Monday, September 21, 2015

TV Declines, Especially Among Younger Viewers

The TV industry now admits that people canceling their TV subscriptions is a trend. NBC News looks at a Magid Advisors study and finds trends that TV carriers and content providers might worry about. Of the 3.7 of TV cable and satellite subscribers who say they are very likely to cancel within the next year, 77 percent cite other sources of TV content, but 23 percent say that is not a factor. Buried in the worries about online video content providers, the bigger trend is that an increasing number of TV subscribers never find time to watch. This is especially so with younger viewers. From the NBC News story, citing Magid:

[I]n the 25 to 34 age-range . . . 7.1 percent of pay TV subscribers said they were "very likely" to cancel their service in the next 12 months.

The commercial culture that commercial television feeds is partly to blame for the decline in television. Commercial culture largely created the consumer time pressure trend, in which most consumers have more things to do than time to do them. It is inevitable that TV viewership is one area that gives way when people run out of time. As long as consumer time pressure continues — and there is no end in sight — the total TV audience will continue to erode.