Posted on 03/11/2015 10:37:37 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Viewership was down in the third and fourth quarters
It might be time for cable to start worrying about online streaming. The Wall Street Journal reported that a drop in TV ratings and viewership can be chalked up to subscription-based streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.
People familiar with the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau told the newspaper that as much as 40% of TV-rating declines in the third and fourth quarters were attributable to streaming services. The news comes as TV viewing has declined by an estimated 10% from a year previously in the third quarter, and by 9% for the fourth quarter year-over-year, according to the Journal, citing Nielsen data.
“We believe the U.S. television industry is entering a period of prolonged structural decline, caused by a migration of viewers from ad-supported platforms to non-ad-supported or less-ad-supported platforms,” according to Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger in a March 9 statement.
According to the Journal, Scripps Networks Interactive chief revenue officer Steve Gigliotti said that working with Netflix once “sounded like a good idea, but “now there are some serious misgivings about it.”
Netflix reported fourth quarter earnings in January, posting big gains. The company reportedly finished 2014 with a 26% gain in revenue in the year’s last quarter, while over four million people subscribed. Netflix notched $1.48 billion in revenue during the quarter, up from $1.18 billion last year. Profits also rose 72% year-over-year for the fourth quarter to $83.4 million, or $1.38 per share.
Meanwhile, HBO announced a streaming service that will begin as an exclusive partnership with Apple. Plans were unveiled at a March 9 event, featuring the Apple Watch. While HBO Go will cost $14.99 per month and require access to an Apple TV, Netflix costs $8.99. During the event, Apple also announced it’d be reducing the price of the Apple TV to $69 from $99.
With TV, I DVR anything I want to watch, so I can skip over the commercials.
TV is done with anyway.
Not to lousy customer service, outageously expensive fees, and nothing but crap on TV?
I remember having 4 channels and one of those was educational. Like Jeff Foxworthy says, if the President was on that night, as a kid, you were screwed.
But But , Netflix is Old TV , LOL and I only pay $7.99
-PJ
Walking Dead shows the problem they’re having with Netflix isn’t the service, it’s the product. The top 5 shows Sunday were the new ep of WD, the Talking Dead discussing the show, Real Housewives of Atlanta, reshowing last week’s ep of WD, and then reshowing this week’s ep. Make shows people want to watch and they will, don’t and they’ll find shows they want to watch.
Your ratings suck because you air crappy programs, you continually shove homosexual characters and scenes down our throats, and you base your ratings on the 18-49 age set. I’m 67, and have seen some decent programs cancelled, despite having high ratings each week, only because it wasn’t popular with the 18-49 age group.
The Japanese have some good ones as well. I just started a new J drama, Kageri Yuku Natsu
Reporters open up a new investigation of a baby kidnapping 20 years prior. Seems there was a conspiracy, but amongst whom? Cops? Reporters? Hospital, Family ?
J dramas tend to be shorter so they get to the gist of the story pretty quick.
I just finished one on Netflix called “It’s Ok, That’s Love”....I have never found myself laughing and tearing up so much watching a show.
Memo to cable execs: Netflix isn’t killing you, the poor quality content and archaic delivery system you use is killing you.
I’m not interested interested in fag TV. I’ll stick with my netflix
They see Netflix making $$$ and the network studios want more for their share.
Netflix has no commercials and extremely reasonable cost.
Some networks are trying to copy that — CBS, HBO, so far. If they follow the Netflix model, they might make money. If they do like Hulu and charge plus insert commercials, they probably won’t find much success.
[I have never been able to watch a Hulu or Crackle or similar service that inserts commercials. About half-way through, they lock up. To restart, the program runs through all of the commercials again. Half of the time, they re-stall again.]
The bigger threat is to cable/satellite companies. If CBS, HBO, etc., can offer online at reasonable cost and ample content, they could impact cable/satellite companies.
My cable on-demand is lousy. It has commercials inserted in many programs and it delays offering current shows. It also isn’t very good at keeping updated — some newly broadcast programs never show up in the On-Demand listings.
I’ll check it out. My Dad brought me back a big book of Korean art after his all-inclusive govt. vacation there.
My siblings were surprised to see me reading it and looking at the photos of vases, paintings and so forth.
I also got a really cool tanker jacket with a big Army patch on the back with a dragon on it, and my first name on the front.
Yeah, there’s a lot of happy crappy on Netflix. `Oz’ and some others come to mind with their lefty stereotypes and gratuitous slams of anything right of Shrillary.
CSI New York with Gary Sinise as head detective is pretty good, with Sinise as a former Marine, a big photo of Reagan on his office wall.
What TV has got to do is stop with the commercials every 2 seconds. If they put the ads on the screen like they do with the internet, maybe in a small box in a corner while the show plays they would get a lot more viewers. I was watching Fox the other night and shut it off, I got fed up. Commercials commercials commercials.
PS Two extremes: `Dexter’, thumbs up.
Same actor, `Six Feet Under’, lousy.
Netflix has been pushing net neutrality for a while, and despite not getting all they wanted in the latest FCC orders, they still do.
Netflix still supports net neutrality, and has enlisted House of Cards in the fight
Back in the infancy of cable, I remember one of the selling points was that there were no commercials to worry about.
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