Is live TV dying? No, but it’s not as healthy as it once was
Viewing time of live TV continued to decline in Q3, albeit by only a minute in from a year ago, as viewers increasingly tune in to time-shifted TV and online video.
Nielsen said live TV viewing per day slipped to four hours and six minutes in the third quarter, a minute less than in Q3 2015, and a much smaller decrease than the six-minute drop between Q3 2014 and Q3 2015.
The extra minute went to DVR viewing, which increased to 29 minutes from 28 minutes.
That said, Nielsen’s Q3 Total Audience Report estimates the number of TV households subscribing to video on-demand services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video increased to 54% from 46% in Q3 2015, showing the OTT revolution continues apace. Another recent report, from Parks Associates, showed that nearly half the U.S. broadband households that subscribe to a video on-demand service likely took more than one. Digital TV Research, meanwhile, last month forecast 112 million SVOD subscribers by the end of 2016.
Pay-TV didn’t fare as well, showing continuing subscriber declines. A year ago, there were 100 million pay-TV subscribers in the U.S., that number has fallen to 89.2 million.
And there’s more on the way, especially as consumers discover OTT options like Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now and the soon-to-launch Hulu Cloud TV offering.
Broadband-only households continue to increase as Millennials establish homes sans pay-TV, opting for what they’ve become accustomed to paying for: Internet access. Nielsen found broadband-only homes increased 27% to 4.6 million from 4.36 million. And, as more consumers eschew pay-TV, more are opting for over-the air content; broadcast-only HH increased to 14.3 million, a 12% bump from 12.8 million a year ago.
Stay tuned.
Follow me on Twitter @JimONeillMedia and on Videomind
Director, Operations - Live, at Roku Inc.
7yGreat points Jim and Jason. I think the figures also need to take into account that there's a lot of content being consumed on mobile devices that didn't exist 10 years ago. Those consumers may never have had a cord to cut or watched very little news and sports content.
Technical Video Product at Pluto TV
7yHi Jim, I think its important to distinguish between live and linear in this context, because its sort of blended together here. The stalwarts of "live", appointment based viewing - sports and news - really need to be demarcated from true linear pay TV. I suppose you could make an argument that millennials consume sports and news differently, but those are still two genres where the content tends to lose a massive amount of value when time shifted no matter the medium. I don't think linear is dying, its just changing. Yes, most will probably still be paying for a pay TV bundle, but you'll be paying mostly for the VOD content or the exclusive sports/news content. The true value of each just gets flipped on its head. Linear becomes more of a discoverability mechanism similar to the way you Shazam something on the radio to add it to your Spotify. Or if you need to sign in with your TVE provider to access content on some of the OTT services. Will linear viewing decrease in the short term? Probably. Is it dying? I doubt it. Is it truly losing value? Maybe in the traditional sense of huge bundles, but it's too long of a debate to have here :)