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Cord-Cutting Keeps Churning: U.S. Pay-TV Cancelers to Hit 33 Million in 2018 (Study)

Author

Michael Beach
July 31, 2018

Traditional pay-TV vs. cord-cutters (% change YoY):
1) Traditional pay-TV subscribers — 94M (↓ 4%)
2) Cord-cutters — 33M (↑ 33%)

Estimated cord-cutters by year:
1) 2017–25M
2) 2018–33M
3) 2019–39M
4) 2020–45M
5) 2021–50M
6) 2022–55M

Individuals in traditional pay-TV households:
1) 2015–205M
2) 2022–170M

Video viewers by platform:
1) YouTube — 192M
2) Traditional Pay-TV — 187M
3) Netflix — 148M
4) Amazon — 89M
5) Hulu — 55M
6) HBO Now — 17M
7) Sling TV — 7M

Quote from Marcien Jenckes — President, Advertising @ Comcast:“Television has been entitled…Because it’s so good as a medium … we didn’t as an industry do what we needed to do to make a case for ourselves.”

Quick definitions:
1) Cord-Cutters — Consumers who cancel traditional pay-TV
2) Cord-Nevers — Consumers who have not yet subscribed to traditional pay-TV
3) Cord-shavers — Consumers who reduce their pay-TV bill. An example of this would be moving from cable TV ($103/month) to a lower cost streaming service such as SlingTV.

Other key findings (% change from 2017-Q3):
1) 81% only want to pay for specific channels (↓ 1%)
2) $33 is the ideal monthly amount (↑ 6%)
3) 22 is the ideal number of channels (↑ 0%)
4) $1.50 would be the cost/channel/month (↑ 6%)

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