How much bigger is ESPN than FS1? – August 2017 Cable Coverage Estimates

Nielsen typically updates its universe estimates in late August/early September for the coming TV season, so I wanted to post the last set of cable coverage estimates under the current estimates. I plan on posting the first set of #s under the new universe estimates in late August or early September.

**DO THESE NUMBERS INCLUDE STREAMING SERVICES LIKE SlingTV, Vue and DirecTV Now?**

In the past that was a simple question to answer. The answer was “no.” Some people didn’t like it but it was simple! December was the last month that was the case though.

Starting with the January estimates the answer changed to “Yes….kind of.”

I applaud Nielsen for  plowing ahead though I don’t know that I’d have gone ahead and started  when I only had 6 (January estimates) or 21 (February estimates) or 37 (March estimates) households, or even the 91 (August estimates) that I could sample. By comparison the national TV panel has around 40,000 homes in it with around 100,000 participants.

**Nielsen plans to grow the alternate MPVD services (streaming services like SlingTV, Vue, DirecTV Now) participation rapidly over the coming months.** 

**CHANGES SINCE LAST UPDATE**

The biggest one is the inclusion of Big Ten Network as a measured network. Nielsen also has begun segmenting  “Total Cable Plus” (basically how big is the Pay TV Universe is). There are now versions with and without the MPVDs (Sling, Vue, DirecTV Now, etc).

**Some Tricky Comparisons**

The comparisons in the “Cable Sports Networks” vs March is only based on the fact that’s the last time I saw the full data and made these tables. You might see “But I heard ESPN was up in August!” ESPN was up in August versus the July estimates (87,217 million households in August vs 86,959 million households in July), but ESPN is still down vs. March.

I always liked the Cable Plus metric, but that’s now way more confusing. If you compare to the version without MPVDs ESPNs declines are lower than overall declines for pay cable since March, but if you compare them to the loaded w/MPVDs number…small sample size with lack of apples-to-apples (Nielsen didn’t have that metric in its March estimates), but in the case of ESPN it doesn’t look like MVPDs are making up for all of its wired losses.

Two tables below: first  the August estimates for the cable sports networks (stick to sports!) and those sports networks’ change versus the March estimates.

The second table is the coverage estimates for all nationally measured cable networks.

Nielsen cable (includes satellite & telco services) coverage estimates for the nationally measured cable sports networks for August 2017:

If you’re on a mobile phone these tables should be much easier to read if you tilt your phone to landscape mode.

Nielsen cable (includes satellite & telco services) coverage estimates for ALL nationally measured cable networks for August 2017:

All data ©Nielsen (data provided by a variety of TV network sources and not directly from Nielsen)
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