Data: US continues to cut satellite/cable viewing
October 19, 2023
Inscape, a provider of currency-grade smart TV data, has released data that provides insight into the full extent to which TV viewers are abandoning traditional formats such as cable and satellite for streaming platforms.
According to Inscape’s Q2 2023 TV Market Trends report, about 5 per cent of US cable/satellite households have outright quit viewing content via their satellite and cable TV options in the second quarter of the year. Inscape’s data demonstrates that a sizable portion of those remaining subscribers have cut their viewing time significantly as well.
‘Quiet quitters’, or households who have sharply reduced their cable/satellite viewing time but have not fully quit, were more prevalent than full quitters in Q2 2023. Looking at US cable/satellite households, Inscape found that 9 per cent reduced their cable/satellite viewing by 75 per cent or more from Q2 2022 to Q2 2023 (to account for viewing seasonality), but didn’t fully quit. Additionally, 8.4 per cent of US cable/satellite households had a drop of 50-75 per cent in cable/satellite viewing time in Q2 2023 from Q2 2022.
Inscape data also provides some insight into why these ‘quiet quitting’ households retain their subscriptions in the face of such a dramatic pullback in activity. Although streaming has become the dominant source of overall TV viewing in the US, households continue to turn to cable/satellite and antenna-based OTA formats for access to sporting and news programming.
According to Inscape data, while streaming commands 56.5 per cent of overall TV viewing time, that falls to 23.1 per cent for sports and 14.7 per cent for news. Cable/satellite/antenna, meanwhile, accounts for 43.5 per cent of overall TV viewing time, but dominates in sports (76.9 per cent) and news (85.3 per cent).
“This quiet-quitting trend emphasises the reality that not all TV viewership stats are created equal,” said Ken Norcross, VP, Data Licensing & Strategy, Inscape. “While overall viewership data suggests a broader movement between formats, closer examination of specific programming categories like sports and news illustrates how legacy formats remain viable options. Collecting accurate viewership data across these disparate formats requires a platform capable of a complete, holistic view of the entire TV landscape, which is what Inscape provides.”