Streaming More Bad News For Traditional TV

The shift from pay TV to streaming continues as the latest Nielsen Total Audience report for Q2 confirms that the number of homes who only pay for broadband Internet is rising while the number of homes with pay-TV subscriptions is on the decline, reports Broadcast Cable.

According to the data, broadband-only homes are up by 52 percent to 3.3 million from 2.2 million year over year. Meanwhile, pay-TV subscriptions are down 1.2 percent to 100.4 million, from 101.6 million at this time last year. And while 1.2 percent may not seem like much, that million plus decline has caused all sorts of havoc on the stock market, with big media companies like Viacom, Nickelodeon, Disney, and many others seeing tumbling stock prices in recent weeks.

The latest findings echo a study last month from Strategy Analytics which found that pay-TV services reported subscriber losses of 479,000 in the U.S. from April-June of this year, calling it the “highest rate” they’d seen thus far.