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.