With traditional pay-TV subscribers declining and the number of home subscribing to streaming video-on-demand rising, time spent watching live TV dropped sharply in the second quarter.
According to Nielsen’s Second-Quarter Audience Report, cord-cutting continues, and digital devices and services are becoming more common. Nielsen has been moving to a total-audience approach to capture viewing on different platforms and gadgets, as well the eyeballs still watching TV via broadcast and cable.
Live viewing fell 6% to 3:55 hours per day from 4:09 in the same quarter a year ago among people 18 years and older, the report said. The Q2 2016 figure was down only slightly from 2015, which was 4:11.
Time-shifted TV was up to 32 minutes per day from 30 minutes a year ago.
Showing a big jump was the use of apps and the web on smartphones, which occupied 2:27 per day in the quarter, up from 1:43 a year ago and 1:09 in 2015.
The Nielsen report noted that as of June, 58.7% of TV households have at least one enabled device, up from 52.2% a year earlier. There are 6.5 million homes—representing 5.5% of the U.S.—that have a smart TV, a multimedia device and a connected game console.
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As a result adults in the U.S. are spending an additional half hour more a day compared with last year connected to media across platforms, noted Peter Katsingris, senior VP of audience insights at Nielsen.
Nielsen said that in the second quarter, 59% of homes had a subscription VOD service, such as Netflix (pictured), up from 53% a year ago.
Meanwhile, total multichannel homes, including virtual providers, was down 1% to 97.9 million from 98.7 million a year ago, when virtual MVPDs weren’t being counted.
Broadcast-only homes were up to 15.7 million homes, compared with 13.6 million a year ago and broadband-only homes were up to 5.9 million from 4.1 million.
Wired cable was down to 51.8 million from 53.4 million a year ago; satellite was up to 35.3 million from 34.1 million; and telco dipped to 9.7 million homes from 11.2 million.
