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Subscribers Pay 61 Cents Per Hour of Cable, But Only 20 Cents Per Hour of Netflix (allflicks.net)
An anonymous reader writes from a math-heavy report via AllFlicks: The folks at AllFlicks decided to crunch some numbers to determine just how much more expensive cable is than Netflix. They answered the question: how much does Netflix cost per hour of content viewed, and how does that compare with cable's figures? AllFlicks reports: "We know from Netflix's own numbers that Netflix's more than 75 million users stream 125 million hours of content every day. So that's (roughly) 100 minutes per user, per day. Using the price of Netflix's most popular plan ($9.99) and a 30-day month, we can say that the average user is paying about 0.33 cents per minute of content, or 20 cents an hour. Not bad! But what about cable? Well, Nielsen tells us that the average American adult cable subscriber watches 2,260 minutes of TV per week (including timeshifted TV). That's equivalent to 5.38 hours per day, or 161.43 hours per 30-day month. Thanks to Leichtman Research, we know that the average American pays $99.10 per month for cable TV. That means that subscribers are paying a whopping 61.4 cents per hour to watch cable TV -- more than three times as much as users pay per hour of Netflix!"
Most Netflix content has been off the air for years. It's cheaper content. Other than their original shows, which is admittedly increasingly growing in size and value, generally cable offers more valuable access than Netflix does.
Netflix costs $3 per person for 4 people to view it, but that includes 5 profiles. So realistically it's rare all 5 people want to watch at the same time. So it's quite easy to pay less than that. Cable is usually at least $30 to $40 per month for a household. That's 10x as expensive for the cheapest plans available. Not to mention Netflix doesn't have commercials... You can't compare the average hours per user for cable and netflix. They aren't equal... At best you can compare the cost per person. The number of hours is highly variable, and not to mention it doesn't change the monthly cost anyways...
Seems like a false comparison. Netflix lacks news, sports and the vast amount of programming that is available on Cable ... it better be cheaper! A much more interesting comparison would be Netflix and HBO.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
This also doesnt factor in connection cost. Thats 20 cents per hour for people that somehow have internet costs counted on a different ledger.
"His name was James Damore."
You really can't have "just" Netflix for 9.99/month. You need an Internet connection as well.
For netflix you need a proper internet connection.
For cable, you don't (technically).
I'm not here to rah-rah Comcast bundles, but I don't see anything in those 20-cents-per-hour numbers that account for the cost of the Internet service to get the Netflix into your home.
5.38 hours per day
I doubt this figure; this is an absurd amount of TV to watch on a daily basis on average.
If you have a job, this figure pretty much means you spend all your free time on TV.
Is this just number the cumulative amount of hours of all TV's in an average family household turned on, or is this actually time spent watching TV by an average individual?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
How much does Netflix cost again? $10 per month? It's so insignificant that I'm not even sure. I look over my credit card bill every month making sure all the charges look legit and I don't even usually notice Netflix.
It might not work for all customers, but I would still pay for Netflix if it was $25 a month. I would complain at that price, but I wouldn't cancel my service.
cable TV? Screw that. People complain about the paucity of things to watch on Netflix, but have you looked at your cable TV lineup? That's even worse and I used to pay close to $150 per month for that
Over 5 hours a day of TV ?!
And you guys complain about immigrants taking your jobs ?!
So many thing wrong with this that it is hard to know where to start. Looks to me that it was more of an ego trip on the part of the author than a valid study.
First of all, cable is obviously a screw job. There is no way that I can pretend that cable has any merits. But still ...
NetFlix content is generally older than cable content. While Netflix is creating some new shows, it is unlikely that many people are signing up for NetFlix for their "look, we made a little show" content.
People who are watching NetFlix have to be paying for Internet too. And many pay for a faster speed than they otherwise would to watch NetFlix. So Internet prices should be considered. Once that is done, since NetFlix is watched less, it might even end up costing more per hour, but "per hour" is just stupid.
Computing the cost per hour is pointless. Both are unmetered. People turn cable on even though they might not be paying attention to it, it becomes just something that's there and might occasionally be interesting. The same isn't quite as true for NetFlix since you have to actively select what you want to see. But realistically NetFlix is likely watched less simply because there is less to watch. If NetFlix had live shows such as news feeds then it might get watched more in a month making its meaningless "hourly cost" less, but it does not.
All that you can really say is that cable is more expensive than NetFlix, as long as you are not getting screwed too bad on Internet access.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
5.38 hours per day - after work, commuting, eating, sleeping. I don't think I could manage that for more than a couple of days if I was paid to do it!
are commercials.
When I cancelled my cable connection, I redirected that money to a different bank account of mine instead, where I save up for vacations.
I went through many of my other expenses and found 200$ pr. month which now goes to that account.
As much as I support the mandatory 2-minute-hate-for-Comcast routine we've established, this is maybe trying a bit too hard to establish Netflix as the savior. I mean, at least let 2-3 days pass between stories on how Netflix is going to save us from horrible cable TV.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Netflix won't survive without real net neutrality.
With airborne TV, the content providers take care of production *and* delivery.
With cable TV it's the same.
Why should different with internet TV?
Either Netflix pays the ISPs, or it needs to be bought by one of them (Verizon?).
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
When you have cable it's left on for background noise alot of the time. So actual hours viewed will be alot less than that. The cost per actual hour watched will be much higher than that.
I use my cable connection to watch Netflix!
to get our internet from the cable provider as they is no other choice due to the illegal monopoly tricks cable companies use like "franchise fees" in cities to make it more difficult for competition to come in to the town.
So my cost is close to the cable number because I am punished for having internet without cable. $80 a month for 15meg
Because comcast rapes us in towns where there is zero competition.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In my circles and with my career, internet has become a necessity not an option. Looking at it through this lens, you factor the difference between the internet you'd have without netflix and what you'd have with it, not the entire cost. In my case, that's $10/mo extra, not the whole $50.
I'm not defending cable, it's WAY over priced. I've also got a NetFlix account, as it is one of the very few places where I can get any 4K content, even if it is VERY limited.
But, there's no way that NetFlix, in it's present state, will replace cable. The NetFlix content SUCKS! It's mostly old, sometimes VERY old, B grade content and it just SUCKS!
RedBox content is greater than NetFlix. Cable content(200 channels of thrice duplicated utter shit) is greater than NetFlix! The NetFlix "phenomenon" is a bubble generated by people who where fedoras and trilbies while struggling to grow a beard.Peopel watching 4 to 5 hours of TV a night are not watching NetFlix shlock.
That ludicrous level of fallacious and manufactured melodrama is usually found only in the most extreme fags.
You should consider reducing the amount of dick in your diet.
Does the average American watches all the most expensive channels? That's a lot for TV. My cable bill is about $30 CAD ($23 USD).
Most Netflix content has been off the air for years. It's cheaper content.
That's actually why I dropped my subscription (twice). I like the concept but I had two problems with Netflix. One was that it was a pain in the rear to find something interesting to watch that I hadn't already seen or had no interest in seeing. I would spend 30-60 minutes searching through their (crappy) interface to try to find something to watch and eventually give up. The other problem was that their catalog was decidedly lacking in more recent content. Oh they had some but it was very hit or miss for their streaming. I haven't seen any original content from them that piqued my interest enough to bother subscribing again and I doubt I will. Most movies I actually care enough to watch more than once I already own on DVD or BluRay. Also much of what I would watch on Netflix I can watch for free on Youtube or elsewhere, including cable.
This isn't saying Netflix is a bad service and I love the concept but for me personally I didn't find it to be good value for money. I do pay $35/month for a cable subscription but surprisingly I find that to be better value for money than Netflix was. I just didn't use Netflix enough to justify the (admittedly reasonable) subscription. Ideally I'd like to get some form of ala-carte programming but neither the streaming nor the cable options have nailed the magic formula for me at least.
...because if Netflix had the amount of "channels" that I have with my cable service, and all of the variety each channel has, available, including new episodes, Netflix would be a lot more expensive.
I actually got rid of Netflix years ago because it stopped having anything I really cared to watch.
Amazon Prime Video has more options than Netflix...and it's included in my Prime membership - which is cheaper per month than Netflix.
Amazon should buy Netflix, change over to the monthly Prime price, and include it like they do now.
And how much should internet service cost? I was paying $80 per month for 40 Mbps down but only ever getting 20 and often getting about 2. As it turned out, they were willing to lower my bill to about $35 per month and no doubt they're still making a profit. So where was that extra $45 going?
That my friend is about the closest thing to pure profit in the known universe. It costs them essentially the same amount to provide you 1Mbps access as it does 100Mbps access once the equipment is installed. Like text messaging for phone companies they are charging for something that otherwise would be an underutilized asset. Worse, in a lot of places there is just one option for customers so they have little incentive to compete on price or improve service. Where I live my options are Comcast or MUCH slower service from Frontier Communications or to cut the cord and go LTE though my cell phone. Kind of a Hobson's choice really.
It's kind of like seats on an airplane. People have different willingness to pay for what in reality are very minor differences and so they charge different amounts to maximize profit.
Crazy, isn't it? And maybe a bit sad, as well.
My Internet which includes a handful of cable TV channels - $298; my phone - $98 (including reduced speed but unlimited data & tethering allowed); son's phone $35 (voice only); wife's phone also about $100 (including data).
Total telecomms bill for the family $531 or just under USD 70 per month. Now we don't have TV sports packages or so (those run $200-500 a month), just don't care enough about that, and I'd rather go to a bar or so if there would be anything actually worth watching in that realm.
Here I hear talk about just cable TV at USD 150 a month. That's before mobile phones and so. Maybe it's time for a free market or so, better quality and lower prices.
As "Nielsen tells us", an average adult watches 35:26 hours of TV per week. That is 2126 minutes per week, not 2260.
But more importantly, the article compares "minutes streamed" per user (=person or household that pays for the service) from Netflix with "minutes watched by an adult cable subscriber". However, the linked Nielsen source does not limit TV to cable TV, and purports to measure minutes watched per individual, which on average would be more than one person for households with a cable subscription.
I do not know exactly how Nielsen gets at it's data (i certainly wouldn't let them measure my TV consumption, if any, by installing a meter in my living room!) but I take all these surveys paid for by interested parties with a rock of salt.
Okay, here's a few reasons why this basic analysis falls short and doesn't apply a monetary valuation on the following items:
a) like someone else mentioned, Netflix doesn't materialize out of nothing. You also pay for your Internet connection (and bandwidth).
b) Err, sports anyone? This is actually the only thing stopping me since other than doing kludgey stuff with Kodi/XBMC there are no good (legal) options where I live
c) like someone else also mentioned, Netflix shows older content
d) may not matter to many of you, but for me, Netflix is not regulated by the federal broadcast authority; i.e. they can do whatever they want pretty much
Seriously, perhaps the original writer decided to write 3-4 paragraphs after googling for 30 mins, post it, await reaction from proper forums and then use that information to actually write an insightful article? I can't stand lazy journalism. and the worst is that Slashdot appears to provide a willing vehicle to crap content like that.
How does one get a gig like that?
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Netflix doesn't just show up on your tv, laptop or phone. You must also find some way to factor in the cost of internet access on top of the Netflix cost. That is, if you want to do a better job of comparing apples to apples.
Proverbs 21:19
Just wasn't worth it any more.
I can go on an extra ski trip or buy a new car every decade with my savings.
25mb minimum internet now. 1 year contract with the discounts ending in 1 year (my last was a two year contract with the discounts ending after 1 year).
I am spending $132 per year extra to have cable and one premium channel (which I can change with no charge).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Mine $18, including phone and 1 gigabit internet.
They didn't include the $100/mo for broadband internet access or cell phone data plans.
What does the TV channels include and how fast is your internet? For comparison here in Mexico you can get a plan with 200Mbps down/20 Mbps up; 285 channels (95 in HD) with an unlimited phone line (which no one uses since cellphone lines are also unlimited, and no way to get rid of the phone) costs 1719 MXN a month which runs about 91.5 USD given the awful exchange rate (1 USD = 18.7975 MXN). This is on one of the expensive service providers. Recently changes to telecommunications law got passed making it easier to compete, we have a handful of choices even in the small city I live. Prices have gone down a lot! But still I'm curious if they are low enough or we're still being ripped off. Comparing to the states is one good option.
I would LOVE to pay 61 cents per Hour of Cable TV programming.
For $0.61/Hr...... Please give me the Pay-as-You-go plan with no monthly minimum and the meter that measures number of hours that one or more TVs are turned on.
I did the calculation and worked out my average monthly rate
$55 for 30-Megabit internet Plus $66 for Cable TV + $10 for Cablecards = $131/Month
drops to $55 for internet Plus $12 for Cable TV + $10 = $77/Month
Based on the approximately ~20 hours a week; I get to watch TV.
In fact, it's still a good deal, even if I have nothing to do one weekend now and again, and make it 50 hours, instead.....
Okay - how does one watch Netflix without paying for an internet connection? Netflix costs 20 cents more on top of that $99 ISP bill.
Cord cutting idiots. When you cut the cord you can't watch Netflix either. Put up rabbit ears and watch local TV yes. Worthless comparison on a blog to get ad dollars - thanks for clicking & reading.
> the average American pays $99.10 per month for cable TV
Bullshit.
That is 100% bullshit.
First off, you don't get to order just cable TV. That doesn't exist (for a reasonable price). If you do opt for only cable TV, comcast offers me a 100$/month plan.
Second, if you want internet, or heaven forbid a landline, the cost jumps to ~200/month. Sure you get those 6 or 12 months of a reduced rate, but then you're slapped with a bill that rivals your mortgage.
And we have to watch commercials.
The contract that I have for Internet is 8M/800k ADSL - the fastest available to me, and admittedly it's pretty expensive for that. There is fibre in the making in this village which will be much faster and much cheaper but it's all I have. Other parts in the city - especially the high rises - have 1000M available, and can get 100M at like half the price I pay. For what I do it's sufficient. Faster would be nicer, but well it's not there and I can live with it, there's nothing that I want to but can't do because of the speed.
Cable, don't know really how many channels, about 30 free including three pay-TV channels of choice. It could have been 100 and I wouldn't have watched it, it could have been none - my previous home we had no cable TV, just cable Internet. It's included mostly as incentive to have you buy more from them. It's worth nothing to me, so I credit the full fee I pay to the Internet service, and $0 of it to the cable service (which is digital, too, so when watching cable channels my downloads suffer).
Most channels have around 45 minutes of content and 15 minutes of advertisements per channel. So that's more like 82c per hour, plus 15 minutes of whatever your time is worth (minimum wage?). But you need to factor in how much TV is being watched from DVR recordings, which I suspect is harder to count correctly in Nielsen ratings, and where ads are generally skipped.
This study is not very good at all. Who cares about amount of TV watched per hour? The service providers might but not the consumers. Cable TV ( $99/mo) vs Netflix ($9.99/mo). So, Netflix is 10x cheaper on a monthly basis!!! The number of hours that I might spend watching TV is irrelevant. What matters is the bottom line... How many $$/mo it costs me and what value I (the customer) attach to it? I am very happy to be completely OFF cable for about 10 years. I simply have an antenna and get all the local channels for free and in HD. It is funny when I get offers for the local channels from cable/communication companies ( $10/mo for the channels plus a ridiculous fee so it ends being like almost $20/mo for something that I already get for FREE!!! You can't beat that no matter how much you try!!! And we supplement that with Amazon Prime and Netflix. I also like the fact that I have complete control of what is watched. I can happily sacrifice not having as many options as with cable. Not a big deal considering how much money we are saving $$$!!!
Yeah, I was wondering about that as well.
If they're factoring that I spend $0.61/h for an hour of programming, but 15m14s of that programming is advertisements, then realistically you're paying $0.155 of that for the "privilege" of watching tampon and adult diaper commercials. For programming, you're actually then paying $0.61 for 44m46s (74.6% of the hour).
For actual programming, that's $0.818/h
2016:
Actually PAYING to watch television
It's like you enjoy throwing your money away or something.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Wouldn't cost on cable be even higher if some of the Cable viewing time includes watching commercials ....no commercials on Netflix.
30 mins of programming, comes with 6 minutes of commercials.
So, there is a 5:1 content, to commercial ratio, and thats on the side of being very very generous.
So, with 161.43, there will be 32.286 hours of commercials included in that. So you are really getting 124.57 hours of what you actually "want" to watch.
NF: 9.99 / 50 hours = 19.98 cents / hour
TV : 99.99 / 161.43 = 61.44 cents / hour
Now, cut out the "value" of the commercials: 99 / 124.57 = 79.47 cents/hour
Now Consider:
My Time : $70.67 / hr
Time Spent Watching Commercials: $70.67 * 32.86 hrs / Mo -$2261
Time Saved By Netflix NOT watching Commercials: 50 hours "Netflix" = 58.83 hours "TV" = 8.83 * hourly = +$624.0161
So, I saved 624.00 and 8.83 hours on average, having no TV, and just watching netflix.
I could use the 624.00 to pay for 60 Months of Netflix or 6.3 Months of Television.
So, basically, TV is saying "Your time is so worthless, pay us to waste it".
(TV) Cable cutters pay more for having JUST internet. Did they factor that in?
CAPTCHA: clarify
You can probably double the cost of cable since about half the time is spent watching advertisements. So you're paying twice, once with your wallet, and again by being inundated with ads. That's not even considering the questionable value of their programming, which is roughly TV quality for the most part.
The only reason we still have cable is heavy duty lobbying on their part to prevent people from getting access to competing ISPs.
I'm sorry. That comment was in no way intended as a slight to the homosexual community. If you people want to sign up for "House of Cards", so be it. It was insensitive of me to suggest otherwise.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Kodi for life.
At the end of the month a Netflix viewer is ~10$ poorer.
At the end of the month a Cable viewer is ~100$ poorer.
Monkeying with the math to get 3x is stupid.