It’s no secret that more Americans are “cutting the cord” and moving away from typical cable now than ever before. It’s so popular to move away that the good folks at PC Mag wrote an article containing 10 great gifts for cord cutters.
How many people are cutting the cord?
According to Leichtman Research the percentage of households with “pay-TV services” was at an all-time high at 88% in 2010, but now it is down to 79%. A decrease of 9% isn’t that huge, but I wonder if their statistics include people who don’t really want cable, but have it anyway because they’re pigeon-holed into paying for it.
What counts as a cord-cutter?
Let’s use myself as an example. I currently pay for cable services because I didn’t have a realistic option to opt-out. You know how it is with bundle packages, I tried to ask for just stand-alone internet but I would need to pay for some incredible-deluxe “internet only package” at 250mb/s or something like that, when realistically I only need maybe 40? So, I’m paying for 70mb/s and “Limited Basic Cable” or whatever that means… but it’s legitimately not even plugged in to my TV.
I’m pretty sure that I count as a cable customer, but I don’t use it except to stream HBO and Fox Sports to my Chromecast. Which I would gladly get from another service if “cutting the cord” finally made financial sense for myself.
Traditional cable has been on the decline – and that doesn’t look like it’ll change.
Given my current situation, there are probably a ton of other people who are just like me, stuck “paying for cable” even though it’s not really for the purpose of watching cable television.
Twitter has streamed football games. Netflix and Amazon are both creating original content that will never be on cable TV. YouTube Red is gaining traction. Sling TV, PSView, Roku, Apple TV, can all enable you to cut the cord from traditional cable.
Basically, tons of different services are replacing cable TV and if people get alternatives to situations like mine, those numbers should really start plummeting.