The industry has continued to insist that customers are happy with the pay TV bundle but signs are starting to emerge that “cord shaving” has become “cord cutting”.
2015 is the year of cord cutters
Overall pay TV subscribers in the US fell by 0.7% in Q2 2015 as streaming companies such as Netflix continue to enjoy explosive growth. The drop in subscribers follows several quarters of flat growth. The negative trend is now accelerating as the graph below by MoffettNathanson shows.
- “A year ago, the Pay TV sector was shrinking at an annual rate of 0.1 percent. A year later, the rate at which the Pay TV sector is declining has quickened to 0.7 percent year-over-year. That may not seem like a mass exodus, but it is a big change in a short period of time. And the rate of decline is still accelerating,” the analyst wrote in a note.
Consumers are tired of paying for large TV bundles with channels that they never watch so many are turning to streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, and more recently HBO Now and Showtime’s stand-alone services.
On the other hand TV channels continue to offer exclusive content such as sports, and that is likely to continue for some time.
However, at this point there is just no denying that the “cord cutting” trend is real. The market has reacted in a major sell-off of stocks that has wiped out more than $50 billion in value.
- Source: MoffettNathanson via Recode
