Just pick a nit, or actually not so much of a nit, *all* cable is paid cable, it’s just you pay twice for the non-premium channels — once with money for the privilege of paying again with eighteen minutes of your life for every 42 minutes of actual entertainment.

In my community, cable is often necessary to receive a signal at all even if you’re getting the most basic package – the equivalent of the broadcast networks plus a local-ish all-news channel and public access. I don’t know why, we’re far from mountainous, but you can spend your life adjusting the rabbit ears, or you can pay for cable. So these households are watching ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW (sometimes) but they’re doing it via cable, and yes, I get the difference between the network and the delivery method. However, if it costs $14 a month to get five channels and $21 a month to get 40, you’re going to choose 40, and then you will eventually watch them. They know this, which is why you can’t get a cable bundle without MTV. (I actually had a local cable exec admit this to me, only not about MTV. There are cable-networks that get poor ratings on their own, and I don’t mean C-SPAN, I mean commercial endeavors. To survive, they have to be bundled in with the ones that have some legs of their own. Which begs the question: Why do they exist in the first place?)

So while we still refer to them as “cable” and “broadcast” networks that is just legacy terminology. In the US somewhat less than 2/3 of the viewers *receive* their TV via a cable, somewhat less than 1/3 receive their TV via satellite and about 10% receive their TV over the air.

And its not QVC that’s “kickin’ butt” but these cable networks:

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/12/02/espn-nickelodeon-lead-cable-networks-november-24-30/9056

I don’t doubt it, it just seems counterintuitive that cable viewing would be that high — QVC must be kickin’ butt, huh? LOL

Exactly – it’s basically “any TV turned on?”, which is not the best metric to measure fragmentation. It probably increases partly because people don’t watch TV together as much as they used to (as in “the whole family”), so the TV stays on longer even though each individual viewer may watch less TV.

Secondly, Nielsen have changed their measurements over the decades, so it’s hard to gauge how much skew there is in the figures. (Didn’t they introduce college dorms into the panel only recently?)

Thirdly, this is primetime data. In my experience (granted, that’s not US-based experience), while DVD viewing does peak in primetime, it’s slightly phase-shifted towards late night (and Sunday afternoons). So it shouldn’t hit prime time TV viewing as hard as all-day viewing.

And finally, there’s the problem of parallel consumption. According to a paper by Nielsen, 31% of internet use, for example, occurs while also watching television. So it’s partly a fragmentation of attention rather than a fragmentation of media selection.

Most of the basic cable stations were not producing original programming like we know it today, the focus was on sports and news and repeats. Remember that the 80s launched FOX as a fourth network and then UPN and the WB entered the broadcast market diluting numbers in the 90s and into this decade. The growing variety of original programming on cable means that you can find something any night of the week without having to resort to repeats. And by repeats- the low viewing numbers of Knight Rider show that recylcling tv series is a no go too.

Re the Indies- that is a good point. Here in Phoenix we have a lot of indy stations many servicing the Spanish speaking market, the English stations show a lot of really good reruns and older movies. One local station runs sci-fi all night- Star Trek Voyager, SG-1 and the like and runs Perry Mason, I Love Lucy and other vintage favorites which are hits with the retirees here in the valley of the sun.

When I was a kid in the dark ages of the 70s when cable was how you got broadcast stations to your house when you lived where you couldn’t get a good antenna signal- back then the indies were where you tuned in for after school cartoons, on weekends they showed old black and white movies and classic serials from the 50s an 60s. This is how those of us in our 30s and 40s can say we have seen the same shows that our older friends and parents did.

Today- there are cable stations that show that nostalgic programming – again diluting the market for broadcast tv.

Ah…memory lane. Anyone here remember the cheesy San Jose TV 36 campaign with the buxom blondes in tight low cut t-shirts purring “Tune in to the Perfect 36″ ? Those ran into the 80s. Ah….a simpler time when Nielsens were relevant and captured a true picture of tv viewing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we are now at a point with cross-platform viewing (online, DVr, mobile, etc.) where cable was circa 1987 on your chart. We’re just at the beginning of the fragmentation. If we come back in 20 years and chart the “TV programming” audience shares, will we see online/on-demand/DVR viewing in a graph shaped much like the cable shares on today’s chart?

And Independent television is nearing extinction…poor little indies.

It may have been different in, say, the 10 largest metro areas back during the mid 80s, but in the rest of the country, the basic cable networks took longer to get established. However, in many areas, homes could be wired directly for HBO or Cinemax alone far earlier. (And my personal history matches this – I had HBO alone starting in ‘86, and was only able to switch to basic cable when the system was established in my area around ‘88 or ‘89.)

It’s my suspicion that the sudden jump in basic cable viewership between, say, ‘85 and ‘91 is due far less to CNN or MTV airing better programming and more to basic cable being available in more of the country.

Though the data isn’t wrong, neither necessarily is your teacher in the case of fragmentation. DVD viewing and video game viewing certainly eat into TV time. I don’t have the data to support this, but my speculative guess is the fragmentation occurs mostly with younger people (video games take time!) and is offset by more “older” people watching more TV.

These charts are household viewing. There is no P2+ data to compare with 25 years ago, but if it could be done, and done by age, I think the results would be very interesting.