Complete Story
02/13/2015
Cable sees steep drop in viewership – near 13% in January
For a very long time, it seemed cable viewership knew no limits on how high it could climb.
It grew from year to year to year, surpassing broadcast in share of eyeballs and sparking big gains in advertising.
But now those boom times appear to be over.
A new report from financial services company Nomura finds total-day live cable viewership fell 12.7 percent during January, after smaller declines over 2014.
Viewership dropped 11.5 percent in December and 10.9 percent in November, according to the report.
“It is safe to say it’s the worst monthly decline since January 2014, since that is when we launched coverage, and that is as far back as our data goes, but I suspect it could be farther,” Anthony DiClemente, a research analyst and co-author of the report, tells Media Life.
The question, of course, is why cable viewership is falling so much.
One reason could be more people are time-shifting shows. The Nomura report does not include live-plus-seven-day viewership, and cable viewers have been using DVRs heavily for years now.
That’s one reason many cable networks now refuse to release or comment on live-plus-same-day Nielsen numbers, instead using live-plus-three or live-plus-seven playback for their press releases.
