Traditional paid TV not in 32% of US households, Roku finds
More people are turning to Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming services in the COVID-19 pandemic
More than 30 percent of American households don’t have traditional paid TV.
A new Roku study, which polled 7,000 U.S. adults in March and 2,000 more in May, found that 32 percent of U.S. homes do not currently subscribe to a paid TV service. In addition, the data shows 25 percent of the survey-takers said they’ve cut back on paid TV while 45 percent said they’re likely to cut the cord completely within the next six months.
About 17 percent of recent cord-cutters did say, however, that they would resubscribe to traditional TV to watch live sports. If sports don’t return due to complications of the coronavirus outbreak, 52 percent of those households are likely to reduce their packages.
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At the same time, 31 percent said they would subscribe to a live sports streaming service.
“While we entered 2020 with significant momentum around cord cutting, we’re now seeing that the COVID-19 pandemic and the pause of live sports has caused consumers to rethink how they access home entertainment and what they are willing to pay,” Matthew Anderson, Roku chief marketing officer, said in the report. “It’s clear that value matters more than ever and the abundance of free content, free trials to premium streaming services and the savings that consumers achieve are fueling the shift to streaming.”
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| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NFLX | NETFLIX INC. | 897.79 | +0.31 | +0.03% |
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 197.12 | -1.26 | -0.64% |
| DIS | THE WALT DISNEY CO. | 115.67 | +0.94 | +0.82% |
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Most cord-cutters pointed to cost as the top reason for scaling back. Roku users who cut the cord said they saved around $75 a month. Another reason Americans are tuning out from paid-TV is to tune into more streaming, like Netflix, Amazon and Disney+, as the pandemic keeps them home.
A recent study from real-time research company Invoke found that 75 percent of respondents, including 80 percent of those 35 and younger, were watching more streaming now than before the COVID-19 crisis began.