Originally Posted on Forbes.com
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, a multidisciplinary, integrated professional services firm and digital media consulting company, Vorhaus Advisors, co-sponsored a large national survey of Americans 18 years and older, about their media and digital behaviors. The study had over 2,000 respondents which were matched to the U.S. Census.
Cord-Cutting clearly remains a major threat to the traditional pay TV industry of cable, satellite and teleco providers. For a number of years now most pay TV companies (not the SVOD service) have had on-going, drip-drip loss of subscribers. This year the Manatt-Vorhaus Digital Strategy Study show that 10% of pay TV subscribers intend to cancel their service and not replace it with another pay TV package.
The study also showed that 41% of the total adult population felt TV was their most important method of getting entertainment. A separate choice was Connected TV which 11% of the respondents said was their primary choice for entertainment platform. Nonetheless, the big-screen kingdom of TV does have threats at their gates. In the coveted 18 to 34 year old demo, only 19% reported that TV was their primary method of getting entertainment content. Over 54% of these younger consumers aid that smartphone, tablet or PC/laptop was their primary method for getting entertained.
The purchase of SVOD services has now risen to over 70% of online consumers in America today. Nonetheless, the average household says they are going to purchase another 1.6 additional SVOD services. So clearly the party is not over for SVOD.
Furthermore, consumers say that they are mostly driven to buy/obtain other services to deliver long-form entertainment content – 68% of consumers say they are driven by other content they can get digitally and not have to pay for. The number #1 single reason for wanting to cut the cord was the cost of cable – another problem facing the cable/satellite industry.
