Here are the ratings that have Viacom execs worried about their ailing TV networks

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Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

All eyes have been on Viacom for a while now. But the scrutiny has become intense recently as the company underwent a contentious change in leadership, another sagging quarterly report, and a subsequent double-digit percent drop in its stock price all within the past week.

What’s happening at Viacom

Last week, Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman was elected the board’s new chairman after Sumner Redstone, 92 and in declining health, stepped down from the position. Redstone’s daughter, Shari Redstone, opposed Dauman’s appointment and was the only vote against him. Her father, who remains a member of the board, was among those who voted for him. There’s a glimpse into the drama at the top of Viacom. 

Sales in the filmed entertainment division fell by 15% as the company put out fewer releases, according to Reuters. Its movie production has seen more misses than hits, though it does have Oscar nominee “The Big Short” going for it.

But Viacom’s TV offerings — which include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Spike, and TV Land — aren’t faring much better. In its most recent quarter, Viacom reported a 3% decline in revenue from its media networks, including TV. The company reported a 6% drop in revenue to $3.15 billion.

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Once synonymous with youth and pop culture, Viacom’s flagship channels like MTV and Comedy Central seem to have misplaced their finger on what their viewers want. MTV, for example, has been trying for years to create a stable of scripted offerings that resonate with young people and has failed more often than it has succeeded. The network has also seen an exodus of executives in the past year, including the exit of its president.

Business Insider took a close look at Viacom’s cable network ratings from the fourth quarter of 2013 through the fourth quarter of 2015 with the help of Nielsen ratings research (Logo was excluded because it didn’t meet minimum reporting levels for Niesel).

The results give a snapshot of Viacom’s TV difficulties over the past several years and one explanation for its internal struggles:

Looking at the ratings for total viewers of Viacom’s cable channels over the past two years shows that they’ve all experienced a drop in viewership.

The three biggest decreases in total viewership were:
1. Comedy Central -35.8%
2. TV Land -34.6%
3. Nick-at-Nite -28.1%

Viacom’s most stable network for total viewership is its country-music station: CMT -7.7%

Here’s a snapshot of just the last full quarter of primetime ratings available to us from Nielsen. This gives us a sense of which Viacom networks have the biggest total audience currently.

Top 3
1. Nick-At-Nite – 962,000
2. Spike TV – 725,000
3. VH1 – 660,000

Bottom 3
1. CMT – 287,000
2. MTV – 454,000
3. TV Land – 513,000

Usually, most cable networks sell ads for the higher age bracket of 25-to-54-year-olds. But taking into account the younger viewership of many of Viacom’s cable networks, we decided to compare them at the 18-to-49-year-old demographic most often used by the broadcast networks.

These numbers give us a sense of which networks are hitting broad, advertising-friendly audiences.

Top 3
1. VH1 – 419,000
2. Comedy Central – 375,000
3. Spike TV – 354,000

Bottom 3
1. CMT – 125,000
2. TV Land – 154,000
3. MTV – 292,000

In order to see how the channels are doing with young people, we combined the average primetime viewership for the 2-to-11-year-old and 12-to-17-year-old demographics. One would expect that MTV and Nick would rank highest with these young viewers, but that’s not quite how it works out.

Here’s how it looks:

Top 3
1. Nick-At-Nite – 541,000
2. VH1 – 102,000
3. MTV – 97,000

Interestingly, VH1 just edges out MTV with young viewers, even though VH1 had always been positioned as capturing audiences who age out of MTV’s youth demo and into the adult demos.

Note: Nielsen doesn’t measure CMT and TV Land in these younger demos, so they aren’t included in this report.

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