In a blog post on Tuesday, Nielsen reported that on average, US homes receive 189.1 TV channels, but viewers only watch 17.5 of those channels.
The news will appear in Nielsen's forthcoming “Advertising & Audiences Report,” and while the results seem somewhat intuitive, they articulate a very real problem in cable TV—the fact that consumers often feel forced into paying for a lot of TV they never watch.
Nielsen's blog post today showed that the number of cable channels in an average US household has grown dramatically over the last five years, but the number of channels that viewers actually watch has hardly changed at all. In 2008, US households received an average of 129.3 channels but only actually viewed 17.3 channels. In 2013, the number of channels received increased 46 percent, but the number of channels viewed only increased 1 percent.
The data, Nielsen says, "substantiates the notion that more content does not necessarily equate to more channel consumption. And that means quality is imperative—for both content creators and advertisers."
The cause of stagnant channel-tuning may not just be about poor-quality channels; competition from new services surely plays a part as well. Cord-cutters have long called for the unbundling of channels from cable subscriptions, and as services like Netflix, iTunes, and set-top boxes with content-specific apps gain market share, it has become easier to ditch old-school cable TV if the bills get too high or consumers feel like they're paying for a product they don't want.
Cable companies counter 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. As the Los Angeles Times notes, “If a cable network were suddenly in 30% fewer homes, it would need to find a way to make up for that lost revenue, and the easiest approach would be to just charge the people who still get the channel even more.”
“However, the rising cost of sports programming is starting to lead to louder calls that at least some content should be sold to consumers who want it and not forced on everyone,” the LA Times continues.
In October 2013, Canadian government officials said they would look into mandatory unbundling rules, and in November 2013, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) said it would draw up a roadmap to that end. The report is due sometime this spring.
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