Days of Our Lives - daytime television programming

American Demographics, May 1, 2001

The TV tastes of today's daytime audience are far different and more discriminating than those of the traditional crowd.

More men are choosing to stay at home during the day with their families. But TV programmers have yet to notice.

Sheryl B. Wiblin makes an appointment to see Dr. Phil every Tuesday at 4 p.m. The 38-year-old Wiblin isn't sick. Rather, she's hooked on the relationship advice that the "life strategist" prescribes during his weekly visit to Oprah. As a freelance media publicist who works from home in Sherman Oaks, California, Wiblin determines her own work hours, making sure she's free for Dr. Phil's diagnosis, and for her daily dose of Regis, CNN, and CNBC's Power Lunch. Wiblin says that her daytime television viewing has actually doubled in the past three years, ironically thanks to the Internet. "The Internet is something I use because I have to, for business," she says. "But when you work at home you are so isolated. TV has become my way of feeling connected to the outside world."

Chances are the undying and ever-increasing number of soap operas, court, talk, and game shows that have been the staple of daytime TV for years aren't going anywhere. The bulk of daytime TV viewers, and the primary audience for these kinds of shows, has remained the same for decades - stay-at-home moms, retired seniors, students, and those who are injured or unemployed. In the past few years, however, increased technology, more flexible work arrangements, and shifting gender roles have made more young, educated, and wealthy consumers of both sexes available to join this group during the day. As a result, the overall composition of the daytime TV audience is slowly and subtly beginning to change.

Some may argue that working from home and watching television are incompatible activities, and yet actions speak louder: 43 percent of women and 19 percent of men who currently work from home watch at least some daytime television, as do 34 percent of all part-time workers, according to an American Demographics' analysis of data from Simmons Market Research Bureau. But what, how, and how much this group watches is vastly different from the traditional daytime audience. As home-based and flex-time workplace trends continue, there may be an opportunity for TV programmers and advertisers to reach an even larger chunk of this more lucrative, prime-time-like audience during the daylight hours.

More people are finding and taking opportunities to blur the differences between their work and home lives. The percentage of wage and salary workers with flexible schedules jumped from 15 percent in 1991 to 28 percent in 1997, according to the latest available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the number of people who telework - or do work from someplace other than a traditional office - is expected to reach 30 million by 2004, up from 23.6 million today, according to the International Telework Association & Council (ITAC). What's more, home-based teleworkers are a particularly attractive demographic, with median average incomes in the lower $50,000 range, compared with the lower $30,000 range for non-teleworkers, and 82 percent of them have at least some college education, compared with 60 percent of those with traditional work arrangements.

The vast majority of home-based teleworkers (85 percent) spend at least some time working during hours that do not fall within the traditional 9-to-5 shift, thus leaving many of them with a little more free time at home during the day than average suit-and-tie employees. It appears that some of these teleworkers are spending that time sneaking a peek at the tube, as the overall composition of the daytime TV viewing audience seems to be shifting slightly more upscale, according to an analysis of average daytime Nielsen ratings by Twentieth Television, a division of FOX Corporation. Perhaps most interesting is the growth in the proportion of adult male viewers making up the daytime TV audience. According to Twentieth Television's analysis, 25 percent more men with some college, and 27 percent more men with household incomes of $50,000 or more, watched daytime TV in the fourth quarter of 2000 than in 1995.

The TV tastes of the new daytimers are far different from and more discriminating than those of the traditional crowd, however. For instance, while about 35 percent of all homemakers watch a daytime soap opera at least once a week, only 22 percent of people who work at home do, according to Simmons. Not finding what they crave on regular broadcast stations, many daytimers have turned their sights to cable. Forty-year-old Sari Fremont, for one, is a fan of Lifetime and of The Learning Channel's series of reality shows: A Baby Story, A Wedding Story, and A Dating Story, which chronicle the lives of real people during their most intimate moments. Fremont, a social worker and mother of two, runs a private practice out of her home in Haworth, New Jersey, and says that she's too busy most days to watch television. But when she does, she tries to select TV programs that give her some piece of knowledge or bit of advice, "something I can take into my pocketbook with me."