According to research undertaken by In-Stat, more than 16 million US TV households may be using their broadband service more than they use their TV sets in the next three years.
“Today’s stable and profitable subscription TV services are facing new competition from online and mobile entertainment services, and from new, high-quality packaged goods, such as HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs,” says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst. “The very nature of what consumers call “entertainment’ is undergoing a profound change in which the ability to instantly share content with friends, family members, and those connected on social networks or buddy lists is creating micro user communities that replace traditional entertainment sources such as TV programmes. As more high-quality content becomes available online, savvy consumers are considering ways to reduce their monthly bills by getting everything from the Internet.”
According to the research, another big loser will be subscription TV as 30 per cent of respondents said they would prefer to use the Internet for TV. The new satellite subscription broadcast licencees can’t be too happy to hear that.
