Online video holds steady against linear TV options

The number of online video viewers keeps growing steadily, and those who have completely cut the cord from pay TV are happy with their decision, a pair of newly released reports from comScore and nScreen Media reveal. But pay-TV providers are battling the trend.

The number of unique viewers of online video websites grew steadily between March and April, from 181.9 million to 186.1 million, comScore reports. Google Sites topped the list as usual, driven mainly by YouTube views, followed by Facebook and AOL. Yahoo Sites and NDN round out the top five online video websites.

Additionally, cord cutters are overwhelmingly happy about their choice to stop paying for cable and go to over-the-top and over-the-air entertainment solutions--87 percent told an nScreen Media poll they were at least somewhat happy with their decision, and 37 percent said they would never go back to pay TV, Multichannel News reports.

However, pay-TV operators are holding the line on subscribers, DSL Reports' Karl Bode wrote in an article citing a Leichtman Research Group report. The top 13 pay-TV providers added 260,000 video subscribers in the first quarter of 2014, compared to 230,000 during the same period last year. It's a figure that Bode suggests that "while growth is fairly flat, traditional cable TV operators still don't yet have much to worry about when it comes to cord cutting."

Pay-TV subscriber losses were about 40,000 over the period, the LRG report said, which were nearly identical to the year previous--suggesting that operators are working harder to hang onto subscribers.

comScore video metrix

Top U.S. online video content properties, ranked by unique viewers, April 2014. (Source: comScore)

For more:
- Multichannel News has this story
- DSL Reports has this story
- Clickz has this story
- comScore has this release

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