Number Crunching…

Since I crunched the numbers yesterday based on partial results, I’ll do it again today based on total results for yesterday. TVNewser’s Mark Joyella has updated totals on the FNC blackout protest.

On Sunday alone, Fox News recorded 36,000 emails to Dish via Fox’s “Keep Fox News” website, which allows visitors to immediately fire off an email to Dish, make a phone call, or find a new television provider. The site has resulted in a total of 116,000 emails and 156,000 phone calls–32,000 alone just on Sunday.

36,000 emails out of 14,000,000 subscribers is .25% of Dish’s customer base. And yes, I’m awake now.
32,000 phone calls out of 14,000,000 subscribers is .22% of Dish’s customer base.

Incidentally, I goofed on my decimal places yesterday. Math was never my strong suit. The numbers were two decimal places deeper than they should have been and obviously I regret the error…and never making it past Trig in college…

On Facebook, a post on the Fox News page made early Sunday has received 85,000 likes, 37,000 shares and 27,000 comments–many of them vows to drop Dish if Fox is not returned.

There a couple of issues with using this system which makes knowing the accuracy of the data impossible:

– Are all these people Dish users? Or are some FNC viewers on other systems?
– While the Likes and Comments on Facebook have to be uniques because of the nature of the system (though this system cannot account for people with more than one FB account…though such a number would probably be astronomically low), the FNC website numbers do not tell us whether people sent in more than one email/phone call.

I’d love to know what Dish’s monthly churn is on cancellations and subscriptions…then we’d know whether the FNC viewers threats to cancel their subscriptions exceed that value. What it wouldn’t say is whether those people would actually go through with it once they realize they’ll have to pay a penalty, which I assume they would have to in order to get out of Dish’s service.