Interesting piece this AM from The Wrap, which, if you don't know, is the place that Joe Adalian is supposed to land at after his departure from the now web-only TV Week.
(No, no sign of him yet, but I keep checking for a new link for the blogroll. I'm on it, not to worry.)
Anyhow, in their First Take newsletter they have a link to their analysis of HBO and Showtime's success in a bad economy:
“It’s just a very good time for us,” said Matt Blank, chairman and CEO of Showtime. “Regardless of the cost of subscription cable, consumers see staying home and watching premium channels as a cost-efficient use of their dollars.”
“People are starting to spend their money more wisely, and premium cable is a very good value for the cost,” added Dave Baldwin, executive VP of program planning for HBO. “For the price of taking the family to one movie, you can afford all of HBO.”
According to Daniel Frankel's piece Showtime has added almost 700K subscribers, and segment leader HBO has had a huge success selling True Blood season one on DVD and adding an additional 35K users, not much until you consider they are already the star of the category.
Starz even added almost 400K.
Starz? I know! And no, I don't think it's because of their series version of Crash. Better chance that they found 300,000 fans of Party Down than Crash, which is just so all over the place that you don't know what to make of it.
(And you, Dennis Hopper, exactly what ARE you doing on that show?)
Sure, some of the gains have to do with people looking for more affordable ways to pass the time, and I notice that DVD sales as a whole being down is a boon to pay cable and companies like Netflix. But you can't rule out that people are tiring of the formulaic, and pay cable and to a slightly lesser extent their advertising-supported friends on the dial are the innovators in the marketplace.
And, the relaxed content standards just might be more in tune with the viewing public (if not the general public) than the network fare.
Certainly any HBO series is more compelling than listening to the comedy stylings of a 59-year-old comic in prime time. It would be great to see even the pay cable channels program aggresively against Leno weeknights at 10, it's a timeslot that in my opinion is ripe for the taking, despite all the analysis and trend research NBC has paid for and is throwing at you and me.
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