Yet another study released Thursday reports trouble from the traditional TV model.

Research by L.E.K. Consulting in the U.K. places the upheaval squarely on millennials’ preference for non-traditional media sources. 

The company posits that one of the most important challenges comes from millennials’ planned reduction in spend on pay TV and switch to internet-based ‘Over-the-Top’ (OTT) services like Amazon Prime and Netflix. The study, which was conducted online and surveyed 1,308 Millennials and 685 Non-millennials living across the UK, found that 45 percent of millennials pre-family and 56 percent of millennials with children currently have a pay TV subscription, and 45 percent of them either have or expect to have an OTT subscription in the next year, with two thirds of those planning to cancel or reduce their pay TV spend.

Martin Pilkington, Head of L.E.K.’s European Media, Entertainment and Technology practice said the research shattered the common assumption that once millennials are older and have their own children they revert to more traditional media consumption patterns. 

“New media companies in the TV industry are rapidly building wallet and mindshare amongst millennials and this is spreading to other generations,” Pilkington said in a staement. “Our research findings are a wake-up call to the traditional media players that the change in consumption habits is coming faster and is far more pervasive than they might have thought. Many organisations will need to adapt more rapidly to this fast-emerging new competitive environment.”

The survey also found that new broadcasting brands are rated far more highly by millennials than traditional industry brands. Amongst the millennial generation, brands such as Google, YouTube, Amazon and Netflix have twice the affinity rating of even the strongest traditional TV brands. Amazon, meanwhile, stands out as the only new media brand that maintains this high affinity across both millennial and non-millennial age cohorts.

Millennials spend twice as much time as non-millennials on new media, such as online video services (11 versus 5 hours per week) and social media (7 versus 3 hours per week), even though both groups spend about the same time consuming all media (54 versus 56 hours per week).  

Millennials across all life stages have much higher penetration of online video subscription services: 38 percent for millennials pre-family and 32 percent for millennials with kids versus 15% for non-millennials.

Pilkington forecasts a tought market that will necessitate innovation for traditional players going forward. 

“This new environment will be become tougher for traditional media companies to monetize as the internet brands muscle in more and more,” Pilkington said. “One response by the pay TV players has been to launch cheaper ‘slim bundles’ to attract and hold on to subscribers. However, there needs to be far further and faster innovation to develop propositions that capture the interest and behaviour patterns of the millennial generation.”