-

Saturday, November 14, 2009

VERSUS' Loss Of DirectTV Not As Bad As It Seemed

Don't get me wrong, I feel for all the people that were unable to watch the last couple IZOD Indycar Series races in 2009, but it looks like the loss of DirectTV wasn't as bad as it seemed.

According to MultiChannel.com, the loss of VERSUS on DirectTV was nearly completely balanced out by the addition of the sports channel on Dish. When Direct TV dropped the station, VERSUS was in 75 million homes. After the addition of Dish, VERSUS is in 71 million households.

Granted, the numbers could drop in December because VERSUS is scheduled to jump back up to the "Classic Gold 250 package" on Dish after November 30th. However it's been reported that VERSUS and Dish are currently in negations to move the sports channel down to a more common package.

Even with the loss of DirectTV, VERSUS' viewership has been up considerably over the last couple months. In September primetime viewership was up 26% and up 50% on the weekends. Viewership jumped again in October where primetime was up 16% and 12% on the weekends.

VERSUS reports that they've received 130,000 calls and E-mails about the DirectTV dispute.

0 comments:

Post a Comment