Number of would-be US cord-cutters increases

The proportion of US pay TV subs planning to ditch their subscriptions has almost doubled in the past five years, according to new research.

US research house Frank N. Magid Associates says that 3.7% of US consumers now say they are ‘extremely likely’ to churn. The figure was 1.9% five years ago.

The proportion of would-be cord cutters increases among younger consumers, with 7.1% of consumers aged 25-to-45 in the ‘extremely likely’ to churn category.

The main reason cited by those most likely to get rid of traditional pay TV subscriptions, was the amount of free content available online and the wealth of content on catch-up and SVOD services including Amazon Prime Instant Video, Netflix and Hulu.

The new research comes soon after Pay TV companies in the United States posted their worst ever quarterly video subscriber losses in the second quarter, shedding an estimated 658,450 subscribers in the quarter and marking the first time that non-cable operators have lost video subscribers since satellite operators entered the US pay TV business in the early 1990s.