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:
| Availability | Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime |
|---|---|---|---|
| No availability | 37 | 28 | 47 |
| Partial availability | 5 | 10 | 2 |
| Full availability | 8 | 11 | 1 |
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.
But what could be the cause of that paucity of content. One of the things I decided to look into was whether certain channels were holding content back.
| ABC | CBS | Fox | NBC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No availability | 2 | 17 | 3 | 2 |
| Partial availability | 13 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| Full availability | 6 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
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.
VOD
Because Amazon and iTunes both have strong VOD offerings on a variety of devices, I focused on those specific services. For comparison, Comcast offered to provide me with the data on their online TV services, Xfinity TV, and on their cable TV Xfinity VOD, which I incorporated into the chart below. The reason for on-boarding this data is that it presents an interesting story as to how cable companies are adapting to the new world, where many cord-cutters are trying to leave cable TV services for internet-only alternatives.
So with that said, let’s take a look at this year’s chart:
| Rank | Network | Program | Amazon VOD | iTunes | XfinityTV.com | Cable VOD (Comcast) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CBS | NCIS | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 2 | CBS | NCIS: Los Angeles | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 3 | CBS | The big bang theory | Yes | Yes | No | Partial |
| 4 | CBS | Two and a half men | Yes | Yes | No | Partial |
| 5 | CBS | The mentalist | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 6 | CBS | Person of interest | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 7 | CBS | Criminal minds | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 8 | ABC | Modern family | Yes | Yes | Partial | No |
| 9 | CBS | CSI | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 10 | ABC | Castle | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 11 | CBS | Blue bloods | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 12 | CBS | Unforgettable | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 13 | CBS | Rob | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 14 | CBS | Hawaii Five-O | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 15 | CBS | The good wife | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 16 | ABC | Once upon a time | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 17 | CBS | Mike & Molly | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 18 | CBS | 2 Broke Girls | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 19 | ABC | Grey’s anatomy | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 20 | CBS | CSI: Miami | Yes | No | No | No |
| 21 | ABC | Desperate housewives | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 22 | CBS | CSI: NY | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 23 | CBS | Rules of engagement | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 24 | FOX | Terra Nova | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 25 | ABC | Body of proof | Yes | Yes | Partial | No |
| 26 | CBS | How I met your mother | No | Yes | Partial | No |
| 27 | FOX | Alcatraz | No | No | No | No |
| 28 | FOX | Bones | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 29 | FOX | Touch | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 30 | ABC | Last man standing | Yes | Yes | No | Partial |
| 31 | NBC | Harry’s law | No | No | No | No |
| 32 | ABC | Missing | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| 33 | CBS | NYC 22 | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 34 | ABC | Revenge | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 35 | FOX | Glee | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 36 | FOX | House | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 37 | CBS | How to be a gentleman | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 38 | CBS | A gifted man | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 39 | FOX | New girl | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 40 | ABC | Scandal | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 41 | ABC | Private practice | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 42 | ABC | The middle | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 43 | ABC | GCB | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 44 | NBC | Law and order: SVU | No | No | Partial | Partial |
| 45 | FOX | Family guy | Yes | No | Partial | Partial |
| 46 | ABC | Suburgatory | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 47 | ABC | Pan Am | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| 48 | ABC | Man Up! | No | Yes | No | No |
| 49 | FOX | The Simpsons | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial |
| 50 | FOX | The finder | Yes | Yes | No | No |
The first thing that pops at you is how much green there is for online VOD services like Amazon VOD and iTunes. Let’s aggregate the data to make it easier to read it:
| Studio | Number of shows | Amazon VOD | iTunes | XfinityTV.com | Cable VOD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABC | 16 | 15 (full) | 16 (full) | 2 (full) / 10 (partial) | 2 (full) / 9 (partial) |
| CBS | 22 | 22 (full) | 22 (full) | 9 (partial) | 10 (partial) |
| Fox | 10 | 9 (full) | 8 (full) | 5 (partial) | 5 (partial) |
| NBC | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 (Partial) | 1 (Partial) |
| Total | 50 | 46 (full) | 45 (full) | 2 (full) / 25 (Partial) | 2 (full) / 25 (Partial) |
Amazon had complete sets of 2012 episodes for 46 of the top 50 shows (92%), while iTunes had 45 of them (90%). Considering all the other data sets we’ve looked at over the last few weeks, this is a very good showing, making it clear that TV companies are mostly comfortable with selling their most recent content online.
What is surprising, however, is how little parity there is for cable TV. When I was approached by Comcast with their data set, I assumed that we’d see something close to 100% when it came to making shows available on TV VOD. But due to an approach that focuses more on recent content (ie. the last few weeks), in the same way as Hulu does for their subscription service, Comcast does not offer much beyond the last couple of months. Of the 50 shows, only one (Desperate Housewives, from ABC) had all episodes running in 2012 available.
While some of the reason for this poor showing can be seen as a strategy of presenting primarily the last 4-5 episodes series on a rolling schedule, another surprising part of the data set showed that 23 out of 50 shows (or 46%) were not available in any ways, either partially or fully, on Comcast’s services.
In this instance, the data seems to show that, if you want to catch up on complete seasons of TV shows, your best bet is to pull out your wallet and purchase episodes from an online service like Amazon or iTunes. In a world where hard drive is no longer a limited resources, the availability of any show any time is still limited by licensing rights and it appears that TV rights holders have decided to crown the internet as the place to go to purchase such content.
By Studios
Lastly, the question of whether a particular studio does better licensing that another could come up. So I normalized the data as percentages to get a sense of whether a substantial difference existed.
| Studio | Number of shows | Amazon VOD | iTunes | XfinityTV.com | Cable VOD (Comcast) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABC | 16 | 94% (full) | 100% (full) | 12% (full) / 62.5% (partial) | 12% (full) / 56% (partial) |
| CBS | 22 | 100% (full) | 100% (full) | 41% (partial) | 45% (partial) |
| Fox | 10 | 90% (full) | 80% (full) | 50% (partial) | 50% (partial) |
| NBC | 2 | 0% | 0% | 50% (Partial) | 50% (Partial) |
| Total | 50 | 92% (full) | 90% (full) | 4% (full) / 50% (Partial) | 4% (full) / 50% (Partial) |
Based on the data, ABC may be more willing to license its content out than its competitors and CBS seems to be more conservative in its approach. Corporate ties and history may have to do with this, as ABC is owned by Disney, a company with close ties to Apple (Steve Jobs sat on their board and was a major shareholder after he sold Pixar to them). However, corporate history isn’t everything, as Comcast’s ownership of NBC does not seem to give it much in the way of preferential treatment on content (then again, the data set is so small that it’s hard to tell).
However, we are dealing with relatively small data sets so trying to draw any major conclusion out of this may be premature. However, watching how those number evolve over time could be interesting.
Conclusion
When it comes to legally streaming hit TV show, the internet is the place to go. The catalog there is richer than the catalog you can find on regular cable television. In a world of increasing bandwidth and cheaper storage space, it appears that VOD services like Amazon VOD and iTunes have taken an early lead. Meanwhile, cable companies are still focusing on more recent fares as part of their offering. Which model is best in the long run is a matter for debate but it is clear that if you wanted to bring yourself up to date on what was hot on TV in 2012, the internet is the place to go.