An Insider Intelligence study found fewer than half of all US households would have a cable TV subscription by 2023.
Pay TV households are expected to drop to 65.1 million, a 4.8% decrease from 2022. The study also estimated cable TV subscriptions will drop below 50% of all US households by 2023.
Between 2016 and 2021, Pay TV has lost more than 50 million adult viewers. The steepest drop came in 2020 when more people than ever before were stuck at home – a decline of 7.7%. In contrast, more people are turning to virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) like YouTube and Hulu.
By the end of this year, 15 million households would subscribe to a vMVPD – a 7.6% increase from 2021 – representing 11.4% of all US households. However, this growth would not be sufficient to offset the decline of pay-TV. 63.2% of households would have either a Pay TV or a vMVPD connection this year. By 2026, this figure is expected to decline to around 55%.
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