There may be doubts as to when over-the-air broadcasters will hit the magic 85 percent market penetration with DTV. But cable is a different story.
The cable television industry’s principal trade association has released new statistics that say its digital rollout is close to reaching a saturation point.
As many as 90 million of the 108 million U.S. TV homes (83 percent) are passed by a cable system that offers an HDTV programming package, according to statistics the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) released last month. Those numbers mark a 28 percent increase in just nine months.
Last December, 70 million homes had access to HD programming, the NCTA said. HDTV packages are available to 177 of the 210 designated market areas (84 percent), including each of the top 100 DMAs. Cable systems also increased their carriage of local digital broadcast stations to 454 from last December’s 304, a growth of nearly 50 percent.