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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.
"The only people screwed are the ones that demand instant sports. And I feel bad for them."
I don't. I just checked the Neilsen Ratings for Sports for the last week. The biggest Games score somewhere in the 10% range of sets turned on. That is actually pretty miserable, until one realizes that folks who watch Football may not have the slightest interest in Baseball. But they are all convinced that the entire Nation is watching along with them. They're not. The _vast_ majority of TV viewers have _no_ interest in Sports, except for the Superball, and just maybe the World Series.
Meanwhile, we all pay for mandatory ESPN on Cable, and the ABC/Disney pipe that it slides in on, while NBC splurges Billions on something that few else watched either- The Olympics. (The amount of commercials was appalling...)
Large scale adaptation of A La Carte would put ESPN and all the other fringe Sports networks out of business. Their business models depend on that $1.24 per network or whatever, per _potential_ Cable viewer per month, extracted from _all_ viewers. And since these networks are bundled with other networks that few viewers watch either, the sums are staggering.
For those self-entitled Jerks who insist on us paying for their watching "instant sports": What the hell, get off your fat asses and go watch a game at the local Ball Park. Pro, Semi-Pro, College, High School, Little League... there are a lot of choices. Or what the hell 2, pick up a catcher's mit or a tennis racket, and actually _do_ something with those empty hours otherwise spent gazing at images of people moving around in glowing screen, who are only slightly less stupid than you are.