Cord shaving prompts screen industry to think outside the box

The U.S. market is displaying a resilient anti cord-cutting trend, prompting analysts to suggest that cord shaving is a more likely scenario for mature subscription TV markets in the near future.

New research from Nielsen and the Wall Street Journal has revealed that the most-viewed channels such as ESPN, USA and CNN have lost an average of 3.2 million subscribers each, equating to around 3% of their distribution.

Nielsen claims that it is clear that subscribers are not dropping pay-TV in favour for OTT or IPTV services altogether yet jut rather dipping into both.

While some of the loss can be attributed to cord cutting, the industry overall lost 166,000 subscribers last year, Netflix and Hulu are not the culprits.

In the mature U.S. market the number of basic cable subscribers has increased to 12% from 8% just a few years ago.

TV heads are supplanting any subscriber loss with higher retransmission fees, so they are not feeling it yet.

“We’re at a tipping point of consumers thinking Internet first and TV second,” Bryan Rader, CEO of Bandwidth Consulting LLC, a firm that advises investors about pay-TV marketing trends, told the WSJ.

Neilsen global president Stephen Hasker added, “What we are seeing is some cord-cutting and some cord-shaving. Consumer time and attention is shifting.”

All screen players are looking to adapting next-gen user interfaces that leverage the cloud to offer more multiscreen and hybrid TV experiences as a point of differentiation and a bid to secure the millennial viewer.

In a new trial by year end, Comcast is testing a new hybrid TV service that brings YouTube-like online video capabilities to its X1 cable set-top boxes. Producers may also be able to wrap in advertising or use a transactional fee model.

“It’s clear that for many people, life does not operate around a primetime television schedule,” said Matt Strauss, senior vice president and general manager of video services at Comcast Cable. “And even if you’re home when your favourite show is on, you may be preoccupied in another room or over-ruled by someone else in the family who wants to watch something else.