The Shows That Captured Attention in October 2021

The Fall TV season is well underway and October saw the return of many favorite shows on Primetime TV. ABC's "The Goldberg's", and "Survivor" and "Young Sheldon", both on CBS, have all become predictable programs in the top five of our Attention List month-after-month. But this October, two programs from CW made it to the top spots our Attention List - "The Coroner" and "Whose Line is It Anyway".

While streaming TV has a lot of cultural momentum right now, it's important for our industry to keep perspective on the reach and impact of linear TV, which still represents about 80% of all TV viewership. Shows that capture attention and reach large audiences on linear TV can provide good value to advertisers who are creating their mixed media strategies - incorporating both linear and CTV investments, perhaps for the first time in 2021.

This report highlights the shows that capture the most attention across broadcast, cable, and CTV. We highlight the top five shows in each of these categories below, but if you want to find out which shows made the top 10, click the links for "See the Full List" in each section. Likewise, you can dig in further to CTV performance for October 2021, here with our full report on CTV co-viewing, binging and share of time spent.

All of the information we include in this monthly report is helpful to marketers and media sellers as they react to an evolving media landscape and new ways to measure and benchmark media strategies.

For more on how TVision is using innovative technology and data analysis to reveal second-by-second engagement metrics for both programming and advertising, in both linear and CTV, contact us.

Top CTV Programs, by Share Time of Spent

Share Time of Spent ranks shows by the proportion of time viewers spent tuned to the content. For this report, we are specifically looking at time spent with new, original, episodic CTV programming.

Our Share of Time Spent is a good indicator of the overall popularity of a show, and that’s why it’s no surprise to see Netflix’s mega-hit “Squid Game” top the list.

See the full list

Top Linear TV Shows, by TV Ad Attention

TV Ad Attention measures how effectively an ad or ads held viewers’ Attention while they aired. It is measured as the percentage of all ad impressions in which the viewer was looking at the TV screen for two or more seconds.

The CW tops our list for attention to ads with two programs "Coroner" and "Whose Line is it Anyway" beating out some familiar names on our list, including "The Goldbergs" (ABC) and Survivor (CBS). It's worth noting that no programs in their first season cracked our Top Ten for ad attention this month, as Americans settled in with long-tome favorites.

Cable television programming will usually deliver higher attention given its lower overall audience size and the more intentional aspect of viewing - people need to seek out cable television programming more than they do the broadcast networks. In October the top cable program attention scores were on par with Broadcast leaders. "Million Dollar Listing" on Bravo and Queen Sugar on OWN topped the list.

See the full list