By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Friday, March 4, 2016
Netflix diverted about half of people's viewing from traditional TV in 2015, according to a study by Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson.
According to Variety the analyst came up with his estimate based on Netflix's domestic subscribers watching a whopping 29 billion hours of video last year. That represents about 6 percent of collective American TV watching, based on data from Nielsen Media. That's up from 4.4 percent in 2014. Traditional TV viewing dropped about 3 percent in 2015 vs. 2014.
“Currently, Netflix is a source of industry pain, but not necessarily a cause of industry death,” Nathanson wrote.
When people begin using Netflix, broadcast networks take the biggest hit: CBS viewing among Netflix subscribers was 42 percent lower than those who don't receive Netflix. His study saw drops of 35 percent for Fox, 32 percent for ABC and 27 percent for NBC. Most cable networks were not as affected as badly.
Netflix has about 40 million U.S. subscribers and 35 million internationally as of the end of 2015.
The company is rapidly growing original content and last year spent $10 billion in content costs on revenues of $6 billion.
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