Content summary:
CCTV News reported that the ratings of the 2024 CCTV Spring Festival Gala exceeded 30%, which is surprising! If the Spring Festival Gala's ratings exceed 30%, it means many important changes. Because the ratings are in deep water, we need to question, did the ratings of CCTV’s 2024 Spring Festival Gala really exceed 30%?
1. CCTV News reported that the ratings of the 2024 CCTV Spring Festival Gala will exceed 30%, which is surprising!
On December 10, almost all media were reporting that the ratings of CCTV’s “2024 Spring Festival Gala” on February 9 exceeded 30%, setting a record high. The source of
news is "according to CCTV news reports." In other words, CCTV itself reported that CCTV’s domestic new media live broadcast of the Year of the Dragon Spring Festival Gala set new records in terms of user size and number of viewers.
Specifically, as of 24:00 on February 9, CCTV’s Year of the Dragon Spring Festival Gala live broadcast had 679 million users, 1.501 billion live viewing times, an increase of 12.7% over the same period last year, and 4.2 views of the Spring Festival Gala live broadcast in vertical screen. billion times, an increase of 57.6% compared with the same period last year. The number of discussions on social media topics of the Spring Festival Gala reached 16 billion times, an increase of 59.5% compared with the same period last year.
CCTV also reported that the total number of interactions between CCTV Spring Festival Gala cooperation projects reached 52.1 billion times, overseas communication volume reached a new high, and global readings exceeded 649 million times.
CCTV said in the report that according to statistics from Kuyun Digital Entertainment, the ratings of the station’s 2024 Spring Festival Gala exceeded 30. Among them, "Nian Jin" performed by Liu Tao , Liu Shishi , Li Qin , Guan Xiaotong achieved a peak real-time ratings of 32.4912%.
2. If the Spring Festival Gala’s ratings exceed 30%, it means many important changes.
From a financial perspective, if the Spring Festival Gala’s ratings exceed 30%, it will be an important market signal and cultural consumption phenomenon.
First, it means that the trend of Chinese adults flowing from TV to the Internet, and then from the Internet to social platforms has suddenly reversed.
From the rise of the Internet to the prosperity of self-media social platforms, traditional print media and TV stations are losing users. The ratings of CCTV Spring Festival Gala have dropped from more than 40% in its peak period 20 years ago. Before the epidemic, it was only 30.1% in 2019 and has dropped to 20.2% in 2023.
If the ratings of the Spring Festival Gala in 2024 exceed 30%, it means that the audience of the Spring Festival Gala has increased by half. Customers from traditional media have returned significantly, while users from new media have been lost significantly. This is a very important signal.
Second, it means that the advertising value of CCTV Spring Festival Gala has been greatly increased!
As one of China's largest annual TV events, the Spring Festival Gala's ratings exceeded 30%, which means that more than one-third of the potential TV audience is paying attention to this program. For advertising companies, this means that the advertising reach rate on the Spring Festival Gala platform is extremely high, which can greatly increase brand exposure and influence, thus further pushing up the price and commercial value of advertising during the Spring Festival Gala.
Third, it means that audience preferences for media content have changed dramatically in one year.
The reason why users have been losing ground in recent years from traditional media such as newspapers and television to new media such as the Internet and new media is that new media provide completely different content, completely different reading methods, and interaction and participation methods from traditional media. The ratings of CCTV Spring Festival Gala increased from 20.2% to over 30% in one year, which means that a large number of users have fallen in love with the content and interaction methods of traditional media again.
3. Did the ratings of CCTV’s 2024 Spring Festival Gala really exceed 30%?
Based on this hugely changing ratings, which is related to very important economic signals, Saburo took some time to carefully study CCTV's ratings. As the research deepened, Saburo discovered a very interesting phenomenon.
First, judging from the source data cited by CCTV, CCTV’s ratings did not exceed 30%.
Because CCTV disclosed in the report that they based on the statistics of Kuyun Digital Entertainment, they concluded that the ratings of CCTV’s 2024 Spring Festival Gala exceeded 30%.
Sanlang logged into the official website of Kuyun Digital Entertainment and found that the ratings of the 2024 China Central Radio and Television Station Spring Festival Gala were 29.5%.There should still be a gap between the 30% breakthrough reported by CCTV. Saburo didn't understand why he couldn't be realistic and exaggerate when reporting ratings. Although there is only a 0.5 percentage point difference between 29.5% and over 30%, it at least shows that exaggeration is too prevalent.
Second, how many people are watching CCTV’s 2024 Spring Festival Gala?
Neither the official website of Kuyun Digital Entertainment nor CCTV disclosed the statistical method of ratings. That is, how long you watch it is calculated as the ratings. Just like the youth unemployment statistics, before including university students, youth unemployment was over a quarter. Now excluding college students, the youth unemployment rate has dropped by more than ten percentage points.
So Sanlang conducted a survey on readers’ viewing of the 2024 CCTV Spring Festival Gala on New Year’s Eve. Among the 3,555 people who participated in the survey, 993 people, or 21.8%, watched the Spring Festival Gala, and 3,562 people did not watch it, accounting for 78.2%. This proportion of watching is 21.8%, which is relatively close to the 20.2% audience rating of the Spring Festival Gala in 2023. Saburo thinks it is more credible.
What’s more interesting is that among those who watched the Spring Festival Gala, 38.4% only watched the beginning, more than one-third;
only 37.1% watched half or more, which is only one-third. In other words, if we take half of the viewing as the standard, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala’s ratings are only 8.1%; among them, only 65 people have finished watching, accounting for only 6.5%. Converted into ratings, it is only 1.8%.
Third, the ratings of TV programs have always been in deep water.
Liu Yannan, director, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Audience Research Center of Communication University of China, published on "The Paper" as early as September 18, 2018, "Rating fraud is repeatedly banned. What is the reason?" "The article pointed out that the ratings have been accompanied by various discussions, disputes and doubts since the day it entered China. Entering the second decade of the new century, the problem of ratings fraud began to surface and repeatedly caused uproar. In the summer of 2016, the People's Daily published four reports in a row, pointing to the fraud of ratings and exposing the illegal behavior of some people in bribing sample households to boost ratings. In August 2018, another real-name report was made on Weibo. An organization openly lobbied the parties involved to spend money to buy high ratings. A clear price tag of 50 million per year would guarantee that the program would enter the top ten in ratings, and so on.
Sanlang did not suspect that Kuyun Digital Entertainment’s ratings were fake. However, Saburo believes that the ratings of a program jumped from 20.2% to 29.5% in one year, and CCTV increased it to more than 30%. This is inconsistent with the general trend of users moving to new media, and it is also inconsistent with our personal feelings. Only accurate ratings can help advertising users formulate scientific results that can achieve the expected target.
[Author: Xu Sanlang]
