More than half of consumers with a connected TV have increased their use of over-the-top broadband TV sources in the last year, with 24 percent reporting a sizable increase according to data from the TDG Group. This television includes sources like Netflix (s nflx), YouTube (s goog) and Hulu, and the group’s research notes that this isn’t necessarily good news for the pay TV companies that are seeing subscriptions decline.
From the release announcing the study:
“That consumers are watching more over-the-top video is not itself surprising,” notes Michael Greeson, co-founder of TDG. “But to see such a widespread increase in OTT TV viewing is dramatic, especially as pay-TV subscriptions in the US are experiencing their greatest 12-month losses to date.”
Meanwhile, with the rise in consumption of internet TV there’s a decline in pay TV subscribers. This is the third consecutive quarter of such quarter-over-quarter declines according to investment bank Stifel Nicolas, which notes that the economy is improving and people are building houses again. Growth in housing is generally correlated to growth in cable subscriptions.
So while a whopping 86.8 percent U.S. homes have cable, they are also spending more time enjoying internet services, which may lead more to question the value of paying high cable fees. However, if cable companies can take what consumers enjoy from such over-the-top services like on-demand programming to any device and still keep a lock on quality programming they have an enviable hunk of the market.
