Another day, another ominous media consumption story suggesting consumers are about to ditch pay TV in droves.
Research group nScreenMedia, which partnered with Troubadour Research & Consulting to put together the "View My Video: Consumer Digital Media Consumption" report, said that 84 percent of 1,000 surveyed broadband users who have cancelled pay-TV services in the last two years are pleased with their decision, and 37 percent are so satisfied that they'll never go back. (The report is available here through a brief free subscription process.)
About 17 percent of the consumers polled said they once had pay-TV services but got rid of them, while 10 percent said they have never subscribed. Around 74 percent of the survey group currently has a pay-TV subscription.
So who are these people? How old are they? Were they ever avid TV watchers? What are their general interests? And perhaps most importantly, how many would not be pay-TV subscribers, regardless as to whether they had online video alternatives? The research company says they were drawn from a community of approximately 10 million U.S. panelists, with the survey data weighted to accurately reflect gender and age of U.S. broadband consumers.
We can infer that the 17 percent who defected the pay-TV realm aren't avid sports watchers, with only 9 percent of that group indicating to nScreenMedia that they miss pay-TV sports channels. And we can assume that a good chunk of them just aren't dyed-in-the-wool TV watchers to begin with--29 percent of defectors said they don't miss any TV of any kind. And only 12 percent miss first-run network programming.
Among the 74 percent of survey participants who have pay TV, they use their cable, satellite or telco programming service about 2.6 times more than they do online video, with pay-TV consumption averaging around 13 hours per week.
As for online video consumption, 92 percent identified YouTube as the online video source they most watch. Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) was second at 52 percent.
For more:
- read this report
- read this Multichannel News story
Related links:
Report links OTT on television with increase in cord cutting
Online video holds steady against linear TV options
Cord cutters dominate broadband usage