The end of prime time

The Spanish business paper Expansión analyses the statistics on viewer behaviour in the US and predicts that there will also be changes on Europe's television advertising market: "The media bosses and a few advertising agencies in Spain are observing developments on the US prime time advertising market, which tends to determine the price for advertising. The popularity of PVRs (Personal Video Recorders), which are used by a third of viewers in the US, is casting doubts on the value of prime time. ... This means that the impact of the use of PVRs and other changes in recreational behaviour, such as the downloading of programmes from the Internet, could turn late night viewing into the new prime time. Or what is even more likely, these time slots could become blurred to the point of dissolution, while advertisers shift their focus to certain programmes as opposed to concrete times of day."

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