US Broadband Homes Without Legacy TV Reached 22% in 2016, Says TDG

U.S. broadband homes that don’t subscribe to a legacy pay-TV service jumped to 22 percent last year, from 18 percent in 2015 and 9 percent in 2011, said a TDG Research report Wednesday. The number of “cord nils” broadband households reporting zero use of TV services from cable, satellite or telco-TV providers has grown from just under 8 million in 2011 to 22 million by year-end 2016, said the report. Director-Research Michael Greeson observed the correlation of legacy pay-TV subscriptions declining as broadband video expands and said the extent of the disruption “has been largely overlooked.” Most multichannel video programming distributors are being forced to rely on skinny TV services to save their dual-service relationships, Greeson said. Comcast is an exception, having invested early in IP-enabled set-top boxes and features, he said. “Unfortunately for other US MVPDs, the stickiness of the Internet/TV bundle appears to be in decline, even before Broadband Pay-TV services gain serious footing."