The CW was founded only 16 years ago, and throughout that short life, she has been known as the youngest broadcaster and broadcaster with a younger audience. That’s why when Nexstar COO and President Tom Carter stated during a conference call Monday that the average viewer for the network, which was acquired by the TV station giant, is 58, the internet had a hard time swallowing the stats.
How could the average viewer of a YA-focused content house like “Riverdale,” “All American,” “Walker,” and “The Flash” be in their late fifties?
But as diverse Independently via measurements from Nielsen, the Nexstar exec was correct: The average age of prime-time viewers on The CW throughout calendar year 2021 was 57.4, according to Live+7 Day data. This calculates initial linear viewership and 1 week late viewing (mostly DVR) where available.
Looking at today’s total numbers, which includes not only prime-time broadcast content, but everything shown on a network outside the prime-time window as well, the average age of a CW viewer comes in at 58.4. And those numbers make CW’s audience not only bigger than some expected, but also no longer the broadcast network with younger audiences.
Surprisingly, that title goes to Fox, which in 2021 had an average broadcast age of 56.6 and an overall average age of 56.2 today based on Live+7 data.
More recent data also indicates that Fox has the smallest audience. Per Nielsen, between September 20, 2021 and August 14, 2022, the network averaged a primetime viewer of 57.3 according to Live + Same Day data, which measures all viewers of primetime content on the first day it aired, and 57.4 according to For Live + Same Day data. to live + 7s. Over the same time period, CW viewers were slightly older: prime-time viewers averaged 60.8 per day, while lag viewing resulted in a Live+7 average of 59.5.
According to the latest available data, CBS, NBC, and ABC are all older trends than Fox and The CW. NBC is the next youngest behind CW at L+SD at 61.1, followed by ABC at 61.4 and CBS at 66.1. In L+7s, NBC and ABC correlate with an average age of 61.2, while CBS correlate with the oldest at 65.5.
See the chart below for peak period averages and total day averages for 2021 alone, which indicate the same order: Fox, CW, NBC, ABC, then CBS, smallest to largest.
But that information only looks at linear viewers, who have veered old and old across broadcasts (which have long targeted the advertiser’s 18-49 adult demo) in recent years amid an increase in wire-cutting. This does not tell the whole story, i.e. delete the audience that consumes the content of these networks on the streaming platforms.
Despite losing its supposed status as having the smallest broadcast audience, it’s still safe to say that The CW has the smallest average model in the pack when it comes to broadcasting. A large number of teen dramas and superhero fare on The CW are known to have been largely consumed by broadcast audiences in the late twenties and early thirties. While independently verified broadcast data on the CW series is not available, paying attention to the difference between Live + Same Day and Live + 7s numbers in linear view supports the perception of smaller audiences when it comes to different ways of displaying this content.
Although Fox has a lower number in both categories, Fox’s Live + 7 average age between last September and this August is higher than Live + Same Day – suggesting that Fox’s prime-time content is attracting that older audience in lag watching. By contrast, the average 59.5-year-old CW viewer in L+7s versus the 60.8-year-old average in L+SD shows that millennial viewers aren’t surprised that they tune in their DVRs more often than they watch live .
Like Fox, NBC audiences have also progressed with delayed viewing. ABC and CBS audiences are getting younger with viewing lags of 0.2 and 0.6 years, respectively. But those discrepancies are far less than the 1.3 years separating CW’s live viewers and late viewers, which puts the young CW in that group at least, thanks to the stalled “Riverdale” audience.
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