S. viewer watching a 151 hours of television in the home each month.B While we, personally, may watch less than the average, we recognize that we don’t dedicate all our viewing hours to programming to which we’re loyal.B We spend time surfing, sampling, and checking (and re-checking) programs we’ve heard about from friends and seen promoted.B In aggregate, our time on the hunt adds up and, from the perspective of ratings, accounts for a majority of attention to programming.

Our emotional approach to program loyalty now tempered by intellect and data, we can work though what this means for improving program promotion.B Immediately, we recognize that enticing one-time program viewers to commit another episode represents a significant ratings opportunity.B If we can find the one-time viewers that are receptive to watching again – whose attention is “for sale” – we can devise an effective promotion strategy.

At Simulmedia, we like to say “we have a segment for that”.

The fact that a program’s audience demonstrates observable differences in loyalty and in attentiveness (the volume of program minutes viewed) implies a program-specific segmentation.B We conceptualize the segmentation in the Loyalty-Attentiveness Matrix below.

a conceptual segmentation framework

This Loyalty-Attentiveness segmentation is unique for each program and independent of the Genre Segmentation we introduced last week.B Where we crafted the Genre Segmentation to explore notions of audience preference and their impact on what people watch, the Loyalty-Attentiveness Segmentation explores how people watch.

We find viewers tuning in to different numbers of a program season’s episodes.B In the matrix, the segments tuning in to more episodes find themselves in the right quadrants.B Collectively, these are the “Rooted” audience having demonstrated loyalty to the program.B The segments tuning in to fewer episode are placed in the left two quadrants.B These are “Rovers”, demonstrating less loyalty.

We also find viewers watching different volumes of program minutes.B In the matrix, the segments watching more minutes find themselves in the top two quadrants; segments watching less, in the lower two.

The Rovers with high attentiveness should be the focus of program promotion (the red box in the Matrix).B Though relatively less loyal, these are the viewers who have sampled the program with relative vigor.B Their higher degree of attentiveness to the program is a signal of their preferences.B Exposed to more program promotions, they may be more likely to return to the program for more episodes, helping the program’s ratings as they do so.