Shark Week Took a Bite Out-of-Home-Viewers
Out-of-Home television viewing is often associated with sport and news events. The summer of 2018 was no different with significant spikes in OOH viewing with the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup playoffs and the FIFA World Cup action.
But there were also sharks in these OOH TV waters. Respectable sized OOH TV audiences were watching the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Tunity Analytics showed that the 30th anniversary edition of the event drew 10X the size of Discovery’s previous weeks’ OOH TV audiences. Viewers were attracted to the celebrity tie-ins throughout the week with huge audiences for Shaquille O’Neal, Guy Fieri and UFC’s Ronda Rousey’s “Shark Week” programs. “Shaq Does Shark Week” had the highest combined audience for the week (510,000), while the rare network cross-over event “Shark Tank Shark Week” gross OOH audience came in second (453,000).
In general, entertainment channels do not have high coverage in OOH environments with restaurants and bars often showing sports and news networks on their screens. “Shark Week” proves that the availability of these types of event programming can lead to higher coverage for entertainment networks on OOH screens. Discovery’s ability with “Shark Week” to bring in 10 times the size of their typical audience levels is likely to have been in part a result of the network’s increased screen coverage at OOH locations.
| Program | (000) |
|---|---|
| Shaq Does Shark Week | 510,000 |
| Shark Tank Shark Week | 453,000 |
| Air Jaws | 386,000 |
| Alien Sharks | 359,000 |
| SharkCam Stakeout | 291,000 |
| Guy Fieri’s Feeding Frenzy | 281,000 |
| Great White Abyss | 225,000 |
| Ronda Rousey: Uncaged | 187,000 |
| Shark After Dark | 186,000 |
*Tunity Analytics estimates; combined audience averages for programs with multiple telecasts. Audience (000’s) based on Tunity proprietary estimation model.
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