Image via CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
Over the last few weeks, I looked at how blockbuster movies fared on online streaming services. Many mentioned that TV fares was a better way to measure this so this week, as I've done for the last few years, I'm looking into how the top 50 broadcast TV shows fared when it came to legal availability online.
Approach
As I did last year and two years ago, I pulled the data from Deadline.com’s Broadcast series ranker and cleaned it up. I took out every live and reality TV shows as the archival value of such show is limited since they are primarily marketed as “events” and, as such, lose most of their value to the viewer after the initial broadcast. As a result, news shows and sport events were also dropped from the list.
For data on the latest season, I looked at data posted in Wikipedia and counted seasons that happened during the 2012 year. This means that content from the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 certain was the data set I was hunting for, with episodes having run during the 2012 calendar year. Where part of one of the seasons was available, I gave the service a partial availability. Where seasons prior to the 2011-2012 years were available, I did not give credit if the 2011-2012 or 2012-2013 seasons had no availability because I was focusing the effort on availability of last year’s shows.
From a service standpoint, I focused on services that allowed for streaming to most internet-enabled television. This meant that Netflix and Hulu were the main subscription based offerings and Amazon on-demand and iTunes were listed as pay-per-view services. This year, I've added Amazon Prime as it is increasingly becoming a player in the subscription space.
Subscription services
After cleaning up the data set and double checking the availability of the last TV season, we have a full data set for subscription services.
The results were as follows:
| Rank | Network | Program | Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CBS | NCIS | No | No | No |
| 2 | CBS | NCIS: Los Angeles | No | No | No |
| 3 | CBS | The big bang theory | No | No | No |
| 4 | CBS | Two and a half men | No | No | No |
| 5 | CBS | The mentalist | No | No | No |
| 6 | CBS | Person of interest | No | No | No |
| 7 | CBS | Criminal minds | No | No | No |
| 8 | ABC | Modern family | No | Partial | No |
| 9 | CBS | CSI | No | No | No |
| 10 | ABC | Castle | No | Partial | No |
| 11 | CBS | Blue bloods | No | No | No |
| 12 | CBS | Unforgettable | No | No | No |
| 13 | CBS | Rob | No | No | No |
| 14 | CBS | Hawaii Five-O | No | No | No |
| 15 | CBS | The good wife | No | No | No |
| 16 | ABC | Once upon a time | Partial | Partial | No |
| 17 | CBS | Mike & Molly | No | No | No |
| 18 | CBS | 2 Broke Girls | No | No | No |
| 19 | ABC | Grey's anatomy | Partial | Yes | Partial |
| 20 | CBS | CSI: Miami | Yes | Yes | No |
| 21 | ABC | Desperate housewives | Yes | Yes | No |
| 22 | CBS | CSI: NY | No | No | No |
| 23 | CBS | Rules of engagement | Yes | No | No |
| 24 | FOX | Terra Nova | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 25 | ABC | Body of proof | No | Yes | No |
| 26 | CBS | How I met your mother | No | No | No |
| 27 | FOX | Alcatraz | No | No | No |
| 28 | FOX | Bones | Partial | Partial | No |
| 29 | FOX | Touch | No | Yes | No |
| 30 | ABC | Last man standing | No | No | No |
| 31 | NBC | Harry's law | No | No | No |
| 32 | ABC | Missing | No | Yes | No |
| 33 | CBS | NYC 22 | Yes | No | No |
| 34 | ABC | Revenge | Yes | No | No |
| 35 | FOX | Glee | No | Yes | No |
| 36 | FOX | House | No | No | No |
| 37 | CBS | How to be a gentleman | Yes | No | No |
| 38 | CBS | A gifted man | Yes | No | No |
| 39 | FOX | New girl | No | Partial | No |
| 40 | ABC | Scandal | Partial | Partial | No |
| 41 | ABC | Private practice | Partial | Partial | Partial |
| 42 | ABC | The middle | No | Partial | No |
| 43 | ABC | GCB | No | Yes | No |
| 44 | NBC | Law and order: SVU | No | No | No |
| 45 | FOX | Family guy | No | Partial | No |
| 46 | ABC | Suburgatory | No | Partial | No |
| 47 | ABC | Pan Am | No | No | No |
| 48 | ABC | Man Up! | No | Yes | No |
| 49 | FOX | The Simpsons | No | No | No |
| 50 | FOX | The finder | No | Yes | No |
When I set out do do this, I came to the data with the assumption that Hulu and Netflix would wins those categories hand-down but was very surprised by the net result:
Of the top 50 TV shows on broadcast TV in 2012, only 11 were fully available for legal streaming from subscription services. While we've already witnessed that the availability of box office movies was limited on those services, it is surprising to see that TV content seems to follow the same pattern. Netflix and Amazon Prime appear to have a paucity of recent TV content. Netflix had 16% of the titles and Hulu managed to offer 22% of last year's top shows. Amazon Prime has a very poor showing when it comes to that content type, with a mere 6% being available in any way shape or form and only one show being fully available.
With Hulu being partly owned by the studios, it is surprising that it is not faring better when it comes to this offerings. So the big question becomes: what is the cause of that paucity of content? One of the things I decided to look into was whether certain channels were holding content back.
What is quite interesting here is how ABC and CBS dominate the overall number of shows that are offered. And, delving in, those two companies show radically different approaches to making content available online. ABC looks to offer the variety of its shows in some form. By comparison, CBS has decided that the only way a viewer should access its shows through its own website, thus unable on most aggregation services.
Later this week, we'll look at how those titles fare when it comes to VOD services. So stay tuned.
