Editor’s note: A previous version of this story had the average person watching 17 channels. However, according to new data provided by MediaPost’s Research Intelligencer, the average person now only watches about 15 channels. That means cable TV subscribers now pay over $7 a month per channel they watch.

Complaints about the rising cost of cable TV have been commonplace for years. And as cable prices continue to skyrocket, now exceeding $105 per month on average, it’s easy to see why folks are getting fed up.

As prices rise, cable TV providers are adding more and more channels to their bundles. For some, this helps to even out the rising cost – but for most, those extra channels are never even viewed. Subscribers, it seems, are not getting a fair bargain.

Hiding Behind the Bundle

Cable providers love to offer massive channel bundles, often exceeding 150-200+ channels. This makes it easier to justify charging so much for coverage.

After all, if you’re paying $100/mo for 150 channels, that’s less than $0.70 per channel per month – not bad!

Where the math gets more sinister is when you start to look at the number of channels that people actually watch.

Based on yearly reports from Nielsen, a leading market research and data provider, and new data provided to us by MediaPost’s Research Intelligencer, the average cable plan now includes nearly 200 channels but the average household watches only 15 channels – less than 10% of the channels covered! These numbers have actually dropped over years, despite the rapid growth of channels available to watch.

Meanwhile, data from Leichtman Research Group shows that the average cable bill was $106 in 2017 – and growing rapidly.