By: Guillermo | Twitter

Posted: July 13, 2010 - 2:01 pm

How much network programming was really made available online during the 2009-10 broadcast TV season?

• 90% of shows became available online
• 50% of episodes came online within a day of their original air date
• 60% of episodes went offline within three weeks of their original air date
• Free broadcast content is only available online for a limited time. Is this a freemium model waiting to happen?

More often than not, the debate about the future of online television revolves around the major TV networks. We’ll get to why that’s shortsighted in a future post, but this week we thought it would be interesting to dig into the data to find out just how much network programming was really made available online during the 2009-10 broadcast TV season.  When it comes to the Web, are the networks still crawling, or are they taking full-fledged baby steps, or even, perhaps, turning into a toddler and running away from their parents already?

The following numbers reflect shows that came online at any point during the Fall or Spring seasons from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and The CW. Our data covers free streaming only — it does not include paid downloads or VOD streaming from Netflix, Amazon or iTunes.

Starting in September 2009, the major networks posted 4,420 full-episodes online from 127 distinct shows, 109 of which were from primetime. Our primetime ratio is lower than the total number of 140 primetime shows for the following reasons: 1) 11 primetime shows never aired online this season**; 2) we do not include NFL shows and game slots (10 on TV) as part of our primetime count (more on this in a later blog post); 3) where Nielsen counts shows that air daily (e.g., The Jay Leno Show) as five shows per week, we count them as one (19 instances).

The figures below show the distribution of broadcast shows, as well as full episodes, that were released online in 2009-10.  ABC and CBS had the most shows available online, with ABC the overall leader by a slim margin. The CW had the highest percentage of shows available online with a perfect 100% this past season. Meanwhile, CBS led the pack when it came to the number of total episodes, having posted just under 1,750 episodes available online throughout the season.

Primetime series make up the bulk of available shows online, at 84%. Though daytime (10 %) and late night shows (6%) posted significantly fewer shows, they made up for it by posting loads of episodes — this is because they air daily rather than weekly.  Although most primetime shows made an average of 18 episodes available online last season, the average daytime and late night shows released well over 100 episodes.

The first figure below clearly displays this type of variability amongst the episodes that come online. The second two graphs show that while the standard seems to be about 10-25 episodes per show, there are many with less, and just a few with more. The lowest numbers likely result from shows that were cancelled midway through the season (a whopping 32 primetime cancellations last season…we’ll go into this more in a future post).

So who should we call out for not being available online? Essentially all of daytime and late night shows make all their full episodes available online for some time, so these shows are in the clear. Primetime is far less uniform; the primetime shows that did not make any video available online are:

ABC: America’s Funniest Home videos (only the videos themselves are available), Wife Swap, and Romantically Challenged
CBS: The Big Bang Theory, The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, and Cold Case
NBC: Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU
FOX: American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance (though as we’ll note below, as of 7/6 So You Think You Can Dance started adding episodes online.)

Here’s where it really starts to get interesting: over this past network season, over 50% of the full-episodes that were made available online did so within 24 hrs of their initial air date.  And nearly all became available within two weeks of their initial TV air date.

Now get this: of the 4,420 broadcast episodes that graced the Web for free during the 2009-10 season, over 90% (3,980) were later removed. (Note that Netflix, Amazon and iTunes have many of these available online behind pay-walls, which we include in our Clicker search results) 60% of these episodes were taken down within three weeks of being published, while over 90% of them came down within six weeks. Sometimes the episodes will come back online, but there’s no clearly set pattern to predict exactly which will return when.

Next, we looked at which primetime TV shows from last season still had full episodes available on July 9, 2010.  Of our 127 totals shows (109 primetime shows,) 84 (68 primetime) still had full episodes online for free as of last Friday. In total, there were 635 full episodes available online (525 primetime) from the broadcast networks. On that date, ABC and FOX had the most shows available online and The CW had the fewest. Across the board, primetime shows only make around 5-10 episodes available at any given time, even when they have over 20 episodes to offer. And when a series is cancelled, all episodes tend to disappear from the Internet all together; in the 2009-10 season, we saw this happen with ABC’s Eastwick and The Forgotten, CBS’s Miami Medical, and FOX’s ‘Till Death.

Another trend we’ve noticed since launching Clicker in November is that most network shows release only 2-6 episodes online at a time.

If this data indicates anything, it’s that when it comes to network TV online, what goes up must come down.  If you want to catch a show, the sooner you get to it after its initial air date, the better. If you wait too long, the only likely alternative will be going through a paid service. (And as we just discovered last week when Party Down was pulled from Netflix Instant Streaming, sometimes even paid services take shows down at a moment’s notice.)

There’s hope, though. CBS’s 60 Minutes has kept every single episode from the 2009-10 season online for free, and we were pleasantly surprised to see FOX debut last Thursday’s So You Think You Can Dance within a few days of air and has since posted the last 7 episodes from the current season for free.  Another good sign: three series had every single episode from their 2009-10 seasons available online on 7/9: Parenthood, Trauma and Mercy (all thanks to NBC). Could the times be a’changin?