FX Network Releases Analysis of Peak TV and Reveals the Ratings for Your Favorite Fringe History Shows

1/28/2016

Many of you have probably heard about the phenomenon of “peak TV,” a term for the overabundance of television programs currently airing across the broadcast, cable, and streaming spectrums. According to an analysis conducted by the FX network, primetime alone saw 1,415 television series in 2015. Obviously, no one could watch them all. However, in releasing their analysis, FX provided us with some data that cable networks have been trying to keep secret, namely the total number of viewers who watch their programs.

In the case of programs touching on subjects of interest to us, this is the first time that we’ve seen some of these numbers. The reported ratings include all viewers over the age of 2, and FX used the highest reported rating for a program, which may not accurately represent its overall average viewership. Among the interesting entries:

Curse of Oak Island – 3,824,000 viewers
Hunting Hitler – 2,243,000 viewers
Treasure Quest – 2,151,000 viewers
Legend of the Superstition Mountains – 1,906,000 viewers
Ancient Aliens – 1,609,000 viewers
Hangar 1: The UFO Files – 1,606,000 viewers
Finding Bigfoot – 1,112,000 viewers
America Unearthed – 1,051,000 viewers
Expedition Unknown – 1,044,000 viewers
Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar – 938,000 viewers
True Monsters – 779,000 viewers
Mysteries at the Museum – 723,000 viewers
Mountain Monsters – 718,000 viewers
Diggers – 672,000 viewers
Mysteries at the Monument – 589,000 viewers
NASA’s Unexplained Files – 558,000 viewers
Monsters and Mysteries in America – 358,000 viewers
Alaska Monsters – 328,000 viewers
Codes and Conspiracies – 318,000 viewers
Forbidden History – 295,000 viewers
Missing in Alaska – 262,000 viewers
Myth Hunters – 246,000 viewers

A few shows had too few viewers to be measured, including Ancient Case Files and UFOs Declassified.

And this is just a selection of series on historical mysteries and monsters; I didn’t even list all of the paranormal, psychic, and ghost themed shows, nor did the FX list account for one-time specials like History’s 2-hour Atlantis documentary.

What’s particularly intriguing about the ratings is how the viewership of these programs fails to correlate to the media attention lavished on programs with far fewer viewers. For example, the critically acclaimed Inside Amy Schumer—a program I like very much—had 1,440,000 viewers but commanded media attention in a way that the much higher rated Oak Island or Hunting Hitler simply did not.

More to the point: FX’s Fargo, with 3.1 million viewers, Golden Globe winner Mr. Robot, with 2.743 million on USA, and E!’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians, with 3.2 million viewers, all attract fewer viewers than Oak Island and yet dominate popular culture, primarily through the media attention given to them in excess of their actual viewership. In raw terms, only 1 out of 100 Americans watches one of these shows, yet some dominate the conversation online and in the media, while others do not. It’s astonishing that more people watched a dud like Superstition Mountains than Doctor Who or Hannibal.

The issue, of course, is that programs that command news media attention are aimed at a specific segment of the audience—young, wealthy urbanites—while those that don’t make it into the mainstream media’s eye are those who aren’t part of the most coveted demographic, those middle aged or older, those with less disposable income, and those who live in rural areas. These also happen to be large segments of the audience for history and monster shows. The companies that own both the cable channels and the news media are happy to keep things this way since it funnels interest to the most demographically desirable viewers, who are flattered into thinking themselves representative of the public as a whole, while simultaneously racking up ratings among general audiences for legacy advertisers (read: stuff for old people), but the result is that the news media turn a blind eye to what large sections of America are consuming and crap goes unchallenged and unacknowledged outside the sliced-and-diced demographic bubble cable channels create around it.

27 Comments

Bob Jase

1/28/2016 11:02:27 am

Myth Hunters is actually a fairly skeptical show except for any Christian relic claims.

Jason Colavito link

1/28/2016 11:08:18 am

They're not all fringe shows. Expedition Unknown isn't either. I put in whatever I could think of that covers historical mysteries. It just happens that most shows in the genre tend to be completely nuts.

E.P. Grondine

1/29/2016 10:02:18 pm

Hi Jason -

What kind of numbers do you think "Ancient Alien Cats" will pull?

DaveR

1/28/2016 11:23:26 am

Shouldn't "Finding Bigfoot" actually be called "Searching for Bigfoot?" Because "Finding Bigfoot" implies they're actually going to find a bigfoot, which isn't going to happen, unless they just go out and get some hairy guy with gigantic feet.

I enjoy "Mysteries at the Museum."

orang

1/28/2016 12:03:22 pm

Glad to see Oak Island doing well because it's about a real, legitimate mystery, unlike something like Finding Hitler (which, unfortunately, is also doing well.) Watched Expedition Unknown last night for the second time, and it is pretty good, unlike host Josh Gate's previous show whose name I can't remember.

Time Machine

1/28/2016 12:22:01 pm

How do you know Oak Island Pit wasn't a natural sinkhole later used by those engaged in the American War of Independence that was later emptied

1/28/2016 03:09:48 pm

I don't believe that it's a sinkhole because of the coconut fiber distributed under part of the island's beach sands, because the original shape of the money pit hole would have been unusual for a sinkhole, and because of the several platforms at periodic intervals in the money pit hole, and because of the unusual way the water eventually filled the money pit hole--i.e. the breaching of the final platform apparently somehow triggered a flooding of the hole, thus indicating a sophisticated waterworks system, along with the coconut fiber for filtering, to possibly protect the hole.

1/28/2016 03:51:04 pm

Are you saying that coconut fibre was unknown to those who engaged in the American War of Independence, just to retain the aura of mystery. That's classic mystification process.

1/28/2016 04:09:11 pm

To paraphrase someone else's verdict on another mystery and transpose that over Oak Island Pit:

"Oak Island Pit... is just a black hole which sucks in all our atavisms, a place to which everyone can bring his own ideas and be sure to find them reflected somehow"

1/28/2016 05:42:54 pm

i can buy into the revolutionary war origin of the money pit or about 100 years earlier due to the pulley that was found above the depression in 1795. If it were any earlier than a century sooner than the revolution then one would think the pulley would have rotted or rusted away. the most plausible explanation i've ever seen for the money pit on Oak Island is the story of William Phipps which would be about 1690. No one will sway me from my belief that it is an artificial hole, however.

1/28/2016 12:40:28 pm

I watched a few of the "Finding Hitler" episodes and did find them entertaining, however they're ignoring many facts to arrive at the conclusion that Hitler escaped Berlin during the final advance of the Russian Army.

Colin Hunt

1/29/2016 11:25:33 am

As Time Machine posits, it could just be a sink hole. A sink hole in that area would not be unreasonable and, being so close to the sea, it would not be unreasonable, even probable, that sea erosion through fissures would eventually flood it. It is common practice to use holes, however formed, as dumping grounds (like people throw shopping carts into canals today, same mentality) so it could be expected to contain the castoffs from earlier civilizations, i.e. a hole full of detritus and unwanted debris. As plausible theory as any other!

1/28/2016 12:23:10 pm

>>>Doctor Who or Hannibal<<<

Boring !!

Kathleen

1/28/2016 12:39:10 pm

People seem to like watching people acting like idiots. Many of these shows have idiots that are more relatable to the broad, less desired demographic. I know I would be included in some of the numbers. I am in the yelling at the TV in disbelief and disgust demographic.

Kal

1/28/2016 12:50:44 pm

Was Oak Island pit by chance used as an out house? That would be ironic if they were trying to uncover centuries of poo down there.

1/28/2016 03:48:19 pm

Holy shit

Bobby B.

1/29/2016 12:12:56 am

Indeed it was. In fact, the flood tunnels are old sewer drains. You see, a long time ago, giants used to live exclusively on Oak Island, they weren't anywhere else in the world but Oak Island. The money pit, often thought to be a natural sinkhole, was actually a toilet for the giants. Unfortunately, the sewer clogged, the giants couldn't fix it, thus leading to their extinction, and complete disappearance from the world/history.

1/28/2016 12:51:42 pm

We've found it. The Commodus. Oh...oh god. It's like a bad Vacation spin off movie.

1/28/2016 01:22:24 pm

I can them, squatting down in that hole in the ground, gently fondling some cylindrical brown debris.

"What is this?"

"It looks like parts of a Roman ship."

"Of course. Obviously this is an integral part of the navigational system that would by secure on the poop deck."

"They were more advanced than we ever thought."

"Amazing!"

1/28/2016 01:42:18 pm

Sorry about the typos, I should pay more attention to proof reading a less attention to my chocolate chip cookie.

Duke of URL

1/29/2016 10:35:47 am

Kal, you owe me a fresh cup of coffee and a clean keyboard...

Shane Sullivan

1/28/2016 03:09:33 pm

This is why I was unhappy to see The Soup leave the airwaves. It at least held popular fringe shows and garbage reality TV accountable for their garbaginess, even as they lavished MORE attention on them.

On an unrelated note, that 12 Angry Men adaptation on Inside Amy Schumer was a masterpiece.

David Bradbury

1/28/2016 04:00:26 pm

Some UK (BARB Top 10s per channel) "Live + 7 days" figures from the week ending 17 January. I could only find three genujinely relevant ones:
Ancient Aliens [Military History]: 72,000
Alien Files Unsealed [Military History]: 25,000
Conspiracy Files Unsealed [Military History]: 23,000

Lots of ghost ones though:
A Haunting [Pick] 171,000
The Ghost Inside My Child [Really] 382,000
Ghost Adventures [Really] 268,000
My Ghost Story: Caught on Camera [Really] 161,000
Ghost Hunters [Sony] 27,000
Ghost Hunters International [Sony] 21,000
Psychic Detectives [Tru TV] 68,000
Ghostly Encounters [Your TV] 79,000

And here are the main actual history ones:
Victorian Bakers [BBC2] 2,687,000
Immortal Egypt [BBC2: history of ancient Egypt] 1,500,000
Britain's Bloody Crown [Channel 5: about the Wars of the Roses] 940,000
Empire of the Tsars [BBC4: about the Romanov dynasty] 822,000
The Queen's Castle [BBC4: behind the scenes at Windsor Castle] 701,000
Castles: Britain's Fortified History [BBC4] 582,000

1/28/2016 05:33:23 pm

If you look at the torrent downloaded / seeds numbers for some of those shows, the numbers are totally different.
Fargo doubles to triples what Oak Island does, and Hunting Hitler is only 10% of Oak Island.

I'm not surprised that Hunting Hitler is not so popular with the more online generation.

Phillip

1/28/2016 08:01:37 pm

Glad to see you mentioned Hannibal, sad that it was canceled. It was rare, fine quality television usually not found on network television.
I'm not a fan of the character or the films, but it was like watching fine art Where as fringe shows are like watching a child use crayons on the wall.

Ryan

1/29/2016 01:14:04 am

I would take these numbers with a grain of salt. Tradtional television ratings metrics, particularly The Nielsens have a number of serious problems. The chief one is their sampling methods. They do not actually count the number of people watching the television shows on any given days. They use a an incredibly opaque sample of usually unstated size. None the less for a very long time its been well establish that Nielsen "families" provided with the tracking equipment don't line up with a proper representative sample. The sample size appears to be too small, and skew much older and much whiter than the general population. In fact last I looked into to qualify you have to have a house hold with a minimum number of members. And those members need to bracket into specific demographic blocks by age and gender. So the system tends to under represent smaller house holds. Young people, the unmarried. And from what I've heard the samples come from a pretty geographically limited part of the US. Then that (too small) sample size is extrapolated out to a percentage of the estimated total viewing audience on a given night, and number of estimated viewers. Its a lot of hand way, unpublished math. With its reliability mostly based on Nielsen's deeply embedded relationship with traditional broadcast TV and advertisers.

On top of that the Nielsens have been around for a long time. They were designed to track viewership with traditional broadcast TV, with the advent of cable they had trouble tracking less traditional networks. But the issue gets even worse these days. The Nielsens heavily downplay DVR viewing, and barely address streaming. They've got very little ability to track what cord cutters are watching. Something that has exacerbated their "skews old" aspects of their sampling problem.

So then we're talking about Live + 7. That refers to the initial airing, any repeats, and DVR viewings over the next 7 days. Each weighted differently in the final math. So shows like Oak Island, which repeat heavily in that time frame end up with inflated viewership. Which shows which may see only one or two encores in a week if at all do not. DVR, supposedly weighted less, can't close the gap.

My point being this is exactly what you'd expect to see. This particular rating system is known to skew towards blander and reality tv fare. It has know issues capturing younger, childless, and non-white audience numbers.

Rating systems like this persist because ad supported TV needs a 3rd party metric to set ad rates by. Executive higher up the ladder and advertisers still largely refuse to acknowledge streaming numbers, or any non-traditional distribution methods. A fair bit of the panic in the TV business about "peak tv" is in fact tied up in this. Creators and savvier network people are incredibly frustrated by the in ability of ratings systems to capture anything like an accurate audience number. Shows which fit well in a given systems model tend to command more add dollars. Where shows which are known to have good viewership, and generate a lot of attention, are frequently left with low ad rates because of the lack of a solid, acceptable to advertisers, number to set those rates by. Which has lead to a lot of casting about for better systems.

Some basic cable stations. Like Comedy Central for example (who show Inside Amy Schumer) have had great success ignoring traditional ratings in favor of better metrics on DVR, Streaming, and complex methods of tracking social media and things like Youtube views. They were recently lauded for it in the NY Time magazine. Many other systems show that program rated quite a bit higher than 1.2 mil. And its pretty well accepted that many more than that likely watch the program, are aware of it, and are following it.

Subscription based networks (like HBO and Netflix) have gone even further. They increasing don't even contract these ratings companies at all. In favor of tracking everything internally, and keeping all numbers in house.

A few weeks ago NBC Universal attempted to figure out, then release, Netflix's viewership numbers for certain series. Using what sounds like a pretty cockamamie methodology.

http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/jessica-jones-narcos-master-of-none-narcos-ratings-netflix-1201679334/

Jessica Jones was said to have ratings around 4.8 million, Master of None 3.9, and Narcos 3.2. All of these are respectible ratings for "prestige" cable tv. When compared to the way similar shows are rated by traditional systems. And they meet or exceed every show you've listed here.

Oddly NBC seemed to think this would embarrass Netflix. Netflix doesn't release numbers. But their response was to scoff. Apparently NBC had far underestimated the viewership numbers. And nearly everyone knowledgeable source on the subject seemed to agree (chiefly because NBC doesn't seem to have accounted for the fact that Netflix is available internationally). Jessica Jones "drove the conversation", and g