13% of Multichannel Video Subs Might Cancel in Next 12 Months, Survey Finds

Some 13 percent of current multichannel video subscribers in the United States say they are "somewhat" or "very" likely to cancel their current subscription in the next twelve months, and not sign up with a competing provider, according to a survey of 2,000 US households recently conducted by Strategy Analytics.

“While it may represent only a relatively small percentage today, we anticipate the number of cord cutters to increase going forward,” says Ben Piper, Strategy Analytics director.

Younger Americans consume and value content in a way far different from their parents’ generation, and have little regard for how content is delivered, says Piper. That is undoubtedly true. What still remains unknown is the degree to which consumers will do what they say they will (often they do not).

The other unknown is the extent to which service providers will adapt by offering on-demand access to desired content, shoring up demand for the traditional product by requiring a traditional subscription in order to access the on-demand content.

The other angle is the extent to which younger users, who have grown up in households where somebody else pays the bill, and who initially do not subscribe (to save money) when founding their own households, might change their views as they progress in their careers and find "saving money" by not subscribing is not the big consideration it once was.

So far, online and mobile video seems to be supplemental, not a replacement for multichannel video services, for nearly everyone. The verifiable percentage of users who have had service and stopped using it seems to be somewhere less than three percent of households.

The percentage of all households that buy broadband access but not video service is in the three percent range or so, Nielsen says, for example. The issue there is that not every household that doesn't buy video service is a "cord cutter." Some newly-formed or temporary households do not buy video entertainment services, but are not, strictly speaking, "cord cutters."

They might never have bought multichannel video service before, but that is not always an indication they do not want the product, or will not buy it in the future. Also, there have always been some households that do not buy such services because they do not see the value, and three percent of households would not be at all unusual on that score.

The point is that actual levels of "video cord cutting" are rather insignificant at the moment, and barely different from "non-subscribing" video households overall.

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