In its latest quarterly report on the pay TV industry and online viewing, Digitalsmiths finds that large channel lineups can be a liability.
The pay TV industry still faces serious hurdles in serving and satisfying online viewers, video metadata specialist Digitalsmiths finds in its just-released Q4 2014 Video Trends Report. Looking primarily at the online pay TV experience, the report find that while pay TV app adoption and awareness has grown year-over-year, there are still a large number of subscribers that don’t use their cable or satellite provider’s apps. Overall, 25.2 percent of subscribers have downloaded their pay TV provider’s app, but around half of those people (52.1 percent) use the app less than once per week.
As consumers look for less expensive entertainment options, pay TV’s giant channel lineups could become a liability. Digitalsmiths finds that a vast majority of pay TV subscribers (85.1 percent) watch the same channels over and over, while 78.7 percent of respondents watch only 1 to 10 channels. Moreover, 31.8 percent are overwhelmed by the number of channels they have access to. The high cost of providing those channels could become a detriment, Digitalsmiths warns, if improvements aren’t made.
The report finds that pay TV transactional video-on-demand sales are growing—for example the number of pay TV homes renting one or more paid VOD movie or show rose 3.4 percent year-over-year—however it isn’t growing as quickly as subscription VOD services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, which grew 8.0 percent year-over-year.
Posted on March 10, 2015
Share this:
- Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
- Click to print (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
Related

Get the newsletter
Sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay informed and receive exclusive updates.
You must log in to post a comment.