Television Asia ranks HBO as Tops amongst channels

(posted on 16 November, 6:00 pm)

Asian cable TV magazine Television Asia conducted a survey in October 2000 amongst 400 cable operators Asiawide (majority of the respondents were from India). The survey has come out with some flattering results for HBO, which has been rated as numero uno in five (see tables below) out of the seven categories that the channels were rated on by cable ops. Discovery was the other good performer as far as cable operators were concerned. Star Plus was another dark horse winner when it ranked highly on best programming and most popular channel.

Fashion TV with all its breast and bottom display was surprisingly ranked as the channel offering the worst programming and sales.

The survey also probed cable ops' minds on other issues like when and why they would dump or carry a channel from their networks. 62% said that they would opt for channels that provided the maximum amount of programming value to their subscribers. Other reasons why they would retain/drop a channel included included digital poor transmission quality (five per cent), too many advertisement breaks (three per cent), language/dubbing issues (five per cent) and poor affiliate relations (three per cent). Another five per cent said they would prefer to add channels rather than drop them. Eight per cent named a few channels that they would choose to block but did not assign reasons for their decision.