If you haven’t yet realized it, the writing is still on the wall: cable TV will likely not survive the next decade. The high prices, stringy contracts full of hidden fees, and hundreds of unwatched channels that come with cable subscriptions are finally going the way of the landline phone and rabbit ear antenna thanks to streaming video. Thanks to the wide range of streaming options available and, more importantly, the low cost, more and more households are cutting the cable for good. To drive home how big streaming is becoming, Nielsen released new figures just this week that reveal Americans are now streaming 8 billion hours of content each month on connected TVs. How long until cable bites the dust?
Judging from Nielsen’s eye-opening data, probably not long. The data also reveal that connected TVs using technologies like Roku devices, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV have become the most popular ways to stream video. Nielsen reports that Americans between the ages of 13 and 34 spend twice as much time streaming video on connected TVs than they do on other platforms like computers or mobile devices.
According to the figures, American video consumers 13 and older stream an average of more than one hour of video a day on connected televisions as opposed to just 36 minutes on computers and 24 minutes on mobile devices.
The most revealing data Nielsen published is the finding that only 3% of live TV viewers watching the top five networks are between 18 and 24, demonstrating that younger audiences just aren’t watching live TV like the used to. In all other age brackets, however, live TV still makes up the majority of viewers’ television watch time.
Ultimately, these data aren’t that surprising – although it is interesting to note that connected TVs remain the most popular platform for streaming video. Nothing beats a large screen, no matter how addicted to our phones we may be.
