Primetime Streaming: TV Patrol (ABS-CBN) vs. 24 Oras (GMA 7)

Now that two of the major networks have gone completely online with their prime time news broadcasts streaming on Facebook and YouTube, their impressive performance could give us a good glimpse of the online viewing behavior of a typical Filipino family.

With ABS-CBN shifting all their TV programs to digital, rival GMA Network also prompted to (globally) broadcast their own news programs on Facebook and YouTube (although they’ve been doing so domestically for some years now). GMA 7 still has its regular free-to-air TV broadcasts while ABS-CBN has none, except for its cable channels and the TV Plus.

On its first day, ABS-CBN shocked a lot of digital natives with their impressive showing on their live streams with more than 190,000 concurrent views on Facebook, ultimately attracting 8.7 million views on Facebook and another 1.1 million views on YouTube. You can read our earlier story about it here: ABS-CBN going Digital: By the Numbers.

TV Patrol viewership on Facebook/YouTube during the 1st week of online broadcasts.

We were told by a network insider that this impressive showing of TV Patrol on Facebook/Youtube was the catalyst for GMA 7 to finally broadcast (globally) their news programs on the same platforms.

Both network’s performance on Youtube and Facebook gives us a good glimpse of their reach and answer quite a number of interesting questions:

• Which platform do Filipinos prefer when watching livestreams?
• Do they prefer to watch live or just the replays?
• Is there streaming fatigue?
• Which network has a wider reach and has sustained its viewership over the past weeks.

So we went through the last 2 weeks to check the latest views from streams on Facebook and YouTube. We also took a spot check on the peak concurrent views for both platforms and monitored the post-stream gains in video views for the next 12 hours after the stream.

ABS-CBN’s TV Patrol raked in a total of 16.2 Million views (1.15M views per day, average) on Facebook while GMA 7’s 24 Oras got a total of 22.2 Million views (1.58M views per day, average) for the same period (May 13 -26). The number of views on YouTube is smaller with TV Patrol getting a total 4.5 Million views (325k views per day, average) and 24 Oras getting 7.3 Million (524k views per day, average).

In the past 14 days of FB livestreams, TV Patrol had more views for 2 days while 24 Oras got more views for 12 days. In YouTube, 24 Oras had more views over TV Patrol in all of the last 14 of livestreams.

TV Patrol is showing a downward trendline in viewership for the past 14 days with a high of 1.94 Million in May 14 and a low of 683k in May 23. Also, the last 7 days, it only got more than 1M views for 2 days and the rest fo the 5 days were all under 1M views.

24 Oras is also showing a slight downward trend although not as prominent as that of TV Patrol. The program got a 14-day high of 2.43 Million last May 21 and a low of 379K last May 23 (which is noticeably very low compared to the other 13 days). 24 Oras’ viewership is generally flat but manages to kick better than average viewership every few days.

The same observations can be made in the YouTube livestreams. 24 Oras generally performed better than TV Patrol in all the last 14 days of the broadcast with TV Patrol getting an average of 325k views and 24 Oras getting 524k views.

We also observed a downward trendline in both ABS-CBN and GMA 7 with the former being more prominent.

As for concurrent views, we watched both FB and YouTube streams of the two networks simultaneously and took the peak viewership during their 2-hour broadcasts. Here, we noticed that more people are watching the livestreams on YouTube rather than Facebook.

TV Patrol was peaking at around 17.1k concurrent viewers while 24 Oras was somewhere around 17.4k viewers on their Facebook live channels.

On YouTube, their numbers are better with TV Patrol getting a peak of 55k viewers and 24 Oras closing in at 60k viewers at its peak. This is a stark contrast during the 1st week of their online broadcasts where FB Live was getting way more eyeballs (up to 190k for TV Patrol).

At the end of the YouTube stream last night (May 26), TV Patrol already got 30k views for their broadcast while 24 Oras only got 17k views. However, these numbers continue to grow in the next 12 hours. By 7am the following morning, TV Patrol attracted 257k views while 24 Oras jumped to 422k views.

GMA 7’s concurrent viewers on YouTube are also on the incline with 44k last May 14 and 60k last May 26. ABS-CBN’s concurrent viewers remain relatively flat with 53.5k viewers last May 14 and 55k last May 26.

Also worth noting the total number of followers/subscribers of both networks (as of May 30, 2020):

ABS-CBN added 410,000 new YouTube subscribers in March and 220,000 in April. GMA News, on the other hand, added 400,000 new YouTube subscribers in March and 320,000 new subs in April.

Looking at all these data, we can make some rational observations about viewing behaviors of the average Filipino, relative to the broadcast performance of the two networks:

• YouTube is the preferred platform for livestreams over Facebook in the long-term. This could be also be attributed to better notification of YouTube when a stream is live as well as the signal-to-noise ratio of FB compared to YouTube. For virality, it’s still Facebook over YouTube as seen in the 190k concurrent views of TV Patrol last May 7.
• Facebook is the preferred platform for replays as shown in the total views of both broadcasts after their live stream.
• Between Facebook and YouTube, Facebook has a larger reach with a factor of 3:1 (it’s 3.6 for TV Patrol and 3.0 for 24 Oras).
• TV Patrol suffered a huge drop of viewership, almost a 90% decline, from a high of 9.95M combined views last May 7 to just 950k combined views last night (May 26).
• 24 Oras outperformed TV Patrol on Facebook with a 58% share and on YouTube with 62%. Their combined viewer market share on FB/YouTube is 59% for GMA 7 and 41% for ABS-CBN. GMA 7 is also somehow able to sustain its viewership.
• Viewers are experiencing some sort of live stream fatigue as observed in the noticeable decline of total views between the two networks.

Editor’s Note: An earlier chart of YouTube subscribers incorrectly used “GMA Network” (17.1M) stats instead of “GMA News” (6.45M). This has been corrected.