Doom and gloom. Doom and gloom? The number of TV Households in the U.S. is lower for 2012 than it was for 2011, according to Nielsen’s calculations. Many people have pointed to this as a sign of cable-cutting — people getting rid of their Pay TV service in favor of an Internet alternative. Which sounds plausible enough. Plus, Nielsen credits the lower numbers to the obvious reasons.
- Digital Transition
- Economics
- Multiple Platforms
Of course, nobody seemed to notice the point that Nielsen made in their own blog post:
The last such UEs decline occurred in 1992, after Nielsen adjusted for the 1990 Census, and subsequently underwent a period of significant growth.
So. It was after projecting forward for 10 years from the 1990 Census data that led to an over-estimation for 2011. That had to be corrected downward for 2012. And the same thing happened twenty years ago. But in 1992, nobody suggested that lower TV ownership was related to anything like cable cutting. We would have blamed that one on the S&L crisis or something else.