NBCUniversal’s Cable Ratings Drop: Comcast Not Seeing The Forest For The Trees*



Syfy's promising new original series, Defiance, starts in April.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had a piece on NBCUniversal’s (NBCU) drooping cable channel ratings, particularly for long-time revenue engines like the Syfy channel (down 4% in viewership in 2012) and E! Entertainment (down 10%). There’s an irony in this since I believe NBCU’s parent, Comcast, is to blame for the drop in its own subsidiary’s ratings due to some ambitious pricing of its properties. What were once free (or almost free) basic cable channels suddenly became part of bundled cable “packages” that you had to shell out close to $20 a month for--and that’s how Syfy lost me as a viewer.


Before the DVR era, Syfy used to be called “The Sci-fi Channel” and it was part of the basic cable package. If you had cable in the 1990s, you pretty much got Syfy, CNBC, MTv and a host of other popular stations. Syfy’s content was mostly reruns of science fiction, fantasy, and horror shows of years past, running the gambit from the brilliant like the Twilight Zone to the hopelessly cheesy Lost in Space. But for any true connoisseur of the genre, it was an enjoyable trip down nostalgia lane. Syfy slowly began to introduce original productions, and though their offerings contained a few stinkers (that Flash Gordon reboot), it also produced some brilliant genre shows that might never have been green-lighted on broadcast networks (i.e. Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Stargate SG1, Eureka, and Warehouse 13). The growing strength of Syfy’s and USA Network’s programming gave Comcast the confidence to charge for access to their channels as though they were collectively as good a value as premium stations like HBO and Showtime. The bundle usually included E! News, Syfy, USA Network, Bravo, and a few others. (Not included in this is CNBC.) NBCU is not the only company to do this. AMC Networks, which I recall once receiving as part of basic cable in the 90s, also started to charge for bundles.

Is Syfy's promising new debut,
Defiance, worth $20 a month?

I think what annoyed me most was that unlike premium channels, like HBO and Showtime, Syfy was not commercial free. It had traditional sponsors for its shows and, in fact, usually ran a few more minutes of ads than its broadcast counterparts. Though I enjoyed the shows greatly, I found Syfy and USA Network shows frustrating to watch because of the extra advertising. When Comcast, tacked on the heavier subscriptions for these channels, it left me with a bad taste, and I cancelled them. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the programming—my eyeballs, and the wallet attached to them, regularly viewed Warehouse 13 and Eureka—but my cable bill was nearing $70 a month (without any “premium” channels at all) and enough was enough. The big five conglomerates (Warner, Disney, Viacom, Fox, and now Comcast) are virtually pulling us apart with the nickel and diming. It's simply not sustainable during a prolonged economic downturn.



Lots of sexy "hot chicks" on Syfy shows--I still won't pay for it.

I am temporarily getting Syfy again as part of a customer-relation offering for some problems I had with my Comcast service last year. Watching the new crop of shows, I have to say I like a lot of them. I had never watched Lost Girl before. Continuum looks interesting, and Defiance looks right up my alley. I’ve also been sticking with Warehouse 13 on Netflix when it becomes available (have to wait a year usually) and the new season looks promising. However, when my credits run out, I will not stick with the subscription.

If Comcast wants my viewership so that it can charge more money for ads, it has to have a better covenant with its viewers. By charging both ends of the spectrum--advertisers and viewers--Comcast and the other companies want to have their cake and eat it too—and this I feel is the reason viewership has dropped. Given a choice of keeping HBO; Showtime; or even AMC (which I do not subscribe to, but love their critical darlings Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Walking Dead  enough to get through Netflix), the Syfy/NBCU bundle can’t compete. People are willing to invest only so much in couch-potatoship. If NBCU wants to see its viewership skyrocket, it should be begging its parent company to give away their ad-driven channels for free. The shows are good and people will come around.

*Note: Since writing this piece I have moved to a new home and switched to Fios. Now I get SyFy, AMC, and many other stations that I did not get under my cable package. I want to say that aside from the bundling issue, I thought Comcast provided a good service. Their cable men were polite and friendly and arrived close to the appointment window. The quality of their signal was good and they were willing to credit you for service interruptions. My choice to switch to Fios was due to a package that included all my services and more channels at a lower price, not because Comcast was a bad company.

Ed Lazellari is a blogger and fiction writer. His novels Awakenings and The Lost Prince from Tor Books are available at Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.com.