Morgan Stanley has just produced a study that hammers home the fact that the so-called “cord-cutter movement” is no fad, but a very real trend indeed. According to the report, cord-cutters are on the rise, as 10 percent of pay-TV subscribers say they definitely plan to discontinue their service in the next 12 months, turning instead to Internet-delivered TV content.
Up another two percent is the number of subscribers who say they will probably cancel their service this year, landing at 11 percent.
Even the amount of broadcaster loyalists has dipped since Morgan Stanley’s last pay-TV report a year ago — down six points, 50 percent say they will certainly keep their cable and telco subscriptions. These statistics appear to indicate a slow but steady public lean toward cord-cutting, and it certainly can’t be blamed on the content: the total number of hours of TV content consumed each week rose to about 21, up two hours from last year and nearly five from 2011.
So people are actually consuming more TV-related content, but, interestingly, not on TV. They’re watching on other screens: respondents reported an increase in the amount of TV they watched on tablets, computers and portable devices across the board — the number of hours spent watching it on TVs themselves dipped slightly to 15.5 from 15.7.
And not surprisingly, the young adult subcategory (respondents aged 18 to 29) comprised 30 percent of those who said they definitely were going to cut the cord this year. Only about 15 percent of people aged 45 to 64 said they would stick to streaming. Though not clear-cut, there’s an undeniably generational factor involved in this transition from cords to the lack thereof.
Morgan Stanley polled 2,501 U.S. adults for the study.
If you are ready to cut your cords, check out our introductory guide.
