Cord Cutting is unstoppable! It seems that the young US consumers are Cutting the cable cord at a much faster rate than previously estimated. According the renowned research firm eMarketer, this year, about 22.2 million U.S. adults will cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV service — which is 33% up than the last year. The figure is much higher than its prior estimate, which had predicted about 15.4 million cord-cutting for this year.
The research also suggested that the total number of “cord-nevers” (people who have never taken paid TV Subscription) will rise 5.8% this year, to 34.4 million.
“Younger audiences continue to switch to either exclusively watching [over-the-top] video or watching them in combination with free-TV options,” said Chris Bendtsen, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer. “Last year, even the Olympics and [the U.S.] presidential election could not prevent younger audiences from abandoning pay TV.
eMarketer further predicts that by the end of 2017, 196.3 million U.S. adults will continue with traditional TV (cable, satellite or telco), which is down by 2.4% compared with the last year.
By 2021, the number is going to further drop to 181.7 million, which is a significant decline of nearly 10%. The number of pay-TV viewers 55 and older will continue to rise over the next four years.
In the next four years, the total number of cord-cutters will nearly equal the number of viewers who never had pay TV — a total of a whopping 81 million. It clearly means that about 30% of American adults won’t use traditional Television.
eMarketer’s estimates, however, do not include “virtual” Internet TV services, such as Dish Network’s Sling TV, Hulu’s live TV service, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, or YouTube TV. And the experts say over-the-top TV subscription services so far have not offset declines in traditional pay television.
Another worrisome trend has been reported by eMarketer. It says that 2017 will be the first time, the average TV viewing in the U.S. will drop below 4 hours per day. Digital-video consumption, however will continues to increase. It will be 1 hour 17 minutes per day, up 9.3% year over last year.
