Commentary
Cable Network Carriage Issues May Now Focus On Ratings, Not Price
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 6, 2012
Give credit to Time Warner Cable for news you don’t often hear from a cable operator. Instead of high price increases from cable networks fostering threats from the operator to drop those channels, this time it’s all about ratings.
Say what you will about the current TV viewing measurement system, there is something interesting when a cable operator, in effect, says to a cable network: “If you do underwhelming TV ratings, we will cancel you.”
Hey, these guys are almost -- dare I say -- acting like real TV programmers.
Why? If specific viewership levels are now part of cable operators’ deals with cable networks, it makes me wonder why this hasn’t been the case from the start -- especially since it seems a cable operator’s business should include trying to sell more local advertising time (Canoe Ventures issues aside, that is).
According to a Reuters story, Current TV seems to be on the outs with Time Warner because of lower viewership. Further reports cite a Current TV executive saying the story isn’t true, that it is “in compliance with all distribution agreements.”
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But we are left to imagine: What if any, are the exact viewership level numbers per the contract?
Current TV just fired Keith Olbermann, whose show had been pulling in 177,000 average prime-time viewers -- the best-rated program on the network. But the overall average prime-time viewership in March 2012 was much lower -- 66,000. For total day viewership, it was 29,000.
Yes, these are low numbers for a cable network, even a modestly distributed one like Current, in 60 million U.S. homes. We can only wonder about other networks that compare closely to Current’s numbers.
In prime time for March 2012, Fox Business Network was at 64,000 viewers; Great American Country, 77,000; Fuse, 55,000; Fuel, 38,000; Logo, 67,000; VH1 Classic, 43,000. Do they have any such qualifiers in their contracts with cable operators?
If you are getting 100,000 viewers or 200,000 viewers on average in prime time, is that enough? I guess it all depends on whether you as a cable operator are paying 3 cents, 5 cents or 7 cents per subscriber per month to that cable network.
Current’s subscriber size -- 60 million U.S. homes or so – already struggles to compete with those cable news networks Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC that have 50% more potential homes, with around 90 million homes.
You may talk about cable operators giving equal opportunity to all voices in the U.S. -- big and small. But with the Internet, we now have
many more choices to speak our minds. Cable operators as real TV programmers make us believe there is some transition afoot. And, like it or not, that isn’t all bad.
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
Learning that Olbermann's show had over twice the average viewership on Current TV makes me even angrier that they dropped him, or let him go, whichever. .... Besides that, it puzzles me that viewership is still measured in total views, rather than what would seem to be the better path, which is total views by whom? ... is a smaller audience of known "big spenders" who respond better to ads better than a larger audience who don't?
By the way: Your links within the article are being generated as "mail-to" links rather than links to outside articles.
Let's get real, too. People who love the concept of CurrentTV and want it to flourish and flower, when it comes to sitting and watching TV, Current disappears on the radar. Just exchanging the channel number with a single digit one will pull in a better audience. Same goes with Own and others. More watchers can yield better programming with more investors. This is not new or surprising. But a heavier consideration with this variation in this formula, what else does it say about audience numbers ?
As a veteran of the Cable Industry, I say. "Bravo, it's about time." I've been advocating this for years and even though it's about 6 years late in coming, we've finally started to understand what the Broadcast industry understood years ago. If people don't watch it and advertisers don't support it, our customers shouldn't have to pay for it and it shouldn't be occupying valuable real estate better used for new innovative content with a better value proposition.
I wish I could remember how we got to the point where a programmer's carriage on a Broadband System was a perpetual license.