Cord Cutters and Nevers Part One: Could I be a Cord Cutter?

In a recent study carried out by Comscore: 18-34 year old's are 77% more likely to become cord nevers and 67% more likely to become cord cutter households. These should be 'sit up and take notice' figures for CSP's as this age group has already caused much of the change we've seen in viewing habits of late (multi device, second screen etc)

So in an effort get an idea on what it would be like moving from 'more likely' to actually 'cutting the cord' on linear TV or indeed why someone might decide to never pick up a subscription TV service in the first place, I decided to delve into the world of cord cutters and cord nevers by giving up TV for a week.

I guess I fall a little shy of an average 'linear' TV user, I do watch it and with some frequency, but I also have access to two leading OTT providers (you can probably guess the names) and access to the VOD offering from that well known UK satellite provider. All of which I use to supplement my linear viewing habits - by all measures I guess I'm well equipped to start this experiment.

Diving In

Not really knowing how this would pan out, I started off the week in a flummox and almost falling at the first hurdle - we usually put BBC Breakfast on in the morning... well that's not going to happen. Radio 4 it is then! 

In the evening I continued to watch a series on one of the OTTs that I'm currently in the middle of, whilst playing some computer games. My wife was out anyway, and Masterchef wasn't until Tuesday. Nice and easy - so ends Monday.

We had to wait until Wednesday to watch Tuesday's Masterchef because of my experiment, which a little frustrating, but ultimately no real hassle. Instead we proceeded to watch some other shows on 4oD (Channel 4's On Demand/Catch Up service) and caught up on some shows we'd neglected on one of the OTT services. We put it on the main TV through the xbox. At this point I'm thinking that the experiment is going pretty well really!

Mid week rolls around and we're a day behind in some of our viewing. So over the next couple of days we watched the things we missed via BBC's iplayer (which has seen enormous growth recently) or the other TV catch up services ITV player and 4oD again. We also binge watched some episodes from a couple of TV series such as American Horror Story and House M.D. via one of our OTT platforms - this time we watched it on the tablet.

Friday and the weekend - well, these followed the same routine as the rest of the week with the radio on in the morning, but we did start to find ourselves struggling a bit, particularly on the Sunday morning as we didn't really have anything we could just put on as 'background' television. 

It made me realise how often we'd put the TV on even if just for background noise - a bit of Friends or something we've watched a hundred times already - whilst we got on with other things. 

Sunday evening rolled around and the experiment was over, and I was starting to consider the pros and cons of the experiment.

Conclusion.

It was an odd week, and it was actually harder than I had anticipated. 

There's a wealth of TV and films available on catch up TV and OTT services, more than enough to ensure you didn't need to put the TV on. But, and there is a but, there are a couple of things that get in the way.

It didn't quite sit well with what, I guess, are my current viewing habits - It turns out that I'm very much a second screen kind of viewer and when I'm watching something on an OTT service I feel as if I've gone out of my way to watch it and so should give it my full attention. This might be little tricky if it was my only source of TV long term!

Secondly, it's all very fragmented. I do not believe cord cutting is possible with just one VOD or OTT service, which means that one must subscribe to several. You must find a device or SmartTV that gives easy access to them all (Chromecast, for example, doesn't natively support Amazon Prime Instant) which adds a certain amount of hassle. Having multiple services also decreases the cost advantage gained through scrapping a PayTV subscription.

In the UK, however, we have access to ‘Freeview’. It has a one off cost, access to all the terrestrial channels and a large number of additional channels as well as the option to use a DVR. 

If this was topped up with some monthly subscriptions to the Over The Top services like Blinkbox, Netflix and Amazon, It would make a compelling argument to ‘cut the cord’ on PayTV services altogether… though i'd maybe off on the scissors until all the seasons of Game of Thrones have been aired. 



In part two I'll be looking why people are cutting the cord, what the numbers are like at the moment, and what CSPs might need to do to change this trend.