- The global cable TV market share is currently little around 50%.
- There are 1,775 total television stations in the United States, with about 5,200 cable systems operated by 660 companies servicing 90 percent of the population.
- Between 2017 and 2019, Comcast and DirecTV lost 4.7 million customers.
- 82 percent of respondents in the United States who watch internet TV say it is more entertaining than cable.
- Between 2013 and 2023, pay-TV subscriptions will decline by 28% every year.
- 65 percent of Americans continue to pay for cable television.
Eye-Opening Cable TV Subscriber Statistics for 2022
According to 2022 cable TV subscriber statistics, the number of paid TV subscribers will drop by 28% between 2013 and 2023.
Let’s have a look:
Most people now subscribe to a streaming service (69%).
In other words, according to 2020 streaming vs cable figures, more individuals are now streaming mostly through internet TV services. The key reason for this is because individuals may escape advertisements while still getting access to original material that isn’t available on standard cable. It’s no wonder, then, that by 2021, the live streaming market will be worth more than $70 billion. And the finest video streaming services are battling it out for the lion’s portion of the pie.
The current cable TV market share is just under 50%.
This global data demonstrates that cable television remains the most popular platform worldwide. Satellite TV is next, with a minor percentage, followed by internet protocol television (IPTV). This will change, especially because the number of people migrating to internet TV is increasing, according to cable cutting statistics.
Only 28% of view time is dedicated to traditional TV, 68% go to streaming.
This phenomena could be due to a variety of factors, including more channels to pick from or lower rates. According to pay-TV subscriber figures, however, US citizens agree that streaming is more engaging than traditional cable TV.
Comcast lost more than 200,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2020.
The number of people who subscribe to the service is steadily dwindling. Comcast had approximately 22 million customers in 2017. However, by 2020, that number will have dropped to under 19 million. And the future does not appear to be promising…
Pay-TV subscribers will fall each year between 2013 and 2023 by 28%.
In 2013, the United States had 100.5 million pay-TV households. By 2023, the number will have dropped to 72.7 million, a 28 percent decrease. In 2024, the number of pay-TV households is predicted to equal the number of non-pay-TV households. Non-paying TV households will eventually overtake paying TV households.
% of Americans receive TV via cable or satellite in 2021.
You’d think a higher percentage would be the case, but cord-cutting is taking its toll.
Let’s look at WETA 26 in the Washington, D.C., area as an example. This local PBS station broadcasts a number of high-quality primetime and entertainment programming. WETA UK, its sister channel, transmits British shows, while WETA Kids entertains the kids. They’ve got you covered whether you’re looking for Washington Week, Midsomer Murders, or Pinkalicious & Peterrific!
Clearly, the quality of local television stations influences the number of Americans who have cable.
In 2019, the US had a total of 1,775 television stations.
That’s right, there are a lot of radio stations out there. Furthermore, there are around 5,200 cable systems, operated by 660 operators, that reach 90 percent of the population.
In 2021, 27% of US households are planning to cut the cable.
There are numerous reasons to cancel your cable TV subscription, but the epidemic appears to have accelerated the process. Subscriptions to cable television fell 15% in 2019. However, according to a survey conducted by The Trade Desk, 27 percent of US homes will stop using it by 2021.
In 2021, AT&T is the largest cable TV service provider in the US.
AT&T has the highest share of the cable TV service market, with 24.7 percent of the market. With 22.5 percent, Comcast comes in second. With 16.9%, Charter comes in second.
More than 6 million people cut the cord in 2020.
Cable TV had its worst year ever in 2020, as it lost the most customers ever. More than six million people have canceled their cable subscriptions, bringing the total number of cord-cutters to 31.2 million.
In 2020, 62% of adults in the US were subscribed to a streaming service.
Millennials and digital natives prefer their smartphones and tablets to traditional television sets. They’re constantly on the go, so convenience is essential. Older individuals, on the other hand, are more likely to keep their cable subscriptions because it’s what they’re used to.
In May 2020, only 28% of American adults had never subscribed to a streaming service.
As you can see, the adage “Netflix and chill” is still relevant. While the company started out as a DVD rental service comparable to Blockbuster, it swiftly evolved into an internet streaming service.
Netflix Originals new shows like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black elevated its appeal even more.
In Q2 2020, the Fox News channel made over $203 million in advertising revenue.
The COVID-19 epidemic appears to have had a favorable impact on the channel’s income, as the number has increased by 41% since Q2 2019. CNN and MSNBC, on the other hand, did not share this sentiment. During the same time span, they fell by 14% and 27%, respectively.
In 2019, cable industry subscriptions in the US were worth $92.44 billion.
According to cable TV subscriber figures, this sum has increased from $4.5 billion in 1980. However, revenue has been steadily declining for providers over the previous few years. In 2013, the industry was valued at $99 billion.
As of May 2021, Fox News is the most-watched channel in the US.
Fox News was the most-watched channel in the United States in May 2021, with 2.16 million primetime viewers.
Fox News averaged 1.22 million daily viewers in April 2021.
This is more evidence of FOX’s hegemony. MSNBC finished second with 953 million viewers, and Nickelodeon was third with 786,000, according to cable TV data.
Netflix has 73.94 million paying subscribers based in the US & Canada.
Amazon Prime Video has a larger number of members (112 million). However, Hulu has 55 million subscribers, Disney Plus has 40 million, HBO Now has 17.1 million, and Dish’s Sling TV has 6.8 million.
All of these streaming providers, like Netflix, offer original programming. So, if you like fantasy, you’re undoubtedly watching HBO’s Game of Thrones. On the other hand, gearheads will be watching The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime Video. We’re in the year 2021, and we’re spoiled for choice.
Netflix’s revenue was almost $25 billion in 2020.
Netflix is on track to make over $25 billion in revenue by 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, the corporation generated more than $7 billion in revenue, indicating that it is still growing. Given that revenue was $15.79 billion in 2018, this is quite excellent growth!
% of pay-TV subscribers feel they get too little value for their money.
(Image courtesy of Variety) According to streaming vs. cable statistics, the most important factor driving cord-cutting is cost. About 56% of existing pay-TV subscribers believe they will keep their subscription if it is packaged with their home broadband.
% of people who decided not to receive cable TV did so because they can access the content they want to watch online.
People wish to cut the cable for a variety of reasons. The most prevalent reason is that they can watch the stuff they desire online and so do not need a TV subscription. Cable/satellite is likewise too pricey, according to 69 percent of respondents. And nearly half of those without a subscription (45%) say they aren’t interested because they don’t watch much television.
The number of US households that pay for TV will drop to 70 million by 2025.
Streaming services are clearly displacing traditional pay television. There were 74 million cable-paying households in the United States in March 2021, but that figure will shrink to under 70 million in a few years. It’ll be interesting to observe how these businesses evolve in order to stay afloat.
On average, Americans spent $47 per month on streaming services.
Streaming services have seen a tremendous increase in users since the COVID-19 outbreak forced many individuals to stay indoors. Since the beginning of the pandemic, average spending has increased by 24%. Nearly half of those who subscribe to streaming services do so on four different platforms.
% of Americans over the age of 68 pay for cable TV.
When it comes to cable TV subscribers in 2021, it’s clear that the younger generation isn’t interested in paying for television. Only 46% of people aged 18 to 37 pay for a television subscription. The rate for people aged 37 to 48 is significantly higher, at 48%. A subscription is held by 55 percent of those aged 47 to 67, while 63 percent of those aged 68 and up still pay for television.
Global Cable TV Subscribers Statistics
The data thus far paints a clear picture of how cable TV subscribers in the United States are distributed. But where does that leave the rest of the world? First, let’s take a look at Europe:
There will be 78 million digital pay-TV homes in Eastern Europe by 2023.
In 2010, this number was 25.5 million, indicating a significant increase trend. In fact, the situation is diametrically opposed to that in the United States. Eastern Europe continues to be a burgeoning market. But:
Sky Europe is expected to have a customer base of nearly 15 million subscribers by 2023.
The Sky Sports channels have always been the most popular among viewers. Especially for soccer fans that follow the English Premier League. Sky Movies is catching up, which is fascinating.
In 2024, pay-TV revenue in Latin America will amount to approximately $17.82 billion.
However, since 2017, the figure has been marginally falling and is predicted to remain stable around $18 billion.
China is the country with the most cable TV subscribers.
We’ve previously seen how many people in the United States pay for cable TV, but what about the rest of the world? With 342 million paid TV subscribers, China is the country with the most. With 112 million users, India comes in second.
What’s New
You might be wondering if cable television is on its way out. However, it’s possible that reports of cable’s doom are exaggerated.
Furthermore, some analysts believe that a return to cable bundles is on the horizon. Why is that?
Cable firms in the United States realized a long time ago that the simplest solution to a world with a plethora of paid channels is to bundle them into a more inexpensive package. Even as we rush headlong into the streaming era, some businesses will likely rediscover this concept.
Nonetheless, the cable television sector is in treacherous waters. During the first quarter of 2018, Comcast lost 96,000 customers, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of subscriber losses. It was losing about 2500 users every day in 2019. In the fourth quarter of 2020, it lost 200,000 people.
During the same time period, AT&T’s DirecTV satellite service lost 188,000 customers, resulting in a $660 million drop in video income.
Wrapping up
So, where does the industry go from here? North American revenues will continue to decline for the foreseeable future, according to the most recent cable TV subscriber figures.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region are all developing rapidly.
However, in order to survive, the industry will have to reinvent itself. The brave new world of online streaming is on its way, especially in the United States.
In 2020, how many cable subscribers will there be in the United States?
Cable TV providers have lost millions of consumers as a result of cord-cutting, which they can’t manage to reclaim. In reality, from 2019 to 2021, traditional pay-TV providers lost about 6 million users per year.
Since 2012, major US cable and satellite TV providers have lost 25 million subscribers, with another 25 million expected to leave by 2025. However, most cord-cutters aren’t simply abandoning live TV in favor of all on-demand content. Sling TV, YouTube TV, fuboTV, and Hulu + Live TV are among the most popular all-digital live TV streaming services.
The following are the largest traditional cable TV companies that are losing subscribers:
- In the third quarter of 2021, Comcast has 18.55 million TV customers. The company’s pay-TV customer counts fell below 19 million by the end of 2020. That number was 21.9 million at the end of 2018. In 2017, the corporation had 22.3 million video consumers at the end of the year. Comcast has been losing cable TV customers every year, as we can see.
- Verizon: Since the fourth quarter of 2016, the company’s subscriber counts have been declining. In 2021, the firm lost roughly 281,000 cable television subscribers.
- Charter: Every year, this company loses tens of thousands of video consumers. Higher carriage fees imposed by programmers, according to its CEO, are a major driver of users switching to cord-cutting services. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Charter lost 58,000 pay-TV subscribers. This follows a trend from the previous year, when the firm lost around 66,000 pay-TV subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2020.
- DirecTV (satellite): This AT&T-owned satellite TV provider lost 473,000 subscribers in Q2 2021, down from an 887,000-subscriber drop the previous quarter. Between 2017 and 2019, the corporation lost over 2.3 million satellite TV subscribers. In 2020, the firm lost nearly 3 million DirecTV subscribers, which was a very disastrous year for the corporation.
- Dish Network: In 2021, the second-largest cable TV provider in the United States witnessed a drop in consumer share. In Q4 2021, Dish Network lost 273,000 net pay-TV subscribers, compared to 133,000 in the previous quarter.
For the time being, the bloodletting is set to continue unabated. Even Comcast, which has certainly lost the most cable TV subscribers of all the companies, is pessimistic about its pay-TV prospects. This year, the business forecasts that even more customers will cancel their standard cable TV subscriptions.
However, many Americans continue to use both regular television and cord-cutting services. In 2019, 43% of Americans had both pay-TV and SVOD (streaming video-on-demand) subscriptions.
How many people in the United States have cable?
There were 90.3 million PA (Cable/Satellite) TV subscribers in the United States in 2018, however that number has dropped to 86.5 million this year. In 2020, this number is predicted to fall even lower, to 82.9 million homes.
The number of homes that have cut the cord is expanding at a similar rate. In 2018, 36 million homes did not have access to pay television. This number has continuously risen to 40.2 million in 2019 and is expected to reach 44.3 million by 2020.
It’s crucial to note that just because a family does not have pay television does not indicate they are cord cutters. As more Millennials enter the workforce, they are dubbed “Cord Nevers” because they do not see the value in spending more than $123 a month for cable. A cord cutter is someone who used to pay for television but now avoids it in favor of less expensive and/or more user-friendly alternatives such as streaming or using a DTV antenna.
Are Cord Cutters Missing Anything?
The vast majority of people Cord cutters said they don’t miss their former cable or satellite TV, with 52% saying they don’t miss it at all. Live events (23 percent), local and national news (22 percent), and sports were the most common things they missed (19 percent ).
How many people still have cable TV?
According to Leichtman Research Group, pay-TV providers will lose about 4.7 million net video subscribers in 2021.
The firm polls businesses that account for roughly 93 percent of the total market. According to the report, overall losses last year were slightly lower than in 2020, when 4.9 million people cut the cord. Both figures were significantly higher than the 4.1 million drops in 2019, demonstrating that the pay-TV bundle is still unraveling at a rapid pace.
The total number of subscribers has now reached 76.1 million. Other providers (including satellite operators DirecTV and Dish) account for 26.8 million, with the top seven cable firms accounting for 41.3 million. The remaining 7.9 million members receive a package such as Hulu + Live TV that is provided over the internet. In 2021, the virtual MVPDs added roughly 895,000 subscribers, down from 915,000 the year before.
Do the majority of Americans have access to cable television?
In 1948, cable television became available in the United States for the first time. By 1989, 53 million American households had subscribed to cable television, with 60 percent of all American households having done so by 1992. with According to SNL Kagan data, around 58.4 percent of all American homes subscribed to basic cable television services in 2006. The majority of cable viewers in the United States are middle-class and live in the suburbs; cable television is less frequent in low-income, urban, and rural areas.
How many households have made the decision to cut the cord?
In 2019, 24.6 million households had cut the cord; this number is expected to rise in the next years, reaching 46.6 million in 2024.
In 2021, how many cable subscribers will there be in the United States?
In 2021, almost 4.7 million people elected to cancel their cable or satellite pay-TV services, accounting for 5.8% of the total subscriber base. According to Leichtman Research Group, the top cable or satellite TV providers today have around 76.1 million overall subscribers.
LRG polled providers who account for roughly 93 percent of the overall cable and satellite market. According to the survey, last year’s losses were comparable to the previous year, when providers lost roughly 4.9 million members.
Is cable television on its way out?
Cable’s numbers began declining in 2014 when the industry lost just over 100,000 customers. The numbers climbed steadily above one million in 2017, then doubled in 2018, then doubled again in 2019, before stabilizing at roughly 4.6 to 4.9 million users per year.
Is there still a demand for cable?
In 2016, 63 percent of Americans watched TV through a cable subscription, according to a CBS News poll. Since then, the percentage has decreased to less than half of the population, at 45 percent in 2021. During the same time span, streaming increased from 20% to 37%, while digital antennas (still lagging behind) increased from 10% to 12%.
What percentage of American families do not have televisions?
Since 2009, the number of houses without a television has more than doubled. According to the USEI study, in 2015, 2.6 percent of American homes lacked a television. This represents a significant increase from the 1.3 percent of American households without a television in 2009.
In fact, the percentage remained constant at 1.3 percent from 1997 to 2009, with the exception of 2001, when it was 1.2 percent.
The massive increase in houses without televisions indicates that TV content creators can’t ignore the fact that viewers are increasingly accessing video through other screens, such as laptops and mobile devices.
The report also reveals that households with televisions are watching fewer of them. The average American household now has 2.3 televisions, down from 2.6 in 2009.
How much longer will cable television be available?
In the United States, cable television was at its pinnacle in 2000, with the biggest number of customers. However, by 2010, specialists had noticed a constant decrease in the number. The aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 was blamed for a large part of the problem. A large number of pay-TV families were believed to be unable to afford a monthly membership. However, more foresighted commentators claimed that the loss in Cable’s popularity was due to the internet’s relentless rise and the arrival of OTT on-demand products into the general market.
The number of cord cutters had risen dramatically by 2014. Netflix had eclipsed Comcast in terms of video subscribers, becoming North America’s largest video subscription service. Its popularity didn’t seem to be decreasing either. As a large number of subscribers started to migrate to OTT streaming services, cable TV companies realized they faced a new issue.
According to a more recent Forbes projection, another 27% of American families will likely cancel their cable TV connection in 2021. According to eMarketer, there will be over 55 million cord-cutters in the United States by 2022. Many experts believe that cord-cutting levels will begin to level off sooner rather than later. Even if that proves to be the case, the “harm already done to the Cable TV service business is unlikely to be reversed.” Or should we say that the evolution process, which began roughly a decade ago, will not come to a halt?