Friday, March 22, 2013

Consumers Not Yet Sold on “TV Anywhere”

Most pay TV subscribers in North America have no concrete cord-cutting plans, at least for now, according to a February 2013 study by video discovery platform DigitalSmiths.

eMarketer.com reports just 4% planned to cut cable or satellite service in 2013, and a relatively minor 1.3% planned to abandon pay TV altogether for an online app or rental service. That being said, a sizeable 28.1% said their plans were still up in the air.


Customers reported being more satisfied than not with their TV packages. According to the study, over half were “satisfied” and about one-quarter were “very satisfied.” Still, a solid one out of five respondents reported that they were “unsatisfied.” The biggest cause of dissatisfaction: rising fees.

But the study also called attention to the extent that TV providers are contending more and more with the additional screens that are popping up in households. In Q1 2013, 33.4% of respondents said their household owned a tablet, up from 28.6% in the previous quarter.

Can cable and satellite providers hold customers’ interest on these new devices and offer a service that makes pay TV subscriptions more valuable? The jury is still out.

According to eMarketer.com, Digitalsmiths found that 26% of respondents with tablets had downloaded their service provider’s tablet app. But even of those who had downloaded the app, only 18% said they’d used it, suggesting that consumers still have not integrated it into their routines. However, some who have begun using the app are clearly addicted; 6% of respondents said they used their pay TV app every day.



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