Commentary

Cord-Cutting Steady, Connected TV Apps On Rise

By most accounts, cord-cutting continued at the usual pace at pay-TV providers in the second quarter, but it didn’t speed up. That’s the conclusion of Wall Street firm MoffetNathanson.

The researcher noted that pay-TV providers lost 757,000 subscribers in the second quarter, with a decline of 1.29 million over the last year. While that isn’t necessarily news to sing about, the declines are steady as far as declines go. In short, cord-cutting has still not caused a mass exodus from multichannel providers.

Meanwhile, connected TV viewing continues to increase, and connected TV apps are playing a role in driving the growth. Research firm Parks Associates teamed up with online video shop Ooyala to study video apps on connected devices. “Video apps on connected devices are again playing a key role in the competitive landscape of digital video entertainment,” Parks says.

Apps are one mechanism that consumers rely on to access streaming programming on the TV, with many consumers using them to route their favorite TV shows to the set. In addition, more than one-quarter of over-the-top subscriptions were bought via a connected device app. That includes apps on streaming media players, game consoles and connected TV sets. With half of over-the-top subscriptions purchased on a service provider’s Web site, this makes apps the second most-used channel for selling over-the-top video services, Parks said.

As such, the more ways a TV network offers to sign up for its OTT service, the greater the chance, of course, of generating revenue from it.

Not all apps are created equally. They need to be stable, reliable and easy to use in order to gain consumer acceptance, Parks says.

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