It’s no secret that more and more American households are doing without pay-TV service. Market research firm GfK has estimated the percentage of cord cutting households in the U.S. to be as high as 25%.
To better understand this phenomenon, it would be helpful to have some insight into the reasons behind the cord cutters' actions. That’s exactly what TiVo has attempted to do in their recently-released “Q4 Video Trends Report: Consumer Behavior Across Pay-TV, VOD, PPV, OTT, TVE, Streaming Devices, and Content Discovery.”
TiVo surveyed more than 3,000 consumers in the U.S. and Canada, 18 years of age and older. Of those respondents who did not have a pay-TV provider, 19.8% had cut cable/satellite service in the past 12 months, 48.1% cut the cord more than a year ago, and 32.1% never had cable/satellite service. Asked their reasons for cutting cable/satellite service, 80.1% said that the price was too expensive, 48.3% use an internet streaming service, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, etc., and 27.2% use an antenna to get the basic channels on their TV.