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Keeping Up with Cable TV Cord Cutters

27 Jun 2011
Posted by Market and Main Media

Cord cutting – the act of dropping your cable subscription – has been an upward trend over the past few years. In May 2011, wired cable reached its lowest point since 1989 with only 60.6% household penetration.  Cable programmers are scrambling to stop the bleeding with services like HBO’s GO app which gives subscriber online access to past episodes. 

In reality, “cord cutting” may be a misnomer as users are really just shifting subscriptions to satellite and Internet subscriptions like premium Hulu accounts and Netflix. Media habits around feature length movies are especially altered by internet subscriptions. For example, this Bloomberg video demonstrates that box office sales may be taking a big hit from Netflix.

Marketers need to take steps to keep up with cord cutters as they switch from traditional wired cable.

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Online Tv Viewing Growing, Cable Tv Seeing Declines

11 May 2010
Posted by Market and Main Media

In the last two years, an estimated 800,000 U.S. homes have canceled their cable TV or satellite subscriptions, according to Convergence Consulting Group. Though this number represents a relatively small percentage of the 101 million subscribers, analysts say this could double to 1.6 million by the end of next year. The growing trend is attributed to the increase in quality viewing options online: Hulu, Netflix, broadcasters’ sites and others.

TechCrunch reports that this small niche of “cord cutters” won’t put a serious dent in the $84 billion cable/satellite/telco TV access industry, but argues its existence speaks to the growing momentum of online TV viewing.

But for most, watching TV online is in addition to their current TV watching. In fact, less than 3 percent of those watching full episodes online are those who fit into this category of  “cord cutters.” For now, advertisers will continue to put the bulk of their money into traditional TV options. Last year, only about $1 billon was spent on online TV viewing venues while $62 billion was spent on traditional TV advertising.

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