Streaming Tops Traditional Cable TV Viewership For First Time Ever
from the meet-the-new-boss... dept
The writing has been on the wall for a while, but streaming TV has finally surpassed traditional cable in terms of overall viewership numbers for the first time ever. According to viewership tracking firm Nielsen (who once upon a time called the cord cutting revolution “purely fiction“) streaming saw a 34.8 percent overall viewership in July compared to 34.4 percent for “cable”:
The shift has been an easy prediction for at least a decade, but it’s finally here. After decades of being over-charged for giant bundles of expensive channels they don’t watch, consumers have understandably flocked to streaming alternatives that offer greater freedom of choice for generally less money (despite the stories whining about how expensive streaming is if you subscribe to every service in existence).
The end result: July saw the highest rate of streaming content consumption on record:
In addition to claiming the largest viewership share during the month, audiences watched an average of 190.9 billion minutes of streamed content per week—easily surpassing the 169.9 billion minutes that audiences watched during the pandemic lockdown period back in April 2020. Excluding the week of Dec. 27, 2021, the five weeks of July 2022 represent the highest-volume streaming weeks on record, according to Nielsen measurement.
Data suggests that the nation’s biggest cable TV providers lost nearly two million paying subscribers in the second quarter alone.
Again, I’m old enough to remember when Nielsen spent a decade pretending this shift wasn’t actually happening, despite very obvious evidence that it was. Then we watched as Nielsen belatedly realized that as a video viewership tracking firm they might just want to stop telling cable TV executives (also in longstanding denial) what they wanted to hear and actually start tracking streaming viewership as well.
The trick now as the streaming industry consolidates is to avoid embracing the greed and hubris that made traditional cable TV so open to disruption in the first place.
Filed Under: cable, cable tv, competition, disruption, streaming, video
Comments on “Streaming Tops Traditional Cable TV Viewership For First Time Ever”
Broadcast Viewing is Even More Surprising
As stated in the article, the shift toward streaming was utterly predictable. This is a milestone, but not at all surprising.
What really does surprise me are the broadcast viewing numbers. When cable was in its heyday, I was just about the only person I knew who even owned an antenna. Viewing over broadcast was seen as archaic. When the big NTSC > ATSC shift happened, I remember reading arguments that we should stop wasting public spectrum on broadcasts that no one was watching. Yet, here we are. It won’t be long before broadcast overtakes cable, as well.
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Won’t it be more like cable falling behind broadcast? I suspect the cable market is shrinking more than the broadcast market is expanding—because I expect most people who want to watch broadcasts, and have the ability, are already doing it. Or do you have reason to believe otherwise?
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I watch Svengoolie every week on channel 7.2.
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Cable is still unavailable or only partly available in a large chunk of the country’s land area.
Add to that that the cost middle class of living in the lacking and borderline areas is under $20,000 and often as low as $12-$15k, and the cable companies charging city rates. Nobody is going to pay $200 for a package when the month’s food bill for a family of four is $300!
it’s a variation of the digital divide. People don’t spend $75 a month in these places. And cable companies (and often those in cities demanding higher wages), don’t understand the country value divide!
I’ve lived in multiple locations that would be considered “rural”, as in you can see full constellations at night. One didn’t have a cable option at all. None. Two charged nearly the same rates as Chicago and St Lous.
I don’t think this is so much a shift (in totality) as it is new internet users.
As private companies drop fibre feeds and charge reasonable rates, many are simplify bypassing the cable offering having never had it.
As these private internet runs grow we’ll see more and more that never had cable pop up on streaming sites.
And I put it to you that no new contender in any area gets to become established before it also becomes at least as bad as the old one. Whether it’s pricing (which streaming has been steadily upping lately), clutter (streaming is just carpet bombing everything with new shows at random, most of which are rather more miss than hit), constraining things (you better stop sharing that password with your in-laws, you hear…) or fragmentation (where either multi-subscribing or subscription-hopping becomes a -necessity- when each service has exactly one or two shows you care about, and nothing more – oh, and calling that “whining” only serves to highlight the author’s complete lack of professionalism btw.) – the new thing slowly comes to mirror all shortcomings of the old thing. Rather hilariously if inadvertently (?) acknowledged by the article itself, apparently being filed under “meet the new boss…” category, and we all know what follows there…
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As much as TV industry people might like to think their product is a “necessity”, it never has been and likely never will be. The only time it comes close is in emergencies like hurricanes—but a portable radio seems much more practical. (What ever happened to portable TVs, anyway? They seem to still exist, as do ATSC tuners that can connect to cellphones. But I’ve never seen anyone suggest these for emergency use.)
This point becomes important when people encounter financial problems, as during the current wave of inflation. They’ll cut back spending on luxuries such as cable or streaming services, but not so much on necessities.
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What ever happened to portable TVs, anyway? […] But I’ve never seen anyone suggest these for emergency use.
The small aerials don’t work so good in a storm cellar. The more complex signal of a TV broadcast has more trouble getting through a storm tgan the simpler signal of a radio broadcast.
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Hmm. That actually brings us back to the beginning of cable TV: “community antenna television”, because people near mountains etc. couldn’t get a good signal. Wikipedia says some of those people were also using it to get (audio-only) radio stations, but I don’t think that was ever very popular—probably for the reason you give. (Every cable TV network I’ve used included FM radio signals, but nobody else ever seemed to know that, and I never saw any company advertise it.)
I suppose anyone with an emergency shelter should check radio reception in there, with storm covers closed. There may exist some places where cable actually is kind of necessary (or where people need to install their own larger antenna).
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Which is no good for checking the strength of an OTA signal in storm conditions, during which any such signal is impacted, especially multicast signals. It’s a lot easier to watch online news during a storm, using wi-fi for as long as your laptop battery holds out.
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“Whining” is a perfectly reasonable description of this incumbent industry argument, and i suspect you are misreading it.
But blah blah lack of professionalism whatever lol.
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Nah, the main problems here are still related to the old guard, and the rest with the investor class’s expectations of infinite growth over realistic measures.
“Whether it’s pricing (which streaming has been steadily upping lately)”
Increases have been happening for sure, but you still have way more control than you did with cable. Then, you still have Tubi, etc. to fall back on if you need to not pay for the month. Such flexibility not available in the days of yearly contracts.
“constraining things (you better stop sharing that password with your in-laws, you hear…) ”
That’s a recent thing, but in the context of cable hardly relevant. You couldn’t do that then either.
“fragmentation (where either multi-subscribing or subscription-hopping becomes a -necessity- when each service has exactly one or two shows you care about”
A concern, but you have the choice, whereas with cable you might have to pay for dozens of channels you. not only never watch but might be completely opposed to. Also, I’d say that if a service literally only has one or two thing you want to want, you either need to expand your tastes or make better decisions with your viewing habits.
All things considered, the current situation, compared to the old “you have to pay for ESPN, FOX and religious channels even if you want them to die” model is still superior, and the main complaint seems to be that you have to choose who to pay for. Which, compared to the old “you need to pay for these 30+ channels to get the one you want” cable packages is still a sweet deal.
Re: Re: Bingo.
What’s even better about Streaming is that the infrastructure is there for legacy Television shows that just keep getting canceled to have a home and find an audience (Yes, I’m talking about MST3K). We can actually route around the TV studios if we have a dedicated following who will give money (and if the show is cheap to run).
This won’t last.
People like cheap stuff.
Streaming prices will soon match cable prices.
Water flows downhill.
Man always find a way to make a profit.
Nothing to see here.