More than 30% of U.S. households now get TV exclusively through streaming, with no access to linear free-to-air broadcasts, according to the first mid-year data from the Advertising Research Foundation’s DASH TV Universe study.
The MY 2026 dataset shows “Digital Only” households—those with no traditional Pay TV, no virtual MVPD, and no over-the-air antenna—rose one percentage point from full-year 2025 to 30.5% across the combined Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 waves.
At the same time, households relying on an over-the-air antenna grew to 17.1%, also up one point from FY 2025.Linear and Pay TV penetration continued to decline overall, though the drops appeared to slow compared with recent years, the ARF reported.
“Consistent with trends over the past few years, Linear and Pay TV penetration in general continued to show declines in MY 2026, although the declines appeared to slow,” the foundation said. “While this release covers TV connection measures defined by the ARF’s proprietary framework, DASH produces agnostic, ‘bottom-up’ measures to enable licensees to populate their own connection frameworks and to develop universe estimates customized to their businesses and requirements.”
DASH is conducted in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago using a national probability sample. It supports reliable U.S. projections and allows detailed profiling of TV consumers across hundreds of demographic and usage characteristics.