If 50 percent of the TVs are tuned to Program A, and 50 percent are tuned to other programs, Program A has a share of 50. To the viewer, TV's product is the programming. To the TV executive, the product is the audience. The money comes from advertisers who pay for the right to broadcast a message to the audience. The programs exist to capture the largest possible audience.
Commercial TV is primarily an advertising medium, created to deliver audiences to advertisers.
Because TV can deliver a larger audience faster than any other medium, it can charge the highest rates of any medium for its ads. Americans watch an average of four hours of TV a day, according to measurements by ratings firms. History after 1950. By 1965, all three networks had switched to color. He used the word nuclear 11 times, and spoke of nuclear war in the western hemisphere.