New consumer research data upends the theory that millennials were killing the cable industry. One genre is keeping us glued to our televisions, and it’s not what you might think.
Turns out, young adults love cable news – especially Fox News. The New York Post reports that Fox News has the highest number of millennials tuning in during 2017’s first quarter – and increase of 250 percent since 2015.
CNN also scored big gains with our generation, just behind Fox: “It grew millennial viewership to 62,900 from 34,800 in 2015, while MSNBC just notched 35,900 in the first quarter versus 20,400 in the comparable period two years earlier.”
The biggest gains are reported for the network typically considered right-of-center, and the smallest increases belong to the most left-leaning network in the study. That’s another surprise; few would expect the generation that voted for Bernie in the primaries and Hillary in the general would be watching Fox News more than CNN or MSNBC.
We were supposed to be the generation of “Cord Cutters” – sometimes called “cable nevers” – who would shun cable subscriptions in favor of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. After all, online streaming caters more to our entertainment style, which is on-demand, customized to our interests, and most of all, fairly inexpensive.
To some degree, that is true. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
This could be a function of the economic recovery in conjunction with millennials moving from the college years through the early phases of career-ladder-climbing. We’ve got more money to spend, and by the looks of it, we’re spending some of that cash on cable.
A bigger factor than our disposable income is that cable companies finally started speaking our language. Comcast came out with an app that allows subscribers to watch from a phone, tablet, or computer. Time Warner also started catering to our expectation of flexibility: the company started offering HBO on its own and let some of its channels get bundled into Sling TV (another streaming service).
So we’re subscribing to cable more, but that doesn’t answer the question: Why are we, the country’s first digital natives, suddenly interested in television news?
The current state of political affairs in this country – rocky, unexpected, and constantly changing – has us running to trusted voices.
“Fake news” is now part of our vernacular. We know that what we see on Facebook might be disproven the next day (for that matter, the next hour). The same is true of television news. But the notion of traditional newsrooms, TelePrompTers, and a scheduled regular cast of anchors and pundits still gives cable news an aura of authenticity.
The networks have our eyes on them. They might make the mistake of becoming “Clickbait Live” – but if they stick to facts, they could win our loyalty.
