Madison Square Garden, whose corporate sibling Cablevision sued Viacom over the media giant’s bundling of its cable channels, charges more for its package of bundled channels — but draws a much smaller audience in New York City, figures show.
Eleven of Viacom’s networks do better in Gotham City households than MSG, according to Nielsen ratings for the New York area.
The MSG regional sports networks ranks 44th among NY households with a 0.18 rating — while its sibling MSG Plus rated a 0.04, according to Nielsen.
Together they cost pay-TV companies an estimated $4.50 per subscriber per month, according to SNL Kagan data for 2012.
Meanwhile, Viacom’s entire 25 channels cost distributors $3.73 per month per subscriber, SNL Kagan data for 2013 show.
The number excludes Viacom’s part interest in premium network Epix.
Teen Nick, which carries shows such as “Degrassi” and the hit Australian kids drama about teen mermaids, “H20,” drew bigger ratings in 2012 than MSG.
Teen Nick ranked 42nd versus MSG’s 44th place in the Nielsen ratings.
Cablevision’s lawsuit seeks to drop Teen Nick along with other channels because they aren’t part of the eight core channels it wants to buy.
Cablevision claims it is forced to take low-rated networks to gain access to Viacom’s more popular channels such as Nickelodeon. Viacom claims bundling is a longstanding industry practice and said it will fight the suit.
“On game nights MSG is among the very highest rated programming in New York and both Knicks and Rangers ratings are way up,” said a Cablevision spokesman.
“The issue in our lawsuit is Viacom’s requiring that our customers take and pay for more than a dozen channels they don’t want in order to receive the Viacom channels they want.”