Nielsen: Last News

Soaring food prices may have peaked, a survey has suggested. Food inflation fell to 15.4 per cent in the year to May, according to a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Nielsen.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large These are indeed the waning days of the scripted basic cable juggernaut. That may be a strange thing to point out when once again, the most-watched entertainment show of the just-completed 2022-2023 TV season was “Yellowstone,” the modern western that airs on Paramount Network. But “Yellowstone” is wrapping up sometime in the next year, and the only other scripted series from a basic cabler to consistently be ranked among TV’s top shows, AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” has already ended its run. “The Walking Dead,” of course, dominated the season-ender charts for years — even beating football in the 2014-2015 TV season with a whopping 13.2 rating among adults 18-49. But as basic cable is almost completely out of the original scripted series business now (unscripted hits like “Vanderpump Rules” still abound, of course), those brief halcyon days are coming to an end.

NBC drama series The Blacklist, now in its 10th and last season, is moving into its final weeks with some changes ahead. Beginning June 1, the show, which currently airs on Sundays at 10 pm, will move to Thursdays. Back-to-back episodes will air that night, June 1, at 8 pm and 9 pm, with subsequent episodes airing weekly at 8 pm.

AFC Richmond scored a goal for Apple TV+ on the Nielsen streaming charts for the week of April 24 to April 30.

Selome Hailu As it moves through its third (and rumored final) season, the popular Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso” has achieved its highest weekly viewership as measured by Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings. The comedy was watched for 795 million minutes from April 24 to April 30, landing in the No. 6 position overall. It should be noted that this series high comes in comparison to previous weeks of Season 3 alone, as Apple TV+ viewership was not measured on Nielsen’s charts until this year. However, it remains a triumphant week for the streamer, which also has the Ana de Armas and Chris Evans-led film “Ghosted” on Nielsen’s movies chart for the second week in a row, this time at No. 8 with 181 million minutes watched.

BreAnna Bell “American Idol” scored a win for ABC with this season’s penultimate episode, which aired May 15. The episode hit season highs in total viewers (7.9 million) and with a 1.2 rating among the Adults 18-49 demographic. The episode’s performance pushed the series to its strongest showing in a year according to Nielsen ratings, according to new numbers obtained by Variety. According to the network, “Idol” jumped 3% for the third straight week in total viewers, climbing up the previous week’s 7.7 million total viewers, and also grew week-to-week by 9% among adults 18-49, from a 1.1 rating. In the episode, fans were given a closer look at the Season 21 contestants, including Colin Stough, Iam Tongi and Megan Danielle, via their journeys from hometown to Hollywood. (Tongi was later crowned this season’s winner in the May 21 episode.) Live+7 day numbers for the finale won’t be released until next week, but according to live+same day data, the season finale is the show’s most-watched in three years among total viewers, recording an audience of 6.6 million.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Big media companies and Nielsen have battled for months over the exact way to count TV viewers who no longer watch traditional TV when they want to see a favorite sitcom or drama. One media agency wants to test a different tactic. Mediahub, a media-buying agency that is part of Interpublic Group, has been asking big media companies to consider ad deals that involve not just guarantees of audience impressions, as has long been the norm. but commitments to other sorts of measures that examine whether the commercials spur the people who saw them to take new action. Such a deal could put “more skin in the game from media partners,” says Carrie Drinkwater. the agency’s chief investment officer. “It also helps them change the conversation to get away from the Nielsen linear discussion.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Many TV networks have struck measurement deals with VideoAmp, one of a handful of companies eager to provide an alternative to Nielsen’s tabulation of audiences. Now a company that buys TV time for blue-chip advertisers has done the same. Horizon Media, a large media-buying firm that works for clients including Corona and the National Football League, will use VideoAmp’s audience-measurement tools to help negotiate and transact ad deals between select clients and sellers for national linear TV inventory. Horizon will also use VideoAmp for planning, analytics, and measurement. “There has been a more meaningful movement this year to actually participate with alternative currencies and transact on them,” says David Campanelli, Horizon’s chief investment officer, in an interview. The bulk of the deals, he says, “are still happening on advanced audience targets, versus what we commonly think of with Nielsen ratings, which are demo and impressions counting.”

Selome Hailu With “The Last Thing He Told Me,” Apple TV+ has achieved its most watched limited series ever since the streamer’s launch in 2019. According to Nielsen data obtained by Variety, the series reached 4.5 million unique viewers in its first 31 days of streaming, beating out previous Apple limited series as well as several titles on the overall drama slate, such as “Black Bird” (2.6 million viewers) “Slow Horses” (1.9 million), “Echo” (1.4 million) and “Shining Girls” (1.3 million). The series premiere of “The Last Thing He Told Me” reached 3.4 million viewers, becoming Apple’s most watched drama episode of the year so far.

Donald Trump wants more airtime on CNN and is proposing the news network a second town hall.

This season’s Friday curtain came down last night on the CBS television lineup, and the results were yet another win for the Eye Network.

Fueled by flagship comedy Ted Lasso, new drama breakout Silo and limited series The Last Thing He Told Me, Apple TV+ viewership has been hitting all-time highs this spring.

BreAnna Bell Despite live-streaming issues, which forced Netflix to air its Season 4 reunion of “Love is Blind” on the following day, the reality dating show still managed a 12% increase in viewership and 1.2 billion viewing minutes during Nielsen’s April 17 – 23 viewing window and secured the No. 2 spot on Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10. In comparison to Netflix’s figures, the season earned another 39.48 million hours viewed following the show’s release and earned fourth place on Netflix’s global Top 10 chart, behind both “The Diplomat” and “The Night Agent.” At No. 1, “The Diplomat” opened on Nielsen’s chart this week with 1.3 billion viewing minutes. Thus, marking 11 consecutive weeks where Netflix has taken the No. 1 spot with an original series. The last non-Netflix title to take the top slot was Disney+’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” during the Jan. 30 – Feb. 5 interval.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor YouTube’s biggest ad innovation for 2023? It might be borrowing a well-worn page from old-fashioned linear TV. At the YouTube Brandcast upfront event Wednesday in New York, execs announced the introduction of 30-second unskippable ads in top-performing YouTube content on TVs — you know, just like the commercials that have run on broadcast and cable networks for decades. YouTube also will start testing new “Pause Experiences” for YouTube on TV screens, showing an ad when viewers pause a video akin to the pause ads Hulu first bowed four years ago. In their pitch to Madison Avenue types, YouTube execs also boasted of the streaming service’s massive reach: More than 150 million unique viewers in the U.S. watched YouTube and YouTube TV on televisions for the month of December 2022, according to Nielsen estimates. YouTube remains the No. 1 most-watched service on TV screens in America (across both streaming platforms and traditional TV networks), and in April was one of the only streamers to see month-to-month growth, per Nielsen.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter “Virgin River” has been renewed for Season 6 at Netflix. The announcement was made as part of Netflix’s first ever upfront presentation to advertisers. It comes before Season 5 of the popular drama series has even set a premiere date, though it is expected to air in the fall. “Virgin River” was renewed for both Seasons 4 and 5 back in 2021, with Season 4 debuting in July 2022. The series is based on the Robyn Carr book series of the same name. The cast of the series includes Alexandra Breckenridge, Martin Henderson, Tim Matheson, Annette O’Toole, Colin Lawrence, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Lauren Hammersley, Grayson Gurnsey, Sarah Dugdale, Zibby Allen, and Marco Grazzini.

For years, Netflix had focused squarely on subscriber growth and becoming the dominant player in the streaming world. That changed last year when, after a big market correction, Netflix made a course correction with a focus on profits, including an ad-supported tier which launched in November.

EXCLUSIVE: American Idol hit a high note with the help of some guest judges this month.

A legendary leading man! Sylvester Stallone is known for being the face of several successful franchises, from Rocky to Rambo.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Spanish-TV giant TelevisaUnivsion wants to speak a different language than its English-speaking rivals when it comes to audience measurement. Under pressure from some media companies, Nielsen said in April that it was going to hold back a new product that sought to use “big data,” or audience information gleaned from set-top boxes and smart TVs, as a way to provide more granular information about viewers. Nielsen said the new data would not be accredited for mainstream use, but would be available “for additional measurement during this transition for clients seeking to transact on it.” TelevisaUnivision is going to try. “We all know that today’s TV measurement is inadequate for our multi-screen world, and as a consequence, U.S Hispanics have been undercounted,” says Donna Speciale, president of U.S. ad sales and marketing at the company. “In fact, our audience is 26% bigger than current measurement. How did we get that information? Nielsen just told us,” she tells Variety, using its traditional panel-based tabulation as well as its “big data” product. “This is huge and and a huge step for equity,” she adds, noting that TelevisaUnivision will ask all agencies and clients to base this year’s upfront ad deals on that measurement.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor YouTube, already the most popular streamer on big-screen TVs, last month built on its lead as one of the only major services to see viewing time among U.S. TV households increase, according to new Nielsen data. For the period from March 27-April 30, 2023, TV viewing of YouTube videos (excluding YouTube TV) was up 1.5%. That translated into an increase of 0.3 share points, with YouTube ending the month with 8.1% of total time spent watching television, according to Nielsen measurements. Time spent viewing on most other streaming platforms, including Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Prime Video, Peacock and Hulu, was flat or down compared with March 2023, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge report for April. Along with YouTube, two free, ad-supported TV (FAST) services had month-over-month gains: Fox’s Tubi was up 6% from March, adding 0.1 share point to capture 1.1% of overall TV viewing, and Paramount’s Pluto TV viewing increased 3.9% for the month to hold at 0.8% share.

As the summer months approach, TV usage is down in the U.S. for the third consecutive month, according to Nielsen’s latest edition of The Gauge.