The History channel is not alone in that position
The History channel is not alone in that position. Just as the rich seem to keep getting richer, the biggest cable channels seem to keep getting bigger.
Broadcast networks tend to turn sleepy over the summer months, so cable channels typically build audience share by introducing new shows. Taken as a whole, ad-supported cable channels are averaging the same number of viewers as cable duct they did last summer, with no gains to crow about. But when the 10 biggest entertainment channels are singled out, they show a collective uptick of 5 percent compared with last summer, suggesting that there is a bit of consolidation going on.
Jack Wakshlag, the research chief for Turner Broadcasting, suggested that viewers were “coming back to the head of the long tail,” referring to the idea of marketing a few products to the masses rather than many niche products to smaller audiences.
Chalk it up to an incredibly competitive environment among programmers and an appetite for new shows year-round among wire duct viewers. Speaking to TV critics in Los Angeles this month, John casino online Landgraf, the president of FX, said cable had become a “much more crowded marketplace” in the last 10 years. When FX’s groundbreaking series “The Shield” started in 2002, “there were about 40 scripted original series in all of cable,” he said. “And now there are 140.”
It is the heavyweight channels that can afford the most “big-budget content,” Mr. Wakshlag said. Together, the 10 channels at the top of the cable heap — USA, TNT, Fox News, Nick at Nite, History, TBS, A&E, Discovery, ESPN and ABC Family — draw awiring duct lmost a third of all the viewers for the 90 ad-supported cable channels that are measured by Nielsen.
