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.
Somebody is usually streaming the game on YouTube.
Obviously, they are not focusing enough on bullying, gender politics, and climate change.
The problem is access to sports.
Remember when MLB was on regular old TV?
Now you have to buy access to it. They wonder why 394 people showed up at a White Sox game a month ago. They actually counted.
NFL is going to make that mistake too. Sports was part of the ‘opiate of the masses’. The ‘circus’ part of ‘bread and circus’. Problem is only the plutocrats can afford to watch it.
True.
500,000 loses. Got what they deserved.
I have DirecTV because it is the only way to watch the Astros games on TV. And my wife is addicted to the Golf Channel. All these posters who don't need cable or satellite because they've got Hulu must not watch what my wife and I watch.
I get sling for 4 months per year. As soon as college football season is over, I dump it. There is so much free content out there, I never lack for things to watch. I have two external hard drives and I have a whole video library of things to watch I store on them after downloading it for free off the internet. I watch what I want, when I want for free and with no commercials. When I’ve watched I just delete and free up space for more downloads. Try YouTube and Vimeo and dailymotion. There’s tons of good programs there you can download.
So I never watched ESPN or NFL football or NBA basketball. Too busy and just not interested.
But I recently closed my DirectTV account and bought a Roku stick to stream TV shows off the internet. Netflix, Hulu. Dropped my monthly TV bill by about $175 month.
Cable and satellite cutting by the public is going to change the industry.
When people have other options that are cheaper with more flexibility in what to watch and when, human nature will win out.
I suspect most of ESPN's subscriber losses have to do with their insistence on inserting liberal political positions into their programming than this bogus tax-season-just cutting-back-on-our-budget claim.
Sure, without Comcast how do you access Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime? Seriously, we get 1.5mps through Century Link which is insufficient to use for viewing content. May as well go back to measuring a baud rate.
Well, at least ESPN has that new smash hit program Get Up with Mike Greenberg, Jalen Rose and Michelle Beadle that brings in almost 230,00 viewers for a mere 15 million in salaries and a new 10 million dollar (at least) new studio in New York.
NOTE: This is less than half of what Peppa Pig, which is on at the same time, has in viewers.
Comcast Business.
Super fast internet plus two phones for $110/month!
I had Roku and it didn’t work for us.
It’s funny how all the “reporting” on this focuses on ESPN, like they’re not in the basic bundle of every single cable company in the country. CABLE lost 500,000 subscribers. That means ESPN, and FoxNews, and every other channel lost potential viewers and actual revenue.
“But I recently closed my DirectTV account and bought a Roku stick to stream TV shows off the internet. Netflix, Hulu. Dropped my monthly TV bill by about $175 month.
Cable and satellite cutting by the public is going to change the industry.”
We cut our Comcast cable last June and avoided the 1 July price increase, 1 Jan 2018 and now the new upcoming price increase.
We are saving over $100/month on the old rate. You can probably add another $50/75 per month with the constant Comcast increases since we cut our cable.
To fix this they need to raise prices and pay the Disney CEO more 10’s of millions. Oh and make sure all the players support killing cops and show hatred of America and support mass murderers Castro and Che.
We subscribe to Time Warner-internet service only 15 to 20 mps. As soon as a different service is available we will drop Time Warner or whatever their new name is.
Actually, F1 is buying out the commercial blocks to make sure it is shown commercial-free - at least until their streaming service is up an running. Not only that, but ESPN got the broadcast rights for free, so it is actually a great money maker for ESPN. NBCSN really screwed the pooch by telling F1 they weren't interested any longer.
Not me. They were terribly uninformed, and basically guessed about everything during the race - most of the time incorrectly.
The Sky feed guys are much better at keeping the viewer correctly informed because they are more experienced, have better contacts, and understand the racing better. Paul Di Resta has actually driven the 2018 Williams, while David Hobbs raced an F1 car a grand total of six times, and the last time was in 1974.
And don't get me started about those annoying NBCSN puff pieces during the middle of the race with the insufferable Will Buxton. Getting rid of him alone is worth tuning in to ESPN.
Thanks. Good info.
Odd that folks on the F1 ping list had their panty’s in a wad over the ‘enormous amount’ of commercials on several of the early races...
Left wing garbage, can’t watch it any longer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.