Cable Industry Gains Strength with Bundled Services, DVR, and VOD

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Cable Industry Gains Strength with Bundled Services, DVR, and VOD

7:00 am on October 15, 2006 | Category: Business, Television

The amount of time that cable television subscribers spend watching Video-On-Demand programs and pre-recorded DVR content has doubled from 2% to 4% in the past year, according to a report from Leichtman Research Group.

This relatively small percentage of total viewing time doesn’t pose a major threat to television advertising revenue, however, at least for now, according to LRG’s principal analyst, Bruce Leichtman.

America’s top cable providers now have a combined total of 58.8 million basic cable subscribers, as well as 29 million users of digital TV, Leichtman’s report went on to say. This puts the cable giants well ahead of satellite providers like DirecTV and EchoStar Communications, which lack the advantage of bundled services, and currently have a total of only 28 million customers.