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Posted on July 28th, 2009 by Jeff Storan
Come this August, Time Warner Cable is shuffling its channel line-up for New York City customers.
The changes raise the question of whether channel placement has an effect on ratings. Do stations gain an advantage from having a lower channel number, or are channel choices so diverse and complicated to begin with that channel placement doesn’t matter?
Radio stations have long understood the value of being in the “middle of the dial,” but it is less clear whether such an effect also exists in television. Our initial findings are ambiguous–channel location seems to matter in certain instances but not in others.
Several networks have negotiated for more favorable places in the line-up. For example, Discovery and Discovery Kids are moving from the programming guide’s figurative continental shelf of the 100’s into adjacent spots in the shallow waters of the low 20’s.
Other networks are making room for the next cohort of high-bidders. CNN is vacating its spot for FX at the broadcast-like channel 10 and moving down to channel 78.
For the majority of Time Warner Cable subscribers who don’t follow cable trade press, the line-up shuffle will come as a surprise. Those unprepared viewers looking for Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network and plugging the familiar two 2’s into their remote controls are likely to experience a disruption to their lean-back experience upon finding Discovery Kids on their screens.
If the accidental viewer find herself ensnared in Discovery Kids programming and takes in a commercial pod or two, the network may count this disruption as a happy accident. And if the accidental viewer falls fast for the Discovery Networks’ brand and returns to its channels enough to be considered a loyal viewer, then the happy accident becomes part of the justification for working with the cable operator for a lower channel number.
The question is how many of these happy accidents can a network expect to gain with a lower channel number and to lose with a higher channel number. Set top box data can help answer the question.
The figures below show how audiences with similar affinities for program genre tune in to the same program when the program appears in different places in the channel line-up. Each figure identifies the Genre Segment analyzed, the network, the program, the date range, whether new or all episodes were considered and includes a table with the neighborhood head-end, the channel number, the average rating for the program at that channel number, and a box plot to illustrate the variability around the average rating.
For Bravo’s The Fashion Show, the effect of the lower channel number on ratings is unambiguous and positive. The Reality Watchers, the subset of all viewers who have demonstrated a proclivity for unscripted television, tune in at different rates depending on where Bravo appears in the channel line-up. In Malibu, where Bravo appears at channel 42, new episodes of The Fashion Show score an average rating of 4.6 among the Reality Watchers. In Riverside, where Bravo appears at channel 135, the same episodes receive an average rating of 1.0 among the same audience.
For USA’s longer running and critically acclaimed Psych, the effect of channel line-up placement is harder to detect. The Remote Detectives, the subset of viewers with a demonstrated preference for crime dramas, tune in to new episodes of Psych at almost the same rate in Monterrey Park where USA is located at channel 8 and in Riverside where USA is located at channel 60.
Finally, for CNN’s Larry King, lower channel numbers have a positive effect on ratings, except for in Malibu with both the highest channel number at 70 and ratings among the highest. Fake New Followers, the subset of viewers with an affinity sarcastic news programming that carries over to the real news, tune in to Larry King at higher rates in Monterey Park where CNN is located at channel 10 than in Riverside and Longbeach where CNN is located at channels 48 and 61, respectively.
The question isn’t “if” channel lineup affects viewing, but rather “how” it affects viewing. Case in point: An operator had a “family movie” channel listed near the children’s channels. The operator decided to replicate the channel, and run it near the movie channels.
The result was that teens started to view the channel. Teens wouldn’t surf in the area of children’s programming, but they did find the channel appealing once it was near the movie channels. Not only did they gain ratings, they gained a demographic they weren’t getting at all with the original channel lineup.