Who's Hot? Who's Not! U.S. Factual Channel Audiences, 4Q2011 vs 4Q2010

Which U.S. Factual channels are gaining or losing prime time viewers year-to-year?

Here are three highlights:

A&E swoops into the #1 spot on our list of Factual channels that gained average prime time viewers (+192,000).
Food (+106,000) and VH1 (+97,000) are on a roll.
Discovery Networks’ ID is up 90,000.

METHODOLOGY

Our bucket of channels is not apples-to-apples:

It includes channels that are dedicated to non-scripted, for example Nat Geo and Discovery.
And others like A&E and MTV that include Scripted in the mix.
Some channels that schedule Factual are unrated, or were not rated last year.

Our quarterly, high-level snapshot is prepared with the assistance of John Morse, president of research firm Byron Media.

DOCUMENTARYTELEVISION.COM CHART: WHO’S HOT? WHO’S NOT!

U.S. Factual Channels
Average Quarterly Prime Time Audience, 4Q’11 versus 4Q’10
(‘000)

Quantity Not Quality

Most ad-supported channels sell media based on their target demos.
And networks rate their performance (and those of their managers) quarter-to-quarter rather than year-to-year.
Nevertheless, our measure of the quarterly ‘average prime time’ audience is a useful tool for gauging relative scale of viewing and trends.

HIGHLIGHTS

Largest audience in our sample (‘000)

Growth (%)

Top 5: Nat Geo Wild (43% – reflecting solid sub growth), VH1 (28%), ID (marching on at 25%), A&E (19% – Whew! It’s hot!) and Discovery (17% – the squadron leader turns around)
Audience losers were Spike (-16%), Travel (-13%), TLC (-9%), Oxygen (-9%), We (-7%)

The Factual Tide Keeps Rising

The broad Unscripted category continues to grow at the expense of Scripted, News and other categories.
The year-to-year increase for DocumentaryTelevision.com’s bucket of Basic factual channels was a steady 4%.

OTHERS

Here are 4Q’11 prime time averages for a selection of channels…