The audience for COUNTRY MUSIC extends Ken Burns‘ run as the high-performing PBS documentarian.
- The average audience over 8 episodes was 4.42 million.
- That’s more that 3x the PBS average for prime (1.24 million).
- And slightly higher than the average for the VIETNAM series (4.38 million).
- COUNTRY MUSIC maintained its audience, even returning to peak levels for the finale.
- That’s unlike the steady decline for VIETNAM, when PBS viewers in their millions lost their appetite for a series about that cruel, distant and lost war.
Takeaways
- It’s no longer useful to dismiss the PBS audience as old and non-commercial.
- The channels are steadily losing reach through cord-cutting and their audience through the defection of all but hard-core viewers to the unrated streamers.
- The sustained scale, measurability and relative loyalty of its audience make PBS an attractive contributor to the documentary eco-system.
- And btw, I wish that PBS / CPB would share their considerable funding for Ken Burns’ projects with the many younger producers who are more than capable of refreshing his signature documentary franchise.
And More…
- Watch the COUNTRY MUSIC Trailer
- Here’s a link to the pdf: Ken Burns HH Ratings Bar Chart 2009-2019
- Public Television Viewing in the Age of Netflix (June 2, 2019)
- The PBS Series Ranker (2017) from Masterpiece to Independent Lens.
- Read my comment on THE VIETNAM WAR, based on my experience as a 22 year-old in the Indo-China war zone.
- Our Case Study: Developing NATIVE AMERICA, a $3-4 Mn PBS Series
Thanks!
- Parrot Analytics is the sponsor of my coverage of viewing of unscripted programs.
- Read more here about Parrot’s measure of Online Demand for the Top 20 Netflix Originals in the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia.
