GfK: One-Quarter of U.S. Households Do Not Pay for Traditional TV

NEW YORK: New findings from GfK reveal that one-quarter (25 percent) of all U.S. TV households are now going without cable and satellite reception.

The research, from GfK’s 2016 Ownership and Trend Report from The Home Technology Monitor, finds that 17 percent of U.S. TV households now rely on broadcast-only (“over-the-air” or OTA) reception, up from 15 percent in 2015. Another 6 percent say they only use internet services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or YouTube and do not have traditional broadcast or pay-TV reception at all. This is up from the 4 percent reported a year ago.

U.S. TV households with a resident between 18 and 34 years old are far more likely to be opting for alternatives to cable and satellite; 22 percent of these homes are using broadcast-only reception, versus 17 percent of all U.S. households. Within the same segment, 13 percent are only watching an internet service on their TV sets, versus 6 percent of all TV homes.

Households with at least one resident above the age of 50 have higher rates of subscribing to cable or satellite services. More than eight in ten (82 percent) have some sort of pay-TV subscription, compared to 75 percent of all U.S. TV households. Of the 50-plus homes, 46 percent are paying for cable reception, compared with a U.S. average of 41 percent.

“The fact that a statistically significant increase in broadcast-only reception occurred over just one year may be further proof that the cord-cutting/cord-never phenomenon is accelerating,” said David Tice, the senior VP in GfK’s Media & Entertainment practice. “If you include homes that have no TVs at all—about 3 percent of all households—then less than three quarters (73 percent) of U.S. homes continue to have pay-TV service, with the attendant implications for all stakeholders—not just the pay-TV services themselves, but also networks, content providers, and advertisers.”