Nearly One in Four Pay-TV Subscribers Trimmed Cord in Past Year, PWC Says

Of the 79 percent of U.S. consumers who subscribe to TV, 23 percent trimmed the cord this past year by scaling back the size of their subscription package, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said in a report Wednesday. Some of that decline is due to the introduction of skinny bundles by multichannel video programming distributors, PwC said, and 57 percent of cord cutters did so because of subscription costs. In 2014, 91 percent of consumers envisioned subscribing to cable in the coming year -- a number that had dropped to 79 percent by 2015, implying close to 20 percent of cable subscribers could cancel within in the next year, PwC said. When cord cutters were asked what would get them to resubscribe, 56 percent said an a la carte customization option. Meanwhile, over-the-top video providers appear to be a threat to cable but not to each other, with 55 percent of Netflix subscribers also subscribing to at least one other OTT service, as do 91 percent of Hulu subscribers, PwC said. The study is based on an online survey of 1,200 U.S. consumers conducted in fall of 2013 and fall of 2014, a pair of consumer groups convened in September in Los Angeles, and a three-month analysis of social media, PwC said.