Recently cord cutting has been exploding once again as inflation, and a return to normal life pulls people away from their TVs. Now though, a new report from TVTech says that live TV streaming services like YouTube TV, DIRECTV STREAM, FuboTV, etc, only have8 8.3 million subscribers.
8.3 million subscribers may sound like a significant number until you see that in just 2021 and 202, cable TV companies lost over 10 million subscribers. That doesn’t even count new households created during these two years.
It is estimated that over the last decade, 25 million households have canceled cable TV. On top of that 10.1 million new American households were created between 2010 and 2020, according to the United States Census. So the actual cord cutting number during that period is likely to be closer to 35 million households counting the cord cutters and cord nevers. (A new household is people who moved to the US, children who became adults and started their own household, etc.)
So if there were 35 million cord cutting households in the last decade, how are there just 8.3 million subscribers to services like Sling TV, Hulu, DIRECTV STREAM, FuboTV, etc.
With the growth of cord cutting in the 2010s, cable network owners like Disney, AMC, NBCU, etc put their hopes that they could replace cable Tv subscribers with streaming subscribers through these live TV services. Increasingly though, most cord cutters are going on-demand only and skipping live TV services altogether.
Now in the 2020s, networks have decided that on-demand services are the future and are rushing to have their own. Over the last few years, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, NBCUniversal, and more have all launched their own on-demand streaming services.
The problem networks are facing is most of these on-demand streaming services are still not profitable. Even Disney+ and Paramount+, two of the largest ones, are not expected to be profitable until 2024 or 2025.
The future of cord cutting is very much uncertain in 2023. The original plans of replacing cable TV with a streaming version are not working out as cable networks had hoped. Now, on-demand is seen as the future, but many are wondering if there are too many on-demand services for all of them to make it.
2023 will likely be an important year for many streaming services. It could be a make-it-or-break-it year for many, and Cord Cutters News will be here to cover it all.