The Promise Fulfilled? An Empirical Analysis of Program Diversity on Television

Economic assumptions concerning diversity of program offerings on television are tested for basic cable, superstations, pay cable, and broadcast networks using a 16-day sample of 41 U.S. broadcast and cable networks. Average diversity of program types decreased, and diversity across those channel types increased, as the number of channels increased. Audience ratings for each channel were positively associated with program diversity. Finally, the diversity of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) programming was found to be greater than the average diversity of basic cable, broadcast networks, and pay cable, but it was less than the average diversity of superstations.