According to the Forrester Research report, Young TV Cord-Nevers Have Arrived And Are Here To Stay, 50% of all TV viewers under age 32 will not subscribe to a traditional pay TV service by 2025. Given that bleak-looking future, based on a survey of more than 55,000 U.S. adults, says the report, Forrester analyst James McQuivey suggests that providers must try new ways to connect with cord-cutter and cord-nevers and develop game plans on how to serve them.
McQuivey noted in the report that “… today’s 20-somethings are already hard to reach via TV, and the next generation will be tougher… “
Cable Subscription Status by Age (% of User Category) | |||
| User Category | ||
Age | Cord-Cutters | Core-Nevers | Cord-Havers |
2015 |
|
|
|
Age 32+ | 5% | 15% | 80% |
Age 16-31 | 10 | 25 | 65 |
2025 |
|
|
|
Age 16-31 | 15 | 35 | 50 |
Source: Forrester, October 2015 |
Some MVPDs have been taking heed, says the report:
Cord-cutters are “secondary” to the bigger problem of the rising Cord-Nevers, a group that, according to Forrester, now represents 18% of the population, says the report. Cord-cutters represent about 6%, but will stay below a 15% ceiling. 35% of younger viewers fall into the Cord-Nevers or Cord-Cutters bucket.
Of particular concern are “digital Cord-Nevers,” says the report. A group of young consumers that gravitate to services like Netflix and YouTube that have “grown up believing that they can have all of the TV they want without paying a traditional TV distributor for it.” But the bulk of the population, 76%, still gets pay TV, suggesting that there’s still time for traditional players to solve the problem, notes the report.
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Nearly 20 percent of young men in their late 20s and early 30s still live with their cable-subscribing parents, thanks to the recession in 2009 that only ended because the media reported that it did.
Source: https://www.census.gov/hhes/families/files/graphics/AD-1.pdf
Quite the coincidence that all the key findings are in increments of 5% with an n=55,000 sample, given that the margin of error on a simple random sample of n=50,000 should range from +/- 0.2% to +/- 0.4%.