Study: Almost 25% of U.S. homes will cut pay TV cord within 3 years

Almost 4 million more Americans will drop their pay TV service by the end of this year, the study said. File Photo by Alexis C. Glenn/UPI

Aug. 6 (UPI) — Nearly a quarter of all American homes will have cut the cord on a cable or satellite television service within the next three years, a new study said Tuesday.

EMarketer said in its forecast about 19 percent have already done so, in favor of a streaming service like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Fire TV.

“This year, the number of pay TV households in the U.S. will decline by 4.2 percent to 86.5 million,” it said. “With that negative growth rate holding relatively steady, the number of households subscribing to traditional pay TV services will drop below 80 million by 2021. At that time, more than one-fifth of households will be cord-cutters.”

The number of cord-cutting homes will rise to nearly 25 percent by 2022, it added.

The study said traditional pay TV providers in the United States will lose almost 4 million viewers by the end of 2019. Satellite providers like DirecTV will be hit hardest, it added, and lose more than 7 percent of its customer base by year’s end. Cable will lose 2.4 percent.

“As programming costs continue to rise, cable, satellite and telco operators are finding it difficult to turn a profit on some TV subscriptions,” eMarketer analyst Eric Haggstrom said. “Their answer has been to raise prices across the board, and it seems that they are willing to lose customers rather than retain them with unprofitable deals.”

Some cable providers are hiking the price of home Internet service to compensate, since it has a higher profit margin.

Tuesday’s study also said those who do still pay for programming are watching less. Overall viewership will decline by 3 percent this year to an average of 3 hours and 40 minutes per day, it said, adding that most of the decline is seen among children 17 and under.

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