IBC Survey: Consumers Abandoning Shows Due to Costs

Complete Coverage: IBC 2016

More than a third of pay-TV and OTT subscribers admit to quitting on a TV show, not because they lost interest, but because it became too difficult to access the content. That’s according to a new survey from TiVo, with a majority of the shows consumers quit on belonging to premium pay-TV channels or paid OTT services.

The results came via an online survey of 5,500 pay-TV and OTT subscribers across seven countries.

“Shifts in viewer engagement, like show-dumping, impact the whole value chain, further challenging business models in a fragmented marketplace with many different viewing choices,” said Paul Stathacopoulos, VP of strategy and strategic research for TiVo, in a statement. “Unified discovery and seamless access to content removes some of these barriers for the consumer, improving engagement and resulting in real business benefits including higher content consumption, increased subscriber retention and improved service value, especially for the millennial generation.”

The survey also saw 11% of respondents say they’re extremely likely to downgrade their pay-TV or OTT services, with 8% saying they’ll cancel their pay-TV service in the next six months. Among the 2,000-plus U.S. respondents, 21% said they’re extremely likely to cord shave or downgrade their pay-TV service.

Worldwide, 58% said they pay for more than one SVOD service, and 45% said they have more than one streaming media device in the home. On average, respondents reported watching content four hours a day, with the U.S. average hitting more than 5.5 hours a day.

Netflix remains the streaming king, with 81% in the U.S. having a subscription, compared to 50% with Amazon Prime Video. 

(Photo via Pictures of Money's FlickrImage taken on Sept. 9, 2016 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 3x4 aspect ratio.)