Micro-costs: Inertia in television viewing

We document substantial default effects despite negligible switching costs in a novel setting: television programme choice in Italy. Despite the low costs of clicking the remote and of searching across only six channels and viewers extensive experience with the decision, show choice depends strongly on whether viewers happened to watch the previous programme on the channel. Specifically, male and female viewership of the news depends on whether the preceding programme appealed to men or women, and a shows audience increases by 2-4% with an increase of 10% in the demand for the preceding programme. These results are robust to endogenous scheduling.