Analysis

By 2022, U.S. TV station owners will receive $11.6 billion in retransmission fees from multichannel operators, according to SNL Kagan. U.S. retrans fees hit $6.4 billion last year and are set to reach $7.7 billion this year, a 20-percent gain. SNL Kagan observes that while retrans fees are gaining, including annual increases in dollar-per-subscription rates, margins are under pressure.

According to a new survey, 20 percent of streamers in the U.S. plan to switch, downgrade or disconnect their pay-TV services in the next six months.

A new study finds that nearly three-fourths of U.S. online consumers have internet-connected televisions and that the majority of TV-screen streamers actually prefer a paid model for their TV show and movie viewing.

The top six pay-TV operators in the U.S., as ranked by informitv's Multiscreen Index, maintained their subscriber numbers in the first quarter of 2016, adding in total 33,000 video customers. These six operators have a total of 78.31 million video subscribers between them.

Leichtman Research Group reports that internet-connected TV devices now represent greater numbers than pay-TV set-top boxes in the U.S. According to new findings, 65 percent of U.S. TV households have at least one television set connected to the internet via a video game system, a smart TV set, a Blu-ray player and/or a stand-alone device (like Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV).

About one-fifth of U.S. broadband homes canceled at least one of their OTT video services in the last year, though Netflix had the lowest churn rate, according to Parks Associates. In the last 12 months, 20 percent of U.S. broadband homes had canceled, and in Q2 2015, just 18 percent had done so.

For the first time in six years, Netflix has surpassed HBO in having the "best original programming," according to a survey by Morgan Stanley. The percentage of the survey population picking Netflix as best in original programming increased from 23 percent last year to 29 percent this year, moving the service ahead of HBO, which came in second at 18 percent.

Usage of authenticated video viewing, or TV Everywhere, reached 40 percent of U.S. pay-TV consumers in 2015, up from 22 percent in 2013, according to Parks Associates.

Popular and critically acclaimed films and TV shows have become more digitally accessible in the U.S. than in previous years, according to a new SNL Kagan report. The new study, titled U.S. Availability of Film and TV Titles in the Digital Age, found that 98 percent of premium films and 94 percent of premium TV series were digitally available on at least one of the 33 online VOD distributors and 14 TV Everywhere on-demand services reviewed.

The downward trajectory of the U.S. multichannel segment continued in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to a recent report from SNL Kagan, despite a resurgence in cable subscriptions and solid direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) results. SNL Kagan estimates the combined cable, DBS and telecommunications (telco) sectors lost more than 1 million video customers in 2015.