TORONTO – Approximately 1.1 million Internet households in Canada have no paid TV subscription and cord shaving by those who are subscribers is on the increase says new research from Toronto’s Solutions Research Group.
The 1.1 million Canadian households which relied solely on Internet for video entertainment in Q2 2013, is up from 750,000 four years ago, according to SRG’s latest Digital Life Canada research. Analysis of the characteristics of these households also revealed:
• About half of existing “no paid TV” households with Internet report having cancelled their TV service within the past five years and 10% in the last year. And one-in-three never had paid TV service before but had Internet. The combined number of annual cord-never and cord-cutting households is estimated at over 90,000 per year (about the size of a market such as Regina).
• Average age of a decision maker in a ‘no paid TV’ household was 35, seven years younger than the overall average.
• No paid TV subscription in the home does not mean there is no TV viewing – in fact just the opposite: 65% watched a TV show online and nearly half – 45% – streamed Netflix in the past month in these households. No Paid TV households with Internet were 70% more likely to stream Netflix than average.
• 13% of paid TV subscribers in Canada said they seriously thought about dropping their subscriptions in the last six months but did not act on it. This is about the same level of consideration as last year, but there is an increase in the number of households downgrading their level of service, whether by dropping a channel or a tier. Sixteen percent of households have downgraded in this last wave of research vs. 12% two years ago.
• Authenticated TV Everywhere is not catching on: Only 7% of paid TV customers are using an authenticated ‘TV-Everywhere’ type of online portal or service provided by their TV provider (such as Rogers Anyplace TV or TMN Go). Significantly, 36% say they have heard of such services but never used and almost half – 48% – have no knowledge of their TV provider offering such services.
A segment of younger Canadian adults are choosing to only take Internet as they set up their households or drop TV as they move residences and at the same time, a significant proportion of households populated by older adults are concerned about the increasing cost of TV subscriptions. These two factors will continue to exert pressure on TV providers in the short to medium term, says the report.
The results come from SRG’s Digital Life Canada study which interviews 1,000 online Canadian consumers aged 12 and older every quarter. The latest research was conducted in August 2013.
