• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, September 3, 2015

Over-the-top services are playing nicely with traditional TV. About 40% of Internet users have both pay TV and an over-the-top service, while 42% have pay TV only, and 11% have pledged their allegiance to over-the-top alone. Among over-the-top users specifically, about 78% also have a multichannel video service, according to a recent report from Horowitz Research.

These are potentially reassuring numbers for multichannel providers, but Horowitz said that the prospect of tailored streaming video services from traditional pay-TV distributors could draw today’s multichannel customers to ditch pay TV. The key for success for traditional pay-TV operators is to make sure they’re offering new over-the-top services that their customers might switch to.

The study also found that millennials are three times as likely to use an over-the-top service without subscribing to pay TV, compared to other demographics, and nearly half of that age group spends more than half of their TV time streaming. Again, those figures underscore the potential value of Internet TV service offered from a traditional pay-TV provider.

The growth in over-the-top services should continue, given that more consumers are actually installing connected TVs. Such Internet-enabled TVs and consoles are now in more than 46 million homes, a four million home increase over last year, according to new data from NPD Group. What’s more, about 69% of all installed Internet-capable TVs were connected, an increase from 61% last year and 45% in 2013.