Cord-cutting? Perhaps cord-thinning?

Recent research from IHS Screen Digest showed that cord-cutting is a reality to the US market, with pay-TV cable TV providers losing 600,000 subscribers in Q2 2012, following the trend from the same period in the previous year where 625,000 were lost, according to reports in Advanced Television.

However IHS Screen Digest suggests that blaming over the top (OTT) movie and TV suppliers as the cause is probably an overstatement, and that the poor US economy is a large contributory factor.

IHS Screen Digest forecasts that US pay-TV growth for 2012 will be generally flat for the next few years until 2016.

Cord-cutting was a genuine fear in the US, as more OTT services are launched. Netflix is in growth, although other services are starting to fall by the wayside.

The last thing the TV industry needs is more media jargon, but it appears that “cord-thinning” is a new term of choice, suggesting that rather than completely abandoning pay TV services, a trim to the services a household is receiving seems to be a new approach.

A new US based report from Digitalsmiths, Q4 2012 Video Discovery Trends Report: Consumer Behaviour Across Pay-TV, VOD, OTT and Next-Gen Features, suggests that OTT services are not such an enormous threat in the US as was originally considered, with 65% of pay TV users not having used OTT services at all. However it warns providers to keep a close eye on services being offered and understand why and how consumers use those services.

Read more at Rapid TV News.