Nielsen says there are less TV households than last year: the number of TVHH has dropped from 115.9 to 114.7 million (Preliminary Household Universe Estimate).
- How do we know? Estimations based on the 2010 US census and on data gathered by Nielsen while recruiting people meter households: so what is the margin of error?
- TV sets that do not receive digital signal are not counted. Some households did not update for the digital switch (June 2009).
- About cord-cutting? According to a Convergence Consulting study, pay TV lost 1 million subscribers in 2010. Do some people decide to use a computer or an iPad to watch TV? They might have a big screen but no TV set. They watch movies: if they are using Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Video, RedBox or Vudu, what would they need TV for? News? Everything is available online. Cord-cutting sounds like a viable option. People unsubscribe from cable or satellite and save, especially "the young and the restless". Netflix boasts as many subscribers as the biggest cable-operator (MSO).
- Price could be an issue: average pay TV subscribers spend $75 / month. One can give up TV, not the Web.
Same causes produce the same effects. VOD is growing. And since there is, in Europe, an annual tax on the TV set (150 to 200 $, depending on the country) for public TV, this might be one more reason to give up TV.
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1 commentaire:
Baring in mind that this estimation did not take into account the households that haven’t upgraded to digital TV yet and that the margin of error is not known, we know for sure that various technical evolutions/ways to watch TV and the increasing number of people connected to the internet, means that TV sets, as we’ve known them, are bound to drop or to change. Accessing the internet has become easy for people (by smartphone, IPad, laptops, at work or at home, using a wireless connection when away and so on) and one can say that watching TV from the computer or from an IPad may be more practical for people as we no longer have to be at home with the TV on to have access to its content. Price of TV and taxes which people have to pay to watch it(in certain countries) can also push people to choose to watch TV from the internet on their computer and therefore simply have to pay their monthly internet access subscription.
But TV has changed as one can now record, live pause, listen to the radio, rent movies and access hundreds of channels with a subscription to digital TV. So in many ways, having a TV set still has many advantages as it now has new functions. All in all, whether these new evolutions in the ways of watching TV will make households choose not to have a TV set, or whether further evolutions in digital TV will have people keep their TV set is still to see.
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