Survey Sez 10/08/12

Analyzing the first week of the new program season, TVB, representing the U.S. commercial broadcast-TV industry, says the time-shifted portion of broadcast TV’s same-day Top 20 fall premieres outpaced the total audience (live + same day) of the majority of cable television’s highest-rated original summer programming. Nielsen data, sliced and diced by the TVB, indicates advertising-supported cable TV posted year-over-year decreases in the Primetime daypart across Households, Persons 2+ and Adults 25-54 in both the summer and regular season of 2011/12. On a Household basis, decreases were more significant during the regular season (-4 percent) than in the summer (-2.6 percent), which demonstrated that the Summer Olympics on broadcast television was not the only factor in the recorded declines. In addition, cable’s summer premiere season yielded mixed results, with all major programmers showing declines among their returning series (ranging from a decline of 1 percent on A&E and AMC to a decline of 23 percent on USA) and only a few networks introduced new programming that was as strong as the performance of their returning series (AMC: 102 Index; History:129 Index; TBS:123 Index).  Notes Stacey Lynn Schulman, senior vice president and Chief Research Officer at the TVB, “Cable networks have moved swiftly over the last several years to introduce high-profile original series during the summer at a time when broadcast television networks are primarily offering repeat programming. However, the audience for broadcast television in the summer season continues to significantly dwarf the audience for cable television’s first run programming which includes a number of critically acclaimed series. Even more illustrative of the disparity in number of viewers delivered by both platforms, the time-shifted viewing audience alone for broadcast television’s first week of programming for the 2012/13 season outpaced the total live viewing audience for cable television’s summer programming in most cases”…The worldwide fixed broadband market will continue to grow across different regions to reach 618.7 million subscribers at the end of 2012, increasing 7.3 percent from 2011. In terms of penetration, says ABI Research, more than one-third of world’s total households will have a fixed broadband connection at the end of this year. The growth has come from all the fixed broadband platforms: DSL, cable and fiber-optic broadband. In 2Q12, DSL broadband subscription grew 1.2 percent from 1Q12, adding 4.3 million subscribers. North America has the highest fixed-broadband penetration around the world, with 72.4 percent of households using broadband services. By the end of second quarter, Western Europe had almost caught up with the penetration rate of North America…More than 45 percent of smartphone subscribers use some form of instant messaging (IM) or over-the-top (OTT) messaging app in addition to (and, in some cases, instead of) traditional text messaging (SMS), according to Analysys Mason. In addition, 20 percent use a VoIP app, and 20 percent of those use it more than traditional voice services. Skype continues to dominate the VoIP market, and its main challengers are Viber, fring and Google Talk.