Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17 340
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."
Re:Oh yeah right (Score:3, Informative)
Could spend maybe $20 and get what I want and saved like $60
Exactly why they won't let you.
Re:200 channels... (Score:5, Informative)
"and nothing to watch."
Yeah, we had satellite for a good long time but gradually pared back the channels we received because many we wanted were tied to other channels we didn't and that pushed the price up. Once we got to the basic package we realised that the vast majority of what we watched was on free to air digital HD via our TiVo so we dropped Satellite. We're down to about ten channels now. Still nothing to watch though.
$60+ for ESPN (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh yeah right (Score:5, Informative)
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's the Sports (Score:4, Informative)
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. ):