We've long known that the majority of Live TV viewing during primetime was ad supported cable networks and broadcast networks share was shrinking, but we've never seen a breakdown of DVR playback between broadcast networks and ad supported cable networks.
I'm surprised that ad supported cable gets as much as 33% of the DVR playback. When we used to see Live+7 ratings for cable shows on a regular basis (it ended over a year ago), there were very, very few cable shows that even got 10% extra viewing from DVR playback. Also, among the big ad supported cable networks there are a lot of sports, news and repeats, all of which see very little DVR viewing.
Now I'm interested to know what that breakdown of DVR viewing was a year ago, or two years ago.
Source: CBS presentation to UBS 37th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference
You have to remember that DVR penetration has increased as well. If I’m remembering correctly, DVR use is up about +6% over last year taking it to %40 with A18-49. While I agree that the percentage that cable series grow in Liv+e7 was probably much smaller there are other factors, such as cable series’ often are repeated in the hour immediately after its initial run or the program will be repeated multiple times over the week before the next original airing allowing the viewer more chances to watch and get caught up if they miss one. Broadcast just can’t compete on either of those counts.
Bill, what percentage of U.S. households have subscription TV? The U.S. population is about 310 million people. How many households are there in the U.S.? Is it about 112 million households, as stated by another poster?
The chart says the source of the data is NTI. Is that Nielsen?
NTI is a Nielsen
organizationproduct.For this broadcast season Nielsen estimates 114.9 million TV households.
This post contains the latest numbers we have on subscribers for the various TV service providers.
Nielsen reports that of the 114.9 million estimated TV households, ~102.7 million have cable or satellite.
Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Robert. From your other post, I added the numbers in the Q309 column, and I got 132.8 million “subscribers.” Am I wrong to assume that those are households? Or is the 132.8 million referring to people? Does the cable company know how many people are in each household that subscribes?
Kozy, they are both households, but there is some double counting in what Bill linked to for a couple of reasons. Some people have both cable and satellite. For quite a while, I was one of them!
Most of the numbers in Bill’s post were directly from company reports, but in the quarter someone switched from say Comcast to DirecTV, they could count in both reports.
There is no way for us to reconcile the two numbers really. Nielsen’s estimates are looking at coverage so attempt to filter out any double counting. For purposes of the ratings, I use the Nielsen numbers, because it models its panel based on its estimates.
Another point to consider is that CBS is looking for the best story for broadcast and that the dates they are looking at are during the prime of the broadcast original season when less cable shows were in originals. I’m sure if they looked at 2009 year-to-date the story would be different.