• by Wayne Friedman , January 17, 2017

Although cord-cutting is a constant concern, along with the rise of new OTT platforms, traditional pay TV providers will only see minor declines in subscriber homes in the coming years.

Cable, satellite, and telco pay TV providers are all forecast to sink by around 1% for each of the next several years --  0.7% in 2017 to 98.7 million; 1.1% in 2018 (97.6 million); 1.4% in 2019 (96.3 million); and 1.3% in 2020 (95.0 million), according to eMarketer.

The media research company projects that 1.7 million subscribers will cut cable/satellite/telco services in 2017. On average, those traditional cable/satellite/telco TV homes will reach 201.8 million U.S. adults in 2017, with 175.4 million viewing digital video.

The gap will close in three years -- with 193.7 million adult viewers for traditional pay TV providers and 186.7 million for digital media.

While time spent with traditional linear TV will drop, it will maintain a strong lead over digital viewing -- four hours/1 minute a day versus 1 hour/12 minutes for digital.

This year, eMarketer expects total U.S. TV advertising to hit $72.72 billion, with digital video ad spending at $12.55 billion.