Make it two years running where traditional pay-TV providers have topped 3 million in video subscriber losses, as a new study – which traditionally has been conservative in reporting those numbers – reports that 3.515 million customers cut the cord in 2018, 13% more than the 3.111 million it lost last year.
Roku streaming devices are hot at the moment with the company reporting its customers are streaming almost three hours of content a day. It’s seen a 40% year-over-year increase in the amount of active users on its devices during the 4th quarter and, citing preliminary data, said its 27 million active accounts watched 7.3 billion hours of streaming, a 68% surge from a year ago. For the year, it recorded 24 billion streaming hours, a 61% Y/Y jump.
While Apple fiddles with its long-delayed (dead?) Internet TV service and Sling TV and Sony PlayStation Vue strive to craft packages of network content that will appeal to a broad array of America’s increasingly Internet-only households, Hulu – which is owned by Disney, Fox and Comcast – which already offers an SVOD service – looks ready to jump feet-first into the virtual MVPD fire with live streaming content from at least two of its owners.
Cablenet Starz has become the latest content owner to launch an over-the-top service to a growing universe of SVOD and AVOD services going direct to consumers and, in a neat twist, will become the first premium pay-TV network to allow users to download content to watch later on other devices.