According to Parks Associates, live broadcast TV represented 60% of video consumption on televisions in early 2012 but only 44% at the end of 2017. The research house says live viewing continues to decline, with survey data from 3Q 2018 indicating that live broadcast video now accounts for 42% of all video consumption on a TV. Parks says the data is consistent with the overall decline of pay TV subscriber numbers in North America and the shift to OTT video services, which consumers are embracing in large numbers.
"While OTT SVOD has significantly changed viewing patterns among consumers, live video is far from dead. We still see massive spikes in viewership for live events. However, an increasing amount of live viewership is on connected devices," said Brett Sappington, Parks' senior director of research. "Change does not come easily, but the scale of disruption in the video industry requires traditional pay TV providers to address their business and service strategies in a new way. New strategies include delivering video to mobile phones and transitioning live video to online sources."
Other findings indicate:
- The overall rate of OTT video service cancellation is steady at 18%.
- More than 85% of U.S. millennials subscribe to at least one OTT video service.
- By 2022, more than 265 million households worldwide will have more than 400 million OTT video service subscriptions.