alvear.com

An analysis by the Television Bureau of Advertising found that cable penetration fell to 61.3% of all TV households compared to 62.1% last year. That’s the lowest that cable penetration has been since February 1990.

It’s not a big drop, but it’s a sign that other broadcast TV providers are gaining. There’s no information on how the Internet other VOD systems are affecting cable penetration rates, but it’s likely there’s some cause-effect here.

Meanwhile, satellite and other TV providers are gaining on cable.  So called “alternative delivery systems” went from 24.5% last year to 28% this year.  Broadcast satellite is the leader in this category with an estimated 27.6% of TV households, up from 24 percent a year ago.

The study didn’t look at IPTV specifically, but it should be among the alternative systems since it’s usually delivered via fiber or DSL. But in the U.S. IPTV deployments have been rather small still, unlike Europe or Asia where IPTV is growing at a very fast rate.

AT&T and Verizon are now battling cable and satellite providers with their IPTV offerings in many states and communities, but so far their subscriber numbers are pretty low. AT&T’s U-Verse offering has about 126,000 subscribers, while Verizon’s FiOS TV has about 515,000 as of the end of the second quarter 2007.

[tags] cable penetration, cable TV, cable, satellite, IPTV  [/tags]

Bonus: Press release from the TV Bureau of Advertising.

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