Netflix Caused Half Of The U.S. TV Viewing Drop In 2015

Netflix Caused Half Of The U.S. TV Viewing Drop In 2015

"CBS viewing among Netflix subs was 42% lower than non-subs, with Fox at -35%, ABC at -32% and NBC at -27%."

Ultimately, that could be catastrophic, like the impact that TV had on the movies. In 1946, the average American attended 34 movies per year. It dropped in each of the next seven years until it had reached only 12 by 1953. (It's around four or five now. I haven't looked at the data since 2011, when 313 million Americans bought 1.24 billion tickets. Complete data here.)

The study concludes, however, that an impact on the order of the Alvarez Hypothesis is not imminent. "Currently, Netflix is a source of industry pain, but not necessarily a cause of industry death.” That may be a fair appraisal, at least for now, because the current leak is a slow 3%. When the movie business was imploding, the viewership was dropping by double-digits every year.