APPROXIMATELY 30% OF existing U.S. pay TV households are at risk of future video cord cutting, according to a new report from In-Stat.
The report 1Q11 US Digital Entertainment Database seeks to answer the question ‘who will be viewing what on which device’ through a consolidated view of the U.S. digital entertainment market, covering devices, services, content, consumer behaviour metrics, and forecasts.
Noting that growth in pay TV subscribers in the U.S. remained relatively flat in 2010, increasing by only some 148,000 for a 0.15% annual growth rate, the report’s principal analyst Keith Nissen cautions that a substantial portion of pay TV subscribers appear to exhibit similar characteristics to video cord cutting households.
“It is important to track these ‘at risk’ subscribers, rather than the pay TV subscriber base as a whole”, Nissen said in the report’s press release. “In general, our new data confirms that adoption of on-line video is growing. But, except for Netflix, the frequency of use is not expanding. This is largely because consumers are going to on-line portals to view specific TV and movie content. The frequency of viewing on-line video will probably not increase until ‘must-see’ original on-line programming takes hold.”
Other updated research from In-Stat found that:
– Cable operators lost 2.5 million subscribers last year, but satellite and telco operators made up the difference;
– Neither age nor household income appears to impact pay TV video cord cutting;
– More households added premium channels during 2010 than dropped premium channels;
– Cable sports is valued significantly less than on-demand access to TV content or premium TV channels, meaning that more sports will not protect against cord cutting.
