Nielsen: 1 in 8 households have cancelled cable in last 2 years

[Weiserguy]

I think C-SPAN will stay around until the nuclear apocalypse.

Which could be coming in about 53 weeks.

 

[Loverofradio]

Another thread observed the decline of local and regional cable news channels, specifically New England Cable News. This is related to the decline of cable subscriptions. You can't fund a 24/7 local news channel if a chunk of the money used to pay for it disappears. The question you need to consider is how much would you pay for local news? Start thinking about it, because if audience for linear broadcast TV goes away, so does your local news coverage.

There’s always going to be enough advertisers to fund a local tv news operation

 

[Loverofradio]

A blog post from Nielsen published today shows the trend: Only 46% of households purchased the cable bundle last month, down 12.3% from just two years ago

This is not being offset by broadcast reception of television, which is also declining.

Broadcast bounceback: New TV sports rights deals provide fans with free access to local games | Nielsen

As pro sports teams seek to reach bigger TV audiences, some are embracing free, over-the-air broadcasting options.

www.nielsen.com

The report also includes the putrid viewership data for the Phoenix Mercury WNBA team: Only 1418 viewers last year on Bally Sports Arizona. This year on AZ Family Sports (an OTA service) the viewership was up significantly, to a still paltry 8193.

8,000 sounds like the right amount of people who would tune into a local televised game, that’s a good number

 

[JeremyAndrews]

I feel if they put all the Sports in a different package for people who actually want to watch it, it would probably be just a little bit cheaper for people who don't want it.

Same goes for local channels. You get a big local TV station charge added to your bill. Between 10 and 15 bucks. That's for channels that don't use Must Carry (Most of them) Put them in their own package if people don't want to use an antenna. That's what satellite did when they first added locals. You needed an antenna to watch locals, but when they added them to satellite, there was a cost to get them at first.

Most of the channels on cable are not as expensive as the locals, some of the majors and especially the sports.

 

[Mediafrog+]

That's one reason why NWCN (Northwest Cable News) went away in 2017. TEGNA didn't want to keep the channel around, and more people were looking at news on social media.

TEGNA had no interest in regional news channels. They shut down TXCN in Texas in 2015, though that channel had been little more than repackaged local newscasts since 2005 following massive layoffs by previous owner Belo (the channel had launched in 1999.)

 

[TVCOOL]

I saw a rerun of Friends on TBS at a friend's house this afternoon and basically TBS airs friends reruns weekdays to fill airtime. I remember stations like TBS either air rerun comedies ala Gillian's Island and Bewitched and maybe some movies not air 3-4 hour blocks of the same shows.

 

[kwthom]

There’s always going to be enough advertisers to fund a local tv news operation

Until the majority of the Boomers die off...about 20 years from now??

 

[Greg Goodfellow]

I'm surprised more local and small market broadcast TV stations haven't gone the way of terrestrial radio and reduced staff or even folded more than they have. Some small market stations with local news ditched proper cameramen some time ago in favor of Go Pro cameras and smart phones for getting shots and doing interviews, and more of their staff pull multiple duties - Those who are on-air in the studio during a newscast might then go out into the field and get reports between newscasts. Others may host the news, but also be the ones to update the website and do their social media posts.

Where my parents live, I believe 3 stations began pooling resources for at least 1 daily newscast which is now a regional or state-wide news. The 3 stations send news items and content they believe would be impactful or interesting to viewers of all those stations, the staff at one will "anchor" those newscasts and all 3 stations broadcast it to their viewers.

Your second paragraph details exactly what is happening in my home state, whereby the Nexstar stations contribute to the 5:30 pm statewide show entitled “West Virginia Live”. Nexstar inherited this shared effort and has added at least one similar weekend show.