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Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17
An anonymous reader writes "Nielsen, the company that studies the viewing habits of television viewers, announced its findings in a blog post Tuesday. Since 2008, the number of cable TV channels offered as a bundle rose from 129 to 189 in 2013, but in that time-frame viewers have consistently only watched an average of 17 channels. The data seems to support the notion that consumers are better off subscribing to channels a la carte, but cable companies are of the opinion that 'the price of cable TV wouldn't change much if channels were served à la carte because content providers won't sell the most popular programs to cable companies unless the provider's other channels are also served up.' Nielsen concluded in its post that 'quality is imperative—for both content creators and advertisers', signaling the possibility that more Americans will cut the cord after realizing that their cable bill has increased in the last few years but their consumption of content hasn't."
and nothing to watch.
On 17 channels, how many actual shows are being watched...
Most people would be financially better off just buying what they like on iTunes, even at $3/episode.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I live in rural Texas and have one choice for Internet and TV. I pay $128 a month for 250 channels and a 30MBit connection. I watch the following channels:
- BBC America
- SyFy
- Travel
- History
- HGTV
- USA
- Animal Planet
- Local affiliate for Revolution TV show
- My kids watch Nick Jr. and Nick, sometimes Disney
Maybe 10 channels.. what a waste of money. I have the least amount of channels I can get and still qualify for the bundle. If I could get BBC America, I would gladly cut cable, as the rest I can get online.
So even with 189 channels, Pink Floyd is still pretty close with the lyrics from "Nobody's Home"
I've got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from.
Could spend maybe $20 and get what I want and saved like $60
Exactly why they won't let you.
Wife is addicted to crap TV. I would cancel my $200/mo U-Verse service in a second if she'd let me.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I am convinced that the price per channel would go up if everyone was able to purchase channels a la carte.
It costs $X to produce all the content, and they need to charge each customer more than $Y (where y = x / number of customers) on average in order to make a profit. Everybody knows no one could possibly be watching 200 channels. But if all of a sudden people decide they want to only pay for 20 channels, then everybody is going to be paying the same price for just those 20 channels.
People want a la carte because they think it will be cheaper, but it probably won't be on average. For example It'll be cheaper for people who watch 5 channels and more expensive for people who watch 30.
The real way to save money on a la carte, is to cut out the middle man (e.g. the cable companies). If you can purchase content directly from the supplier (e.g. from HBO, or comedy central, etc), that's however many less salaraies that need to be paid by your subscription costs.
ESPN is the most expensive channel in your cable package, and I don't watch sports. Just dropping the sports channels would cut a huge portion out of my (hypothetical) cable bill. Just because most people want ESPN doesn't mean everyone does.
So the reason we can't pick and choose, instead of buying bundles is because of anti-competitive measures by the suppliers?
And a big part of that is the over $60 a year you're spending on ESPN and associated networked even if you never watch sports.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
The fact that most people only watch a few channels doesn't really mean that a la carte would be cheaper overall.
Imagine that there are two channels. It takes a hundred bucks to keep the channel airing for a month. We have two viewers, A and B. A likes channel 1, and B likes channel 2, and they dislike the other channel. Right now, they each pay $100 to watch both channels, although they only look at one. Each channel gets paid $50 per bill.
So imagine that we switched to A la carte. Now A only subscribes to 1, and B only subscribes to 2. They channels still need the same amount of money to stay on the air, so what is the new price? subscribing to channel 1 is $100, and subscribing to channel 2 is $100 too. both channels get the same amount of money, both people pay the same bill... and they now get half the programming. Success?
So let's say that now ESPN charges $20 per subscriber. They do so, because they believe that the value they provide to the average subscriber is about $20. Let's say I don't like ESPN, Well, ESPN didn't get any less valuable, it's just that I will not pay the $20, and said $20 are going to be passed on as rate hikes to the people that want to watch the channel.
So while some people that really just watch very few, cheap channels, might get some savings, if your 17 channels include ESPN, Disney Channel, CNN, AMC and HBO, guess what? You will probably be paying a whole lot more than before, as unbundling makes every single channel more expensive, and you just happened to like 'anchor' channels that can really ask for a premium.
How can Cox get away with this? Disney is famous for saying "carry all of our channels or none". That means that all of the ESPN channels, Disney channels, ABC, and every other channel that Disney owns must be included with all of a cable company's packages (and charged accordingly) or Disney will refuse to deal with that cable company at all. How can Cox (whoever they are) get away with a deal that no other cable or satellite provider has managed to get?
It would be interesting to see if those 17 average out to specific channels, or categories of channels. i.e. Sports Broadcasts.
Honestly, I'd be a cord cutter and I know a lot of other people who would as well, if there were *reliable* alternate way to get the sporting events I want to watch. Baseball, Hockey, Soccer, Auto Racing, just to name a few that you can't really get outside of a cable subscription. Football *could* be piled in there as well, mostly because there are relatively few games on the broadcast channels on any given weekend for a given region. However, NFL is probably the *most* available of any sport.
I never watch anything else that can't be reliably streamed from Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc. But I have to pay for all of it to get the sports. ):
You're assuming everybody subscribes to all the popular channels. At least in my case, that's not true; I'd be interested in at most a couple of them, so even if the total monthly cost is spread over only the top say 10 channels, I'd still save quite a bit.
The data seems to support the notion that consumers are better off subscribing to channels a la carte, but cable companies are of the opinion that 'the price of cable TV wouldn't change much if channels were served à la carte because content providers won't sell the most popular programs to cable companies unless the provider's other channels are also served up.'
Then cable will die.
When a company decides it is better to not provide value to it's customers, and there is now a plethora of other options, they will soon find themselves without customers.
Well, there's like a bajillion web sites, and I only visit about ten on a regular basis! Who's wasting bandwidth now? Checkmate, new media!
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The funny thing about a la carte is that it works the opposite of the way most people who think about it believe it will work. A channel has very high fixed costs and overhead so it is likely that that the more demand there is for a station, the cheaper it will be per person, and the fewer people who want to watch a station, the more expensive it will be. So a high demand station like ESPN will probably be very reasonably priced, despite having a high cost to produce.
Nobody wants to hear this, but it's the truth and people should understand it:
"95% of all Slashdot
That is an overly simplistic analysis.
Reality is that the supply of ESPN and crappy channel are both unlimited once the channel is 'added' to the network, so the a la carte price is what the market will bear -- ie what is highest price they can charge for it where charging more will lose them more subscribers than the extra revenue will cover.
For a channel like ESPN, they can raise the price pretty high and lots of people will continue to pony up to keep getting it. For a channel like "gameshow reruns from the 70s"... not so much so it will be much much lower.
Went to pay my Uverse bill friday, it had jumped 50% (from 117 to 179). Went through the series I record, found 11 channels I actually care about.
Called Uverse Monday, was on hold 40 minutes and they disconnected me.
Called again Tues, was on hold 40 minutes and they disconnected me.
Called again this morning, ended up agreeing to fewer channels, no HD, no Showtime, for the same damned price I'd been paying the last 4 years.
I'm thinking I'll spend tomorrow researching laws (I live in California) to see if that verbal contract is valid, and what my options are.
Sure, lots of channels will cease to exist. But the makers of the content are already using different outlets like youtube to get their content out there. Once they get enough following there, they might strike a deal with netflix or a similar company. Just because "24/7 content you can't choose" goes away doesn't mean that you can't replace it with "content you choose whenever you want it".
TV has been the industrial age of amusement and news. In a lot of "industrial" products, we are now producing custom ordered items, keeping the price low because of automation. If you don't buy your car off the lot, you can have any colour, engine and accessory package you want. It will be produced especially for you and it won't cost you a dollar more than the same car would cost you off the lot. I don't fit in confection sizes (too tall) and I have a lot of my clothing made. Compared to name brands, my clothing is cheaper and often higher in quality. This is because they now have computer controlled cutting machines that calculate the correct fabric cuts and the fabric gets cut by a robot. This is how modern TV is going to work as well.
People now have a choice what content to watch and when to watch it. It may be bad for TV channel owners, but in the end, this will provide improved quality and diversity of content at a price that people are willing to pay for it. Advertising models will adapt to this. In show product placement, more ads on the cheaper subscription compared to the premium one and so on. Don't be fussy about people moving your cheese but adapt and reap the benefits.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?