This is what was "never going to happen." We were told.
They don't give the stats on the remaining MVPD subscribers. The percentages by
state vary greatly. But using the overall average of 59% having cancelled their
subscriptions, my arithmetic would say:
Back before the exodus began, subscriptions went as high as around 90% of
households. The number of US households in 2018 was 127.6M. So, normalizing on
that 2018 figure, if the peak had occurred in 2018, it would have been 114.8
MVPD-subscribing households.
In this one survey sample, the suggestion is that overall, in the US, 67.8M
households have cut that cord, leaving 59.8M households with legacy MVPD
service. That would be 46.9% of US households, still connected to legacy
service, overall.
Okay, according to this survey sample, we have breached the 50% point. Only
thanks to the Internet, and only thanks to the still-prevalent neutrality of
it. No thanks to this FCC, who are suggesting that blocking this competition is
what the American taxpayer really wants.
Bert
-------------------------------------------------------
https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/survey-six-in-10-cable-tv-subscribers-cut-cord-more-likely-to-unsubscribe
Survey: Six In 10 Cable TV Subscribers Cut Cord; More Likely To Unsubscribe
Results of a survey reveal cable TV unsubscribes are accelerating
Phil Kurz 9 hours ago
CHICAGO-Results of a December 2018 survey released this week by Waterstone
Management Group paint a rather dire picture for the cable TV industry: 59
percent of subscribers nationally have cancelled their plans and another 29
percent are considering it.
"I think it is pretty obvious that cable TV is going to go away, at least in
the form that we've known it," says Andy Kerns, creative director of Digital
Third Coast and primary researcher on Waterstone's cord-cutting survey. "I
think the story right now is about how quickly it is happening."
Idaho registered the highest percentage of people who have cut the cord at 72
percent, followed by Kentucky at 70 percent, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Nevada and
Arizona at 69 percent and South Dakota at 68 percent.
The states with the lowest percentage of unsubscribes include Virginia at 51
percent, Alabama and Massachusetts at 50 percent, Pennsylvania, Hawaii and
Connecticut at 49 percent, Mississippi at 47 percent and New Jersey at 36
percent, the survey found.
Seven states had too few responses to be included in the analysis, according to
Waterstone. They included Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont,
Wyoming and North Dakota.
Although the survey didn't examine why people are cutting the pay TV cord,
Kerns identified price and original content as likely reasons. "Netflix, Hulu
and other streaming services were initially competitive on price," he says.
"But they have also been investing in an incredible amount of original content.
That seems to have accelerated this battle with traditional cable."
The survey also did not ask about the efforts of traditional pay TV providers
to preserve subscribers by offering their own SVOD services.
For the survey, Waterman contacted 5,000 people age 18 to 69 across the United
States via Mechanical Turk, an Amazon-powered survey platform. Respondents were
paid to participate.
More information is available on the Waterstone Management Group website.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.