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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.
Given that they force you to buy 8 channels of dreck just to get the one channel you want, it's not surprising. One of the many reasons why I cut the cord.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Meanwhile, I watch about 97% of what I download. Plus shows from Netflix and Amazon.
Now that there are apps for most things like HBO or Starz, I really enjoy stations a lot more - I can pick up a station" as I wish, or drop it when I won't need it for a while.
In any one month I probably pay more than I would with a bundle but then again in some months I hardly subscribe to anything. So I'm probably still ahead and I'm no longer subsidizing channels I find utterly worthless. I'd much rather I spend a little more but all of it goes to the channel I like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If it wasn't for my wife wanting to watch The Bachelor the second it comes on I would have cut the cable a long time ago. I literally watch 3 channels and most nights not even that.
I really can't stomach whats on TV these days. I know I'm older and my tastes have changed but what I see on TV these days is just uninteresting, overly political correct and frankly the actors seem to really suck. On the other hand when I see stuff from 20 years ago the same can be said, but at least then it was cheap.
Netflix is really no better either. The choices are slim, the shows are mostly junk and the prices will eventually climb to the same as cable, and/or add advertisements. It is bound to happen.
As long as you have a competitive market, trade out as soon as introductory specials fade into the sunset, for newer, sweeter deals with the competition.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In other breaking news, the sky is blue.
Meanwhile, I only tend to visit about 20 of the 1 billion sites on the World Wide Web (about 0.000002%), and yet here I am paying full price for my Internet access.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Trump, is that you?
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?
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.
...no matter who you are. Eventually our kids will wonder why we used to sit around watching a central TV, just like we wondered why our parents sat around listening to the radio.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
I travel a couple times a year, when I do I get a hotel that has HBO. I don't look for it, the hotels in my price range always have it. What I learn when I rent a hotel room with HBO is I really don't need HBO at home, it just shows the same crap over and over and rarely shows new stuff I might want to see.
I remember some 10 years ago, dad was in a hospital in OK with heart issues, mom was with relatives close by, and nothing was happening. Sis and I drove from San Diego to Tulsa OK, staying in hotels with HBO, when the Sopranos were going strong. I was getting the DVDs for past seasons from the library, sis hadn't seen any of them so she didn't care when I went from HBO to Movie of the Week.
Same goes for Showtime. My cable company charges me $180/month for cable, I call them once a year to bitch. They typically throw in Showtime/Skinemax and drop the price to $100. Showtime/Skinemax is nowhere near worth an extra $80/month, most of it I can get from the library a few month later for free.
No different than playing 30 of your 300 steam games
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
NSA Server responds and serves up channels
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
On the other hand, we wouldn't have Bob & Doug without CanCon.
Every other study I've seen about TV viewership points to the average viewer's interests encompass a limited number of channels, about a dozen. Stuffing more channels into a bundle doesn't make people watch more of them.
The business model of cable is mainly based on high viewership channels subsidizing low viewership channels. They need bundling to support all the new dreck that gets made and old stuff that's re-run.
You only have 24 hours a day, even with 100 channels you cannot watch all of them!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
What do we need all those other channels for?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
As long as there are people being forced to pay for ESPN but who wouldn't subscribe to it if given the choice not to, Disney will continue to force cable providers to bundle ESPN.
And thanks to the regulatory capture of the US government and all its agencies by the big media companies, there is zero chance of a repeat of what happened to the studios in the 40s where the US government forced an end to the block booking practices (where the studios told theaters "if you want popular films you have to exhibit the less popular crap as well")
I have a 1 meter motorised dish which can be pointed at over dozen satellites, thousands of channels and I still only watch a similar number of channels.
I have a travel pass for the local transport. It entitles me to spend 18 hours on the light rail service every single day. I only use it for 1 of those hours. I book a hotel room. I can be there all day but I only want to use it at night.
Cable TV is a service just like the others. They don't have to buy some channels and then sell them to you at a profit. They negotiate a cost - for most of these channels it's a pretty paltry cost - and then offer bundles. It won't save them any money not to offer you the channels unless they offer nobody the channels.
If they had a package with just the channels you watch it would cost... EXACTLY THE SAME! Because you have shown that you are willing to pay that much for those specific channels.
Bill Maher (of the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher) had a great monologue about how regardless of how this election goes, Donald Trump will likely be the last major candidate born in the 40s, with formative years and values stuck in the 50s. When he says make America great again, he's talking about making it like the 50s again.
Which was great, if you were a straight white male.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Why do you think cable companies don;t allow al a carte channel selection? Most of these networks wouldn't exist without the cable forcing them on you.
Not true. It may be true for you, but not for me. I live in the 11th largest city in the country, and the number of stations I could pick up after the digital switch doubled. Half are Spanish language, which you're just as likely to hear spoken in my household as English, but it was that way before the digital switch as well.
Your mileage may very, but cable is no longer a necessity. Cut it.
My karma is in a nose dive
It must be getting closer to the election - we've almost reached Peak Shilling.
He violated the Cuba embargo, but it's okay because he stiffed someone on the bill. That's this election's version of "but I didn't inhale."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I'm not sure what its like in the US,but here in Canada if you get 200 channels you're getting about 60 channels, 30 of which are repeated multiple of times (~5) for different cities. Obviously if you watch CBC Toronto, you're unlikely to watch CBC Ottawa. This would explain this "finding" immediately.
He violated the Cuba embargo, but it's okay because he stiffed someone on the bill. That's this election's version of "but I didn't inhale."
Hey, why not? It worked for Bill.
Back in my day, judges and juries decided who commited a crime, not Fox News.
Back in my day, prosecutors decided who to try, not investigators.
I wish Nielson tracked when people use the mute button because I mute every presidential TV ad, every drug ad, and every ad for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
Cox Communications doesn't even offer a plan in Tulsa that carries all of the local channels. We get around 40 channels from a dozen or so transmitters here. But to get all of those channels, some of which end up in Cox's lineup on different premium lineups, it'd cost about what I pay in rent. And that's why I have an antenna...
Furries make the internet go.
Get a TiVo. TiVo lets you filter out those channels using the same feature you use to let TiVo know whether or not you get certain channels.
Furries make the internet go.
Sure, 200 channels and there may only be 1 or 2 of them you are interested in at any given time. But having a wide selection can be nice.
Obviously the most efficient would be for there to be a single channel that shows exactly what I want to watch at all times. But of course people would complain about the high cost of that one channel versus the relatively inexpensive per channel cost of a 200 channel bundle.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I guess I would be in the negative 1% club since I don't subscribe to cable at all and only subscribe online to HBO during "Game of Thrones" season then swiftly cancel. The only 2 channels I would like to have, HGTV and Comedy, are not available separately, so I simply found alternative sources of entertainment such as Twitch and Youtube, both of which I gladly support (Twitch Turbo & Patreon for individual Youtube channels.)
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Sounds about right: 90% of everything is crap, and glad for it - there's too much good stuff to watch as it is...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Got tired of paying for a ton of crap I don't ever watch, just to get 2 or 3 channels I did watch. There's at least a dozen OTA channels I receive with excellent signal strength and quality where I live, and I rarely have nothing to watch waiting for me on my DVR -- and the picture quality is better, too, because cable TV recompresses everything within an inch of it's life.
I believe companies like Comcast already realize this, as their profit margins are significant with this model; hence their resistance to provide "a la carte" programming. I also use a DVR, rarely watching live television -- I utilize only a small fraction of what I'm forced to pay for, if I want access to those channels (ie: extra package costs).