Tired of costly cable bills, many Americans have talked about “cutting the cord” and relying on the Internet’s patchwork of streaming television and movie services. Decoder admits it’s a tantalizing proposition. But a new report reminds us that more people than ever are forking over monthly payments for TV.
The so-called “multichannel video market” counted nearly 100 million subscribers at the end of 2009, up three percent from the prior year, the research firm SNL Kagan said Monday.
In a report that was released at a cable trade show in Los Angeles, SNL Kagan said that traditional cable companies had lost market share to satellite and newer telecommunications companies. Regardless, more people are paying for TV: 99.9 million at the end of 2009, up from 97 million at the end of 2008.
The gain can be explained in part by the nation’s gradual population growth, but also by the enduring popularity of television in a fragmented media marketplace.
According to SNL Kagan, cable (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, among the companies in the category) lost a total of 500,000 subscribers between 2008 and 2009; satellite (DirecTV, Dish Network) gained 1.4 million; and telecommunications (Verizon, AT&T) gained 2 million. Cable providers still dominate, however, with 62.1 million subscribers, while satellite competitors have 32.7 million and telecommunications companies have only 5.1 million.
Still, hardly a month goes by without an assertion that cord-cutting is on the rise. Last month found that one in eight cable and satellite customers intend to “eliminate or scale back” their service this year, CNNMoney reported.
Perhaps what we’re seeing is the gap between how people feel and how they actually behave. There’s a history of this in the television industry: it has been well established that Americans underestimate the amount of TV they watch on a given day.