Providing market intelligence for more than 35 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

Cablers Gain Broadband Subs; Live Video Viewing Rises for Pay-TV Operators

In related news, about 10% of broadband homes say they want to increase to even faster high-speed services in the next year, according to a study from Parks Associates. Meanwhile, about 11% of pay TV...

Watch, Meet Smartwatch: Fossil and Misfit Think They’re A Perfect Match

Harry Wang, director of mobile and health products research at Dallas-based Parks Associates, said the digital fitness tracker is the fastest-growing category in the connected health device market, an...

Meet The Texas A&M Grad And DVR Inventor Who Turned Us Into Binge TV Watchers

Roku is the most popular brand of streaming media players in the U.S., according to a study by Parks Associates, a Dallas market research and consulting firm that specializes in consumer technology pr...

AT&T's Mega-Deal With Time Warner Banks On Your Connected Future

"You have industries that weren't traditionally impacted by each other all colliding and trying to figure out how to benefit from this change, while at the same time trying to protect their existing c...