Posted on 05/02/2018 6:58:49 AM PDT by EdnaMode
It’s become a major trend, when tax season arrives, cable and satellite subscriber numbers tank according to Nielsen estimates. I don’t know if that’s because come spring tax season everyone looks at their yearly budgets and many people, in an effort to save money, decide they don’t need cable and satellite subscriptions any longer, or whether the end of the NFL, college football, and college basketball causes many sports fans to tune out for the summer. But regardless of the reason cord cutting in the spring has become an annual trend
And the start of this spring was brutal for ESPN, costing the network 500,000 subscribers, or nearly 17,000 lost subscribers a day in the month of April. Putting that into context, this is $48 million in revenue that ESPN has lost forever. (That’s $8 a month x 500,000 lost subscribers x 12 months in a year).
The loss in subscribers puts ESPN down to just north of 86 million, which is a precipitous decline from the 100 million subscribers the network had as recently as the end of 2011. While the numbers of lost subscribers haven’t been as bad in the past few months, I suspect that’s because ESPN threw such a fit over last year’s numbers that Nielsen slowed down its subscriber attrition data for several months to make sure they weren’t off in their data measurements.
The result with the latest numbers?
A cable and satellite subscriber bloodbath.
Since whenever I post one of these updates there’s an inevitable cry, what about FS1 and NBSN and NFL Network, here are those numbers in a Tweet below.
@SportsTVRatings just got a glimpse of the May cable coverage estimates (which includes telco, satellite and at least some of the streaming services). Carnage might be a little strong. A little.
@SportsTVRatings ESPN: -500K households FS1: -328K households Golf Channel: -505K NBCSN: -544K NFLN: -842K (Comcast kicked it up a tier with the Fox TNF news)
(By the way, now that I’ve linked this subscriber info in the article, I encourage you to respond to people who ask questions without reading articles and call them what they are — idiots.)
Interestingly, the NFL Network fell victim to its decision to take Thursday night football to Fox. As a result Comcast, which owns NBC, the network that aired half of Thursday night football, knocked the NFL Network down into a lower programming tier, shaving nearly a million subscribers off the channel’s subscriber base. Given that the NFL Network makes around $1.20 a month in subscriber fees, that means the NFL gave up over $12 million a year in lost NFL Network subscriber revenue to switch Thursday night football to Fox.
The larger story here remains that ESPN, which is the most expensive channel on cable by far, loses more than any other channel with cord cutting because their revenue takes the biggest hit. That’s easy to illustrate by using FS1 as an example. FS1 brings in roughly $1 a month in subscriber fees so losing 328,000 subscribers would cost it just shy of $4 million total a year. Whereas ESPN 500,000 lost subscribers cost it $48 million a year.
Given that ESPN costs three times what every other channel costs — and given the substantial fixed rate costs involved with its insanely overpriced and paid sports programming schedule — the network needs to be saving money wherever it can.
So it’s probably a good thing the network isn’t spending $35 million a year on a brand new New York City studio and paying three people $15 million a year to host a show whose ratings are declining by 20% over the much cheaper show they replaced.
Wait…
Maybe they need to sign Peppa Pig instead.
ESPN...how you like being ‘mid-major’?
Gee, I remember Senator John McCain backing cable channel choice (a la carte style) and cost reduction many years ago...
We cut our Comcast tv cable last June for two reasons:
1. The NFL backing Kapernick. We stopped watching NFL the season before.
2. The price increases of Comcast for 1 Jan last year and their upcoming one for 1 July last year.
So in June of last year we went to Sling ESP which does not carry any ESPN/ABC/Disney left wing.
The evil Disney left wing empire, which owns ESPN/ABC/Disney, gets zero $’s per month from us.
We are saving well over $100 per month with a fast internet and two phones and excellent tv streaming.
I do Sling and the package to see March Madness forces you to take ESPN. After the final game I immediately switched packages which dumped ESPN. I assume there were many college B.B. fans who did the same.
My exact setup. Also added Kodi. :-)
I was in a bar a couple of months ago and was unavoidably watching them announce their Top 20 Champion teams of the past 20 years...they included a couple of WNBA teams not one person in the bar had ever heard of...smh 😳
And double down on paywall/insider content.
Grampa,
What are you using for your internet?
MFO
People are leaving over the lack of transgenders and liberals on the network. They never criticize Trump’s dangerous tweets so people are leaving. /liberal
Once basketball season ends they force-feed viewers a steady diet of Womens’ College Softball, Womens’ College Soccer, Womens’ College Lacrosse and Womens’ College Field Hockey. Sports which are politically correct (but appeal to 0.02% of the viewing audience).
I thought that CNN dude was fleeing what he'd done to CNN to go to, and finish off ESPN?
I am only good for the college football season. Without that, I would never watch any ESPN. And that’s for only a few games per year.
Well, no.
Fox paid NFL Network some amount. You need to include that in the switch.
You mean Jeff Zucker? Pitaro was President of another division at Disney and was chosen to replace the disgraced John Skipper.
Two Words
March Madness
Nelson Muntz,our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Maybe it was a trial balloon by Zucker's agent that obviously went nowhere.
New morning show “GET UP” is unwatchable.
Some people have Roku and there are “ways” to get certain sports on ESPN without subscribing (so I’ve been told).
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