Here’s a big roundup of statistics revealing just how much we love watching TV and movies at home, how much couch potatoes are willing to pay for such services, and also where it looks like things are heading from here.
1 Ranking of TV-phone-Internet service giant Comcast in Consumerist’s 2010 Worst Company in America competition.
$1 Suggested price per on-demand TV show that would be a “game changer,” according to the NY Times’ David Pogue, who writes dreamily: “Imagine: you wouldn’t need cable. You wouldn’t need channels. You wouldn’t need a TiVo. Any show, any time, for a reasonable price. If any idea ever had ‘THE FUTURE’ stamped across its forehead, this one is it.”
$10 The monthly fee demanded for “premium” mobile TV services such as Bitbop and Hulu Plus—and an amount deemed “exorbitant” by a USA Today columnist, especially because paying subscribers still must watch commercials on Hulu.
28 Delay, in number of days, consumers must wait after many DVDs are released for sale before rent the movie from services including Netflix and Redbox; the agreement was reached in order for movie companies to increase their chances of selling the DVDs to consumers.
$30 Amount movie companies like Disney and Sony are hoping to charge for in-home viewings of films soon after they open in theaters.
37 Percentage of young Netflix subscribers (ages 25 to 34) who don’t otherwise have pay TV subscriptions.
59 Percentage increase in average cable rates since 1996, or roughly three times the rate of inflation over that time period.
70 Percentage of all TV viewing controlled by major U.S. entertainment conglomerates.
88.7, 226 The percentage of U.S. households that own two or more TVs and the number of minutes the average American watches TV daily, respectively, among other neat stats rounded up in BillShrink’s “Evolution of the American Couch Potato” infographic.
$99 The consensus dollar figure that USA Today columnists believe will make American consumers bite for a box that’ll bring Google TV into their living rooms. (Currently, such a box costs a steep $299.)
More than 100 Number of devices that can stream Netflix movies and shows.
$997.07 Estimate for what the average consumer pays annually for TV, Internet, and video games.
2847 Number attached to a recently-passed Senate bill called the CALM Act (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation), which would ban TV commercials that are louder than the programs broadcast on the same channel.
800,000 Estimated number of consumers who have dropped cable TV in the past two years. By the end of 2011, as many as 1.6 million are expected to have cut the cable cord.
$500,000,000 Amount collected in late fees over the years by Blockbuster, which is now roughly $1 billion in debt and recently filed for bankruptcy.