No Virtual MVPD Lines Up Well With Typical Customer Wants, TiVo Says

Cord cutting is accelerating, with roughly 23 percent of people surveyed who don't subscribe to a pay-TV service having been subscribers within the past 12 months but then quitting their subscriptions, up 4.8 percentage points year over year, TiVo reported Wednesday. It said of those without pay TV, 46 percent catch over-the-air broadcasts using an antenna, a trend up 12 percentage points over the past two years. Price and availability of subscription VOD services continue to be the leading reasons for cord cutting, TiVo said. It said 8.9 percent of those who subscribe to a pay-TV service switched providers in the past three months and churn is up 3 percentage points over the past three years. Comparing commonly selected a la carte channels with existing virtual MVPD offerings, the company said virtual MVPD offerings skew heavily toward sports and medium-to-large market channel offerings, indicating the virtual MVPD market can further diversify offerings without any notable increase in bundle size and that no bundle contains just core channels and most-watched channels, even though that's a bundle commonly cited as desirable by viewers. The survey of 3,069 adults in the U.S. and Canada was done by an outside party during Q2. The results show pay-TV operators can stem subscriber losses by aggregating online video services for customers, and they need to do so quickly since consumers increasingly are opting for subscription VOD over pay TV, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Wednesday.