TV Has Never Been Bigger. Why Is It So Misunderstood?

Originally published on Radio + TV Business Report.

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Twenty years ago, The Wall Street Journal declared that TV was dead — two years after The New York Times said the same for radio. Yet the global TV advertising market was estimated at roughly $234 billion in 2024 and is projected to surpass $260 billion by 2030. The global radio advertising market is also growing, from about $21.6 billion in 2024 to $22.5 billion in 2025.

The problem isn’t that these channels are fading. It’s that marketers have stopped understanding how audiences actually use them — and are misreading one of the most powerful tools they still have.

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The Myth of the Media Death Pool

If the media industry has one enduring talent, it’s predicting its own extinction. The internet was supposed to replace broadcast. Then, social media would replace the internet. Then the Metaverse — more hype cycle than reality — was going to replace nearly every aspect of modern life. Yet, since the telephone replaced the telegraph, each new medium has built upon, rather than replaced, the previous one. Every channel finds its greatest value in context, not just volume. TV and radio haven’t diminished; they’ve evolved.

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Broadcast Isn’t Dying but Multiplying

Despite headlines, TV is still where most viewing happens, increasingly once again on ad-supported platforms. In the U.S., about 72% of all TV viewing time now occurs on platforms that carry advertising (broadcast, cable, and ad-supported streaming combined).

Radio is even more resilient. Nielsen data shows that radio reaches roughly 92% of U.S. adults weekly, compared with about 87% for TV. It remains the single largest weekly-reach medium in the country.

Meanwhile, streaming video is simply the evolution of TV, not its replacement. In May 2025, streaming services collectively captured 44.8% of total TV usage in the U.S., only slightly surpassing the combined share of broadcast and cable. Much of that streaming time is now on ad-supported plans, as viewers trade higher subscription prices for lower-cost, ad-funded tiers. FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) is exploding as well: free, channel-based services like Pluto, Roku Channel, and Tubi are gaining share as both viewers and brands seek low-friction viewing experiences in light of the growing cost and complexity of streaming.

The most informed brands have been closely following the evolution of this nearly century-old medium. 68% of the top 100 U.S. advertisers increased their TV ad spend in the first half of 2025, according to Samba TV’s State of Advertising report. They aren’t doing this in the interest of nostalgia, but in the interest of performance.

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The Economics of Trust and Attention

Digital advertising promises precision, but the reality is often messy: fraud, duplication, low-quality impressions, and ad blockers siphon off billions in wasted spend each year. A surprising portion of what brands buy as “reach” never reaches a real, attentive human. Broadcast, on the other hand, trades in something increasingly rare: Verified reach and human attention.

On TV, most viewing still happens in ad-supported environments where creative is both seen and heard. On radio, ad-supported listening dominates the car, where AM/FM still captures more than half of all in-car audio time and around 85–90% of ad-supported in-car listening.

These are not incidental touchpoints. They’re the moments where people are most reachable: on the couch, in the kitchen, behind the wheel — with a screen or speaker they expect to show ads. Most adults continue to discover new brands through TV and radio in ways that drive stronger trust and follow-through than digital impressions alone. Broadcast still feels familiar, credible, and human, and that emotional baseline matters.

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What Most Marketers Miss: The Screen Hierarchy

Here’s the real misunderstanding: marketers still treat “TV” as a single, monolithic medium. It isn’t.

To use TV effectively today, one must know whether their audience treats it as the first, second, or third screen. Its power shifts dramatically depending on that role.

1. First Screen (The Main Stage)

For many households with kids, sports fans, older adults, and high-engagement genre viewers, TV remains the focal point. This is where emotional storytelling, brand building, and recall occur fastest.

2. Second Screen (The Side Stage)

A growing share of viewers treat TV as the visual companion to their phone. That doesn’t weaken TV; it changes which aspects of TV work. Data from Sooth shows that “second-screeners” respond strongly to:

• audio-driven messaging
• recognizable brand assets
• emotional cues
• clear narrative structure

They may not watch every frame, but they hear and feel the story. And they remember it.

3. Third Screen (The Backdrop)

For younger audiences, TV often serves as a background while they scroll. Here, TV’s role is to prime interest that will be followed through in more interactive channels: planting associations and building mental availability that activate later through digital reinforcement.

Understanding this hierarchy isn’t a nuance. It’s the difference between high-impact media planning and wasted impressions.

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Why Integration Beats Replacement

The smartest marketers no longer ask, “TV or digital?” They ask, “How do these channels amplify each other?”  Broadcast builds emotional equity and mental availability. Digital captures intent and personalizes the dialogue. Connected TV and addressable formats now bridge the two, combining reach, trust, and precision.

In Sooth’s work across categories, we found audiences reached through TV as a first or second screen showed stronger emotional alignment, higher ad recall, and more reliable purchase follow-through than audiences reached only through digital display or social. TV sets the stage; digital delivers the closing number.

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The Real Question Isn’t “Is TV Dead?” It’s “Are We Using It Correctly?”

These days, everybody “lives in the feed.” But not every impression in the feed earns a heartbeat of attention. Broadcast is where familiarity meets focus, where emotional storytelling most thrives, and where trust is still the default. Data from across the marketing and business worlds continue to show that TV and radio shape brand perception and buying behavior in ways digital alone cannot.

The challenge for modern brands isn’t whether to include TV and radio, but in understanding how the people who buy from them actually experience the screens in front of them. Despite being our oldest electronic media channels, one could argue that they remain among the most powerful and evolved, as well.

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