Davis Freeberg’s Digital Connection

Nielsen released a survey on television habits earlier this week and the report had some really juicy data in it. In their survey they found that the average number of TV channels that consumers receive is now 104.2 channels.

This compares to 11 years earlier when consumers received an average of 41.1 channels. This is a pretty big increase that’s been driven in part by the adoption of more cable and satellite channels from the MSOs, but it also reflects a broadening of consumer tastes when it comes to which progams we are choosing to watch.

Just because people get more channels doesn’t necessarily mean that they are taking advantage of all of them though. Even though consumers have seen over 60 channels added to their TV lineups over the last ten years, the average number of TV channels that people actually watch has only gone from 10.1 channels in 2005 to 15.7 channels in 2006.

What’s interesting about this stat though, is that even though consumers are watching more channels, because the number of channels they have access to has expanded so rapidly, they are actually watching a smaller percentage of channels overall. In 1995, the 10.1 channels that consumers were watching represented about 25% of all channels that were available to them, but today, because we now have over a 100 channels to watch, the 15.7 average channels, really only represents about a 15% share. As the internet and digital delivery continue to exponentially increase the number of programs that you have to choose from, fragmentation will present an even greater challenge for the television industry then it does today.

When I first looked at the Nielsen results, it made me think about how my own TV habits have changed over the last decade. Ten years ago, I barely had time for TV. If I watched TV at all, it was definetely on one of the major network channels because I didn’t even subscribe to cable. Because I was working nights at the time, it was pretty rare for me to even watch the good primetime shows. The few shows that I did follow were pretty much garbage designed to kill time, not to entertain me. I probably would still be just a casual TV watcher today, but in 2000 I purchased my first TiVo and everything changed.

Having TiVo changed the way that I thought of channels. Instead of spending a whole night watching “must see TV”, I found that in reality, TiVo was the only “channel” that I was watching because it was customized to my own viewing preferences. At anytime, I could go to my TiVo and I knew that there would be at least 40 hours of something interesting on. If a network wanted to stuff junk in between the 8:30 – 9 pm time slot, I no longer had to tune in, if I was really only interested in the 8 and 9 o’clock shows. While the additional channel choices has definetely played a role in my viewing more channels today, it was really TiVo that contributed to the fragmentation of television in my own by making me care more about the actual programs, then which TV channel the program was on.

In thinking about how my own television habits compare with the Nielsen study, I wrote down all of the different channels that I now watch on a regular basis and found that I went from only watching 4 major networks ten years ago, to watching TV programs found on 19 different channels* today. I probably missed a couple of season passes, but the following list represents the shows and channels that I’m watching today. (listed in the order of my favorite channels)

CBS (Suvivor, all 3 CSI’s, INXS Rockstar)
NBC (The Office, Heroes, Law & Order, Law & Order CI, SNL, Raines)
Comedy Central (South Park, The Colbert Report, Reno 911, Drawn Together)
Netflix* (Ok, this one isn’t technically a TV channel, but I still use it to catch up on HBO and Showtime series, as well as past network shows that I missed. I included it because I watch more TV shows on Netflix, then movies)
FOX (Bones, 24, America’s Most Wanted, Cops, Family Guy, American Dad, Simpsons)
ESPN 1 & 2 (Football, Basketball, World Series of Poker, Friday Night Fights)
TNT (Movies and Lakers basketball)
TBS (Family Guy reruns, Movies and More Lakers)
The WB (Veronica Mars, Blind Date, Cheaters)
VS (Boxing)
ABC (Monday Night Football, the Jimmy Kimmel Show)
Sci-Fi (Tripping the Rift and the Twilight Zone before I saw all the shows)
MTV (Pimp that Ride, Laguna Beach, The Real World)
CNBC (Squawk on the Street)
CNN (One of the few channels I’ll occassionally watch live)
AMC (Great resource for movies)
USA Network (La Femme Nikita before it was cancelled and The Dead Zone before it got weird)
FX (I’ve checked out their new shows Dirt and The Riches, but both were too terrible to keep watching. Used to watch the X-Files, but stopped watching once I saw all of the shows)

Nielsen’s data only covers the attitudes amoung the general public, but I would have liked to have seen the same questions asked only to TiVo users. While I’m used to being on one end of the extreme or another for just about any survey I take, I’d be interested in finding out if other TiVo users have also found the number of channels that they watch has also increased greater then the average or if my jump from 4 channels to 19 really has more to do with my upgrading to cable.

Overall, the study didn’t really tell me anything that I didn’t already know (except that 30 second commercial only make up 57% of the ads), but it was still good to see hard data backing up some of the trends that we’ve been seeing in the television industry at large. It was also neat being able to compare my own experience with the broader public. Hopefully, we’ll see Nielsen release an update to this survey because as the number of programs continues to grow, it will be fascinating to see if consumers can keep up with the new choices and if production standards decrease as studio money is spread out amoung more shows.

Posted on March 21st, 2007 by Davis
Filed under: Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Media, Movies, Netflix, TV, Technology, TiVo