• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, September 30, 2016

If you haven’t tried multichannel pay TV, you might never miss it. So-called cord-nevers, especially those between the age of 20 to 35 who have never had a legacy pay-TV service, are usually quite content with streaming services.

In fact, many of these “millennial cord-nevers” say they get everything they need when it comes to video entertainment from Netflix, Hulu and their SVOD brethren, according to a new report from The Diffusion Group (TDG).

About three-quarters of the millennial cord-nevers said that the offerings from SVOD services played a key role in their choice to opt out of pay TV. The availability of programming from SVOD feels completely sufficient to them, according to TDG’s research.

Also, this group continues to rate SVOD quite favorably. Of the 81% of millennial cord-nevers that use SVOD, more than 90% say it meets their video needs. TDG surveyed nearly 1000 millennial cord-nevers in this report.

These satisfaction levels are important to keep an eye on as OTT viewing continues to command both a larger share of audience as well as marketplace attention. In terms of growth, consider these figures from Nielsen. TV viewing in August through Internet-connected devices jumped 58% year over year, and accounted for 8% of total TV viewing among adults 18 to 49 each day, said analyst Brian Wieser in a Pivotal Research Report analyzing Nielsen figures.

Ooyala’s most recent Video Index  found that 74% of American adults had at least one over-the-top SVOD service, and more than half said they used their favorite subscription service more than 11 hours a week.