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With Summer, Big Cable Channels Keep Getting Bigger

The New York Times, Monday, August 16, 2010 11:13 PM

The History Channel is having a remarkably strong summer, with an average of nearly 1.6 million viewers a night in June and July, up from 1.2 million in the same months last year. It is using established hits like "Pawn Stars" to breed new ones like "Top Shot," a firearms reality competition. Ad-supported cable channels are averaging the same number of viewers as they did last summer, with no gains to crow about.

But when the 10 biggest entertainment channels are singled out -- USA, TNT, Fox News, Nick at Nite, History, TBS, A&E, Discovery, ESPN and ABC Family -- they show a collective uptick of 5% compared with last summer, suggesting that there is a bit of consolidation going on. The 10 top cablers draw almost a third of all the viewers for the 90 ad-supported cable channels that are measured by Nielsen. Those channels also churn out most of TV's summer hits.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »

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