Weekly Rewind
PlayStation Vue nabs NFL Network: Speaking of skinny bundles, this week Sony announced that its PlayStation Vue service will carry the NFL Network and NFL Redzone this fall. Until now, both channels have required a cable or satellite subscription, leaving cord cutters without access to Redzone and the final stretch of Thursday Night Football. (I’m not counting DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket streaming package, which technically required you to live in a place that didn’t allow for satellite coverage.)
Pricing, however, is still a mystery. PlayStation Vue’s three channel packages cost $30, $35, and $45 per month–or $10 more across the board in areas that have live local channels–but Sony also sells a few standalone channels such as Showtime and Fox Soccer Plus. We won’t find out which of those bucks the NFL Network and Redzone fall into until closer to this fall.
The empirical advantage of Neftlix: Cable TV’s defenders have long argued that there’s no better deal than the traditional channel bundle. While that may be true in terms of available content per dollar, it doesn’t mean much if people aren’t watching enough of what they pay for.
Over at CordCutting.com, Stephen Lovely determined that cable costs three times more per hour watched than Netflix. To make the calculation, Lovely divided the average cable bill ($99 per month, says Leichtman Research Group)by average cable viewing time (161.43 hours per month, says Nielsen), for an average 61 cents per hour. Dividing Netflix’s standard $10 per month plan by an average 50 hours per month of viewing time comes out to just 20 cents per hour.
Although Netflix’s viewing time is lower, I suspect that people are more focused on what they’re watching, as opposed to just leaving the TV on in the background. And as TV competes with a host of other new diversions, from Facebook to e-books to video games, people are starting to do their own math on which subscriptions are more valuable.
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