By early 2022, streaming had displaced cable/satellite as the most-viewed TV source by US households. In the quarters since, it has steadily grown its share of viewing time: looking at the second quarter over the past three years, streaming has captured 9.7% of viewing share from cable/satellite for US TV households. As a result, streaming’s share of viewing has increased from 44.1% to 53.8% in Q2 since 2021, according to Vizio’s latest report.
Meanwhile, cable/satellite’s share has fallen from 46.9% to 37.1%, while gaming and OTA (antenna) viewing share has remained relatively consistent during this time, the “Inscape TV Market Trends Q2 2023” report says.
A month-by-month analysis of streaming’s share of viewership reveals several trends, including that streaming sustained a measurable high rate of viewing time spent in the summer of 2022. After a slight fall and winter lull, it increased once again in the second quarter of 2023, with US TV households spending 54% of their monthly viewing time streaming during the period.
Last year, streaming’s upward surge during the second quarter set up the summer months to have the largest share of streaming viewing in 2022. This year, it remains to be seen if summer months will experience another record-breaking high, but with streaming’s increasing share in the second quarter, it seems likely, according to the report.
● CABLE QUITTING & SATELLITE SHUNNING VS. QUIET QUITTING
With smart TVs being leveraged by consumers as a central hub with myriad content options, it has become easier and more appealing for people to quit viewing on cable and satellite. As a result, 5% of cable/satellite households in the United States quit viewing on cable/satellite from Q1 to Q2 2023. This was slightly higher than the 4.5% quarterly average for quitting cable/satellite that has occurred since the third quarter of 2022.
“Quiet quitters,” or households who have sharply reduced their cable/satellite viewing time but have not fully quit, were more prevalent than full quitters in the second quarter of 2023. Looking at US cable/satellite households, 9% reduced their cable/satellite viewing by 75% or more from Q2 2022 to Q2 2023 (to account for viewing seasonality), but did not fully quit. Additionally, 8.4% of US cable/satellite households had a drop of 50-75% in cable/satellite viewing time in Q2 2023 from Q2 2022.
● CABLE/SATELLITE STILL RULE FOR SPORTS AND NEWS
Although streaming is now the predominant source of overall TV viewing in the United States, people still gravitate toward cable, satellite and OTA for two programming genres that command live viewing: news and sports. In the second quarter of 2023, these traditional viewing inputs boasted 76.9% of sports viewing time and 85.3% of news viewing time. As more streaming services experiment with carrying news and live sports programming, this could also drive massive consumer shifts in the years to come, Vizio forecasted.
● FAST VIEWERSHIP IS GROWING
Free ad-supported streaming TV, or FASTs – which offer a free, easy entry experience across a wide variety of curated programming – continue to gain popularity among consumers. Considering that smart TV menus often put FAST services at viewers’ fingertips the second they press the power button, it is no surprise that FAST viewing time has increased by 70% in the second quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
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