Echoing the forecasts set out by TiVo’s Digitalsmiths earlier this month, eMarketer is predicting a somewhat dire situation for pay TV in the coming years.
According to the firm’s new research, one in five U.S. households will not subscribe to a traditional pay-TV service by 2018. Of that 20 percent, 14.3 percent will be cord cutters and 5.7 percent will be cord nevers.
In 2015, eMarketer says there will be 4.9 million U.S. households that used to have pay for TV but cut the cord, up 10.9 percent annually. That will jump to 12.5 percent in 2016.
“This year, the number of digital video services expanded at a faster pace than ever before,” eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna said in a statement. “In addition to standalone offerings from the likes of HBO, there are new digital bundles that include many of the channels consumers could only have received with cable and satellite subscriptions in the past. This widespread availability of digital content makes cord-cutting a viable option for a growing segment of the viewing population.”
According to the study, cable and satellite providers will slowly but steadily lose pay-TV subscribers but telecoms will be able to add subscribers over that same time period. eMarketer attributes this slight increase to telcos’ better success in bundling TV with Internet and phone services.
Surprisingly, that picture paints for 2018 represents a decline over the 20.7 percent total non-pay-TV households eMarketer predicts for 2017.