More and more TV viewers in the US have said they plan to drop traditional pay-TV services in the coming months. 4% plan to do so in the next 12 months, according to a survey by Credit Suisse.
According to an earlier survey in September 2010, 17% of Netflix users had already dropped their pay-TV service.
The new survey says that 25% of consumers subscribe to a streaming service such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus, with half of those doing so as a substitute for traditional pay-TV service and the other half having using the services as a complement to their existing cable or satellite DTH service.
Among those who don’t have a pay-TV subscription, half said it’s because of the high costs of such services, while 22% said they don’t watch a lot of TV, 16% said they just watch broadcast and 14% said they don’t find pay-TV channels compelling (respondents could choose more than one reason).
According to Credit Suisse analysts Spencer Wang and Shub Mukherjee, the reason for cord cutting is “is the declining value proposition for a portion of the customer base, not over the top services, in and of themselves.”
The findings were based on a survey of 2,075 consumers conducted in August 2011.
