M+E Connections

Cord cutting remains a concern for pay TV operators, but a new survey from TiVo offers both some hope and some suggestions.

The “Q2 2017 Online Video and Pay-TV Trends Report,” based off responses from more than 3,000 consumers, found that nearly 84% of consumers still have a cable or satellite service, with nearly 9% saying they’ve switched between services in the last three months. Nearly 48% of those who do pay for TV are paying less than $100 a month.

Among those who are paying, more than 36% said they are spending more than $100 a month, and nearly 53% said they’re perfectly satisfied with what they’re paying for.

Of the 16% who don’t pay for a TV subscription, nearly 23% said they’ve cut the cord in the last year, a nearly 5% jump year over year in the TiVo survey. And of those who do still pay, more than 6% said they will cut their TV services in the next six months, while more than 8% said they plan on switching to another provider.

Of those respondents without a pay TV service, nearly 46% said they use an antenna to watch TV over the air, and more than 85% said the reason they don’t pay is because of the price. And for those planning on cutting their cords, more than 56% said they’d like to pay for only the channels they watch, and nearly 39% said they would keep their service if all their providers (including services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video) were bundled together.

“Although some respondents could be convinced to stay, nearly a fifth of respondents with pay TV service (19.4%) have made up their minds to cut or change,” the report reads. “While this number is sizable, pay TV providers should be pleased to know that this group decreased 7.8 percentage points quarter to quarter.”

During the second quarter of the year, more than 42% of pay TV subscribers said they’re paying for premium channels, with HBO, Showtime and The Movie Channel/Network topping the list.

Overall, 77.5% of respondents said they want to pay for only the channels they watch, with the average price respondents wanting to pay for a package of self-selected channels totally $28.79 total a month, or $1.73 per channel, per month.

And TiVo’s report also made note that nearly 11% of consumers are using voice search to find TV content, the highest adoption rate to date. And 19% want the functionality. Of those who use voice search, 87.4% do so weekly, with weekly usage increasing by nearly 10% year over year. Nearly 92% of all voice searches are for specific titles or channels.