Cord cutting has set new records so far in 2019, and the growth of cord cutting is only speeding up. Now eMarketer has released its look into the future of cable TV and cord cutting. According to eMarketer, cord cutting will grow by 19.2% in 2019 and will total 25% of all Americans in 2022. eMarketer is also predicting that pay-TV subscribers will drop below 80 million subscribers some time in 2020, meaning one-fifth of American households will be cord cutters at that time.
By the end of 2019, 40.2 million American households will reportedly have cancelled cable TV. In 2023, eMarketer predicts that number will grow to 56.1 million as pay-TV homes will drop to 72.7 million.
“As programming costs continue to rise, cable, satellite and telco operators are finding it difficult to turn a profit on some TV subscriptions,” eMarketer Forecasting Analyst Eric Haggstrom said. “Their answer has been to raise prices across the board, and it seems that they are willing to lose customers rather than retain them with unprofitable deals. This has been a boon for TV providers, who also offer broadband Internet, as it removes consumers from bundled deals. It forces consumers to pay a higher price for Internet, which dramatically improves profit margins.”
“As viewing time and the number of TV households drop, networks will have to sell ads at higher prices to account for lost viewership,” Haggstrom said. “This will become increasingly difficult to do over time. As a result, traditional TV networks such as Disney and NBCU are bulking up their direct-to-consumer [D2C] digital offerings in order to regain lost viewers.”
These are only predictions, and cord cutting could grow faster or slower than predicted. This just gives us an idea of how quickly cord cutting is growing.
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