How are Soap Operas still on air?
Simple. Enough people are still watching them to sell ads.
Oddly enough, I believe this is half true. People are not watching these programs but these programs are nevertheless still selling high priced ads.
Or more precisely, steady viewership is in measurable decline but the ad streams for these shows have not yet to follow the decline in viewership. How can this be?
I’m thinking of
Late Night TV as I think through this, but the viewership numbers going into 2024 for Jimmy Kimmel (
1.7M), Stephen Colbert (
2.5M), and Jimmy Fallon (
1.4M) do not justify their salaries (
$15M for each), or their production costs. Nor does Good Morning America bring in the ratings to justify paying co-host George Stephanopoulos over $15M, for example. However, in watching these shows, a supermajority of their ads are for prescriptions (“
Ask your Doctor about Skyrizi…Lyrica…Dupixent…”).
In any given year about a dozen different prescription brands each spend over
$100M in the U.S. on specifically
National Television advertisements. Skyrizi and Dupixent each spent over $500 in 2023 across all categories of advertising. Since 2021, prescription drug advertising spending has reached
$7B annually. So is Big Pharma single-handedly propping up Late Night TV? That volume of ad investment will bankroll the bloated salaries of Late Night hosts, Soap Opera production costs, and more.
What the Pharmaceuticals are willing to pay for advertising is outdated but maybe that’s because the audience they are aiming to reach is also outdated? Boomers are the largest age demographic left watching Linear TV as well as the largest age demographic using prescriptions, to the extent that perhaps the Pharmaceuticals, an industry which has money to burn, are willing to overpay (?) to advertise on shows despite steadily declining viewership, though not as steeply for Boomers.
The drop in overall viewership across Linear TV has yet to be followed by a corresponding drop in advertising spending, which has yet to be followed by a corresponding drop in the salaries of TV talent, though it appears
the day is nearing.
