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YouGov surveys respondents about their awareness of and feelings towards many subjects, including politics, technology, brands, celebrities and the media. Today we’re taking a closer look at the popularity rankings of TV networks by demographics—adults, men, women, Millennials, GenX and Boomers, to see what variations there are; the results provide an interesting snapshot of how consumers (as opposed to media insiders) think about TV.
As background, YouGov’s popularity ratings are calculated “by taking the proportion of people who view something positively and showing it as a percentage of all of the people who have given any opinion about that thing, including ‘have heard of’.” More on that below. Now let’s take a closer look.
I. General Findings
The most popular networks were mainly mass appeal cable channels, like Discovery, AMC and A&E, which makes sense, since niche networks would not, by definition, be broadly popular (see below). What is interesting however, is that none of the broadcast TV networks made the top 10. ABC came in 16th, while the CW ranked 43rd, with CBS, Fox and NBC falling in between. However, this may be a function of how popularity is defined (people with positive opinions about the network). Note that PBS comes in seventh—who has anything bad to say about PBS? But popularity isn’t viewership, and we know that as much as people would like to appear cultured, they’re much more likely to tune into America’s Got Talent than Frontline.
II. Variations by Demographics
At least when it comes to the top 10, there were surprisingly few variations by sex and age. The top 10 for men, women, GenX and Boomers was nearly identical, with the exception of one unique network per demo (the FX network for men and GenX, ABC for women and TNT for Boomers). Millennials were the only demo to display a unique top 10 profile as follows:
III. Just What is a “Network” Anyway?
Perhaps of most interest to us was the fact that Netflix made the top 10 list of every demographic. Among Millennials, it was number one on the list, with Hulu coming in at number nine. That’s a better popularity ranking than any of the traditional broadcast networks. It should serve as a reminder that consumers don’t see the media the same way we do. To them, Netflix is just as much a network as any of the others on their list; it’s just the means of delivery that are different. And we would expect that this perspective is here to stay, particularly as programming originally on linear TV proves to be just as popular on Netflix and others. And we expect that at some point original SVOD programming will be syndicated and appear on traditional networks, further blurring the lines for consumers. At the very least, it should serve as a reminder for us to look at the current state of “TV” as consumers see it, not as researchers do.