Live Streaming Might Well Salvage Most Linear Accounts

For 42 percent of customers who continue to buy linear video subscriptions, live programming is the primary reason for keeping such a subscription. But 30 percent of such customers say  they would cut the cord if they knew they could live stream all of their favorite sports, events, and news, a new study by Telaria and Adobe Advertising Cloud has found.

An additional 40 percent would consider doing so as well.

But live streaming is the latest new change. Live streaming provides the advantages of live television content, but consumed as a real-time OTT service rather than through a traditional cable or satellite connection.

Cost is the other major variable. Some 73 percent of customers who terminated their traditional linear video subscriptions cited cost as a reason for dropping the service.

So we may someday find that such surveys of cord cutting were not as predictive as we once thought, for a couple of reasons.

The emergence of live programming services that cost less and  are streamed may well change customer behavior. Consumers may switch to OTT linear offerings in place of legacy linear services.

Such options combine the “best” of linear services (live content) with the lower cost and possible conveniences of streaming services that show archived content.

source: Telaria, Adobe

The study polled 750 consumers between the ages of 21 and 54.