Nielsen: Online Viewers are ‘Cord Keepers’

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ALEXANDRIA: A new report from Nielsen and CTAM indicates that the proliferation of TV content online is supplementing, not eroding, traditional media consumption, with just 3 percent of people who watch programming streamed from the Internet reporting that they will become "cord cutters" and cancel their pay-TV subscriptions.

The new study says that 84 percent of people watching shows or movies from the Internet on their TV sets are watching the same, or more, regularly scheduled TV since they started streaming or downloading programs. Plus, 92 percent subscribe to a pay-TV service. The findings contradict other recent research reporting that 11 percent of Internet-to-TV content consumers are “cord-cutters.”

“So far Chicken Little was wrong,” said Char Beales, president and CEO of CTAM. “It’s critical to our business that we deeply understand these evolving behaviors. We’ve learned that new technologies are providing additional opportunities for viewers to access TV shows and movies, at their convenience. But it’s supplementing viewing of regularly-scheduled TV, not replacing it.”

Todd Cunningham, senior VP of strategic insights and research at MTV Networks, and one of the volunteer leaders overseeing this study added, “These consumers are feeding their insatiable entertainment appetites by viewing more and more content from the Internet on their TV sets and they’re often viewing shows they might have otherwise missed. So we’re keenly interested in learning more about the ‘more than half’ of respondents who say they discovered shows by viewing them on the TV via the Internet first, and then sought them out on regularly-scheduled TV.”