TV Analog Out- How will this effect the reach to the Hispanic Market?
As of February 18th 2009 broadcasting in analog signals will be a thing of the past. Broadcasters will shut off the signals which means the viewers that still depend on antennas will not be able to watch television. Viewers will have to receive signals through cable, satellite or an analog converter box.
According to Neilson Media Research this switch will actually effect a large amount of viewers.
Surprisingly there are still many homes that rely on their antennas to watch television. The cities that will be effected the most lay west of the Mississippi River. Among these cities are Salt Lake City, Houston, Dallas and Minneapolis.
Most of the homes that rely an antennas are low income or of a minority. Furthermore, research showed that households of African Americans, Hispanics, and those below $30,000 rely on antennas more than anything else to receive a signal.
In fact, Neilson warned that with this switch 13 million homes, or 10.1% of all households, would lose access to most TV signals if the transition happened now.
In my opinion, the market that will be effected the most by this switch is the hispanic market. The hispanic market has seen a tremendous growth over the last decade due to the growing population. In 2000 the hispanic population was 12.6%. It is projected to be 15.5% by 2010.
Right now there are 8.26 million hispanic homes with a TV in this country. This is a large market with a large purchasing power. With everyone upping there ad spending towards hispanics 62% of the spending was in television. That spending totalled up to 2.1 billion dollars in 2006.
Two of the cities that has the largest number of homes with antennas are also inclouding in the top DMA's for media spending in televsion. $58.1 million was spent in TV ads in Houston and $35.5 million in Dallas.
Because these households are of a lower income, I would not be suprised if they cannot afford to purchase a converter box. It will be very interesting to see how agencies adjust to this.
It will be interesting to see if cable companies lower their prices in these areas so that their viewer statistics do not wither.
Sources:
http://adage.com/images/random/hispfactpack07.pdf
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3i09b57ed04d938419dc7460c65fdd11a5
posted by Leah Donnenberg @ 10:11 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Even though there are a significant number of people who use antenna's I don't think it will have nearly the effect that is proposed. A google search shows that a 4-tv box costs 150 dollars before a government coupon. The government is current doing a coupon program where users can get atleast 30 dollars off the price and more depending on the model. I think this will be enough to make the conversion a non issue.
Nice post, Leah. I have to say that when any government regulation hits one group harder than others, I worry. In this case, it's focusing on a particularly vulnerable segment, the poor, so I'm very worried. For someone living on a fixed income, coming up with $120 is not easy. And those are the very people who are likely to be affected most.
I am somewhat less worried about the impact on the Hispanic market -- a great deal of Spanish-language programming is only available on cable, so many families have already made that investment. In the border towns, though, where there is Spanish language programming available through analog, there will be some issues.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home