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Viewers Only Watch 10% of Pay-TV Channels: Nielsen (usatoday.com)
Chances are if you have cable, satellite or telco-delivered TV service, you aren't watching all the channels in your package. Heck, you probably aren't even watching half of the channels you pay for. Global information and measurement company Nielsen has conducted some research and found that viewers are actually watching, on average, only about 20 of the 200 channels they pay for. What this means is that a majority of us watch less than 10% of the channels we pay our cable, satellite or other provider for. USA Today reports: Back in May 2014, viewers watched 10.6% of the 197 channels they said they paid for, Nielsen's TV Audience Report found. A year later, viewers watched 9.6% of the 208 channels they got. This year, viewers also watched 9.6% of the 206 channels on their pay-TV service. That doesn't mean customers are unhappy with their service. "There is a jump between 'I'm not watching all the channels I pay for' to 'I'm not going to pay for more channels than I watch,'" says Glenn Enoch, senior vice president of audience insights for Nielsen. "What we do know is that people who have skinny bundles are lower-income than the average, so this is more about household income than viewing behavior." Pay-TV companies need to experiment, for sure, because other consumer behaviors in the Nielsen report suggest traditional TV viewing by those under 35 continues to fall, says Colin Dixon, analyst and founder of nScreenMedia.
Meanwhile, I watch about 97% of what I download. Plus shows from Netflix and Amazon.
Amen!
I hope at some point cable providers get screwed over and penalized for inflating not only the cost of bandwidth, but capping it as well.
Commercial free - a la carte - that's the only way to go. And I'm willing to pay for it.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Right, wonder what your back in the days were... Decades of gangs, prohibition, mafia, corrupt jails, corrupt police departments, insider trading, corporate fraud, war on drugs, welfare fraud, Medicare fraud, Ponzie schemes, housing bubble, stock bubble, too big to fail, etc.
Most of the criminals involved there weren't even touched. Some were even bailed out by taxpayer funds. Or did you mean before 50 years ago... When entire sections of our society were treated less equally?
It is Not the Cable Companies.
The Content providers demand they take packages or they can't get the few channels they actually want.
Or You want.
I have no problem with them including a shopping channel or other junk channel with the channel I want but what I really want is to be able to pay $5 per channel for the channels I want. If they want to give me a bunch of other channels with the hope that I'll watch some commercials, I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is paying $20 a month for a bunch of channels I don't want and/or having to pay $100/month to get the 4 channels that I do want. $20/month for 4 good channels should work out good for both of us but until then I will look elsewhere.
I have two cable boxes... Haven't been turned on since they were installed 3 years ago. I had to bundle them with my internet to get the best deal from the provider. And they stop calling you as often to "save me money with the bundle of the month". Now I just get the useless VoIP calls once every 6 months.
I don't have the time nor inclination to plan my weekly schedule around the times of the shows. I haven't really watched traditional TV in close to 15 years! 10 years ago I even lost the need to have something random in the background.
I still watch shows about 3-4 hours a week. But on my schedule. I think Hulu was a great detox program. Initially they provided the latest and greatest. Then they went to 1 day delay. Then 8 days. Then 30! A few months after that, I didn't mind watching shows an entire season later or even dropping them.
Season clif hangers were no more so wasn't addicted to looking at release schedules. The whole water cooler talk had long since died so there was rarely a need to stay up to date on whatever was on.
Now Hulu became paid only... in between seasons!! So awesome! Haven't even been to the site in months. I am probably bringing the average down, but I think Nielsen is being conservative in their numbers. It probably way worse based on how many just have the TV on and how many only got it due to bundles.
If you tried to sell internet "a-la-carte", the geeks would have you burned at the stake.
Yeah, and rightly so, because the internet is a huge network with virtually no barrier to entry, and anyone can publish content and anyone can consume whatever content is out there.
but don't try and sell TV as all or nothing, then you're screwing them over. Dumb fucks.
You want to use the internet model for TV? Great. One service with every possible channel available, no mandatory equipment rental fees, and then let provider companies compete on how many minutes you can watch per day or whatever for whatever price. If you want to make an analogy between the internet and TV, that's the analogy to make. Don't try to shove the internet into the TV box, that doesn't work. The reason why we love the internet model is specifically because it is better than the TV model. Don't try to make the internet like TV, try to make the old-fashioned TV model like the internet. It's going to go that way eventually once older people die and younger people are raised without ever spending childhoods sitting for hours in front of the TV every night. Instead they'll have spent hours on the internet every day. If you want those people as customers then it's time to throw out the old models and figure out what people actually want.
I'll be happy to pay money to consume TV shows the way that I want to consume them. In the meantime, I get them without paying the broadcast companies and I don't feel bad at all for the broadcast companies. They haven't earned my sympathy because they insist that I do things their way, they don't understand what I want. Until they figure that out, I'm not worried about them getting my money because I know that creative people will continue to make shows I want to watch. I would sooner buy some merchandise that goes directly to the creators than give money to a broadcaster trying to tell me how to watch everything.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black