Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Almost Half of All Pay-TV Customers Are Likely to Cut the Cord This Year

A new report by Parks Associates reveals that it’s likely 43% of all broadband households in the U.S. paying for traditional TV will switch to streaming options within the next 12 months. The main reason? Cable is too expensive. There’s big incentive for TV subscribers to cut the cord in favor of Virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributors like Hulu + Live, YouTube TV, Sling, and more, with cost being just one of the reasons.

The Parks research shows that 17% of vMVPD subscribers are relative newcomers who jumped the traditional Pay TV ship within the last 12 months. Some of their main reasons for making the switch in addition to price include the appeal of the flexibility vMVPDs offer by providing targeted package options on a variety of platforms.

Recent cord cutters also cite switching in order to watch specific channels or programs they couldn’t get with their traditional pay TV package. With dozens of new streaming-only shows and movies being released all the time, it’s obvious people want to be in on the popular originals that come with streaming services and packages.

Plus, people who made the switch in the last 12 months also say there were too many channels they didn’t watch on regular TV to justify paying for it.

“Subscriber losses in traditional pay TV continue, while the vMVPD category continues to grow, thanks to consumer price sensitivity and preferences for platform flexibility,” said Paul Erickson, Senior Analyst, Parks Associates. “Traditional pay-TV operators have online delivery in their roadmaps, if not already deployed. We expect vMVPDs will continue to grow dramatically and will gradually become the dominant offering in the pay-TV landscape.”

From the article "Almost Half of All Pay-TV Customers Are Likely to Cut the Cord This Year" by Tmera Hepburn.

Previously In The News

OTT Video News, Deals, Launches and Products

Some 63% of US broadband households now subscribe to an OTT video service, rising from 57% at the beginning of this year, according to Parks Associates. Parks also updated its rankings for the top OTT...

Revenge of the Antenna

The percentage of broadband-connected households using antenna-delivered broadcast TV has jumped from 9 percent to 15 percent over the past three years. And the percentage getting pay-TV service has d...

AT&T-Time Warner Deal: A Good Merger In The New Media Era Or A Bad Remake?

Pay-TV operators are seeing a "slow erosion of the core business," analyst Brett Sappington at Parks Associates said. "After years of attempts to be more than just a 'dumb pipe,' pay-TV operators h...

Consumers to TV Providers: Careful with My Data

One in five internet households report being “highly sensitive” to how TV content providers collect and use data about family members and their activities, according to the latest research from Parks...