Cord cutters say they are saving an average of $115 per month, according to a new survey, which also found that within five years more than half of current cable customers doubt they’ll still subscribe to traditional pay TV.
At a time when pay-TV subscribers are eroding, the poll, conducted by personal finance website LendEdu, indicates things may not be getting any easier for the traditional TV business.
In the poll, 58% of cord-cutters said they cut the cord because their TV cable subscription was too expensive, 21.2% said they used their cable subscription less because of streaming services and 11.8% said their cable subscription didn’t provide the content they wanted.
The survey puts the average cost of traditional pay TV services at $116.93 per month.
A smaller number of cord cutters, 4%, said the resented the “greed” of cable companies.
The vast majority of cord cutters, 71.6% said they used streaming services before dropping cable. The average cord cutter in the survey had 2.77 streaming subscriptions before cancelling traditional pay TV.
The cord cutters said they paid $33.74 per month on streaming before cutting the cord.
After cutting the cord, they spent $35.33 on streaming services.
On top of that, 34.4% of cord cutter said the also used online subscriptions that weren’t there’s and that they didn’t pay for. That password sharing was saving them about $51.38 per month.
Of those subscribing to pay-TV, 79.8% said the subscribed to at least one streaming service. They subscribed to an average of 2.5% streaming services and paid $30.87 per month for those subscriptions.
Only 52.13% of cable subscribers said they used cable more than streaming services.
When asked if they would consider cutting the cord, 65% said yes, with most of them saying they would be driven to that by increases in the price of cable subscriptions.
Asked about their future as cable subscribers, 31% said they didn’t think they would be using cable in one year, 49.6% said they didn’t think they’d be using cable in three years, and in five years, 56% said no.
The biggest attraction for subscribing to cable was the ability to channel surf, cited by 42.6% of respondents, followed by “not having to depend on my WiFi connection (35.2%), live sports, (11.8%) and live news (10.4%).
The poll was conducted online for LendEdu by Pollfish, which surveyed 500 cord cutter and 500 cable subscribers. The pols were taken over four days beginning Dec. 28, 2017.
I love this blog because it highlights the fact that, if given an alternative, and eliminating the monopoly that the Cable Industry has on the access to quality entertainment, cable customers would have abandon their cable services a long time ago. Keep the information coming UIN!