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Twenty percent of U.S. pay-TV customers reported dissatisfaction with their service in a recent Parks Associates survey.

The figure represents a 100% increase since early 2013, when another Parks survey also revealed that 57% of pay-TV customers were “very satisfied” with their service.

In Parks’ latest tally, only one-third of pay-TV users looked the research company in the eye and said, “I’m satisfied.” 

The Parks data comes after Leichtman Research Group released ...read more

A recent Parks Associates study revealed that since the end of 2015, 20% of U.S. broadband households had cancelled at least one OTT video service in the past 12 months.

However, the research firm found that households with OTT video subscriptions increased their spending from an average of $3.71 per month in 2012 to $7.95 in 2016.

From the article "Xavient says deep analytics will help OTT providers retain customers, reduce churn" by Sean Buckley.

Churn rates for OTT video services are 19% of U.S. broadband households, according to a new Parks Associates report, suggesting that about one in five households have cancelled an OTT service in the past 12 months.

Overall churn rate for OTT services has been stable for the past year, with major OTT video providers Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu all reducing their churn rates. 

From the article "Parks: 19% of U.S. Households Cancelled An OTT Service In Last 12 Months, But Chu ...read more

“Basically, Netflix is saying they are 'too big to throttle,'" said Joel Espelien, senior analyst for TDG Research, in an e-mail to FierceOnlineVideo. “I’m not sure that's the case, particularly as more consumers move to 4K. ISPs could still go to Netflix and say, ‘we'll carry you because you are popular, but we're not going to let you consume all the bandwidth on our network.’”

Brett Sappington, senior director of research for Parks Associates, agreed.

From the article ...read more

According to Parks & Associates, that percentage has nearly doubled since 2013, reaching 15% of homes in 2016.

“Pay-TV subscriptions have dropped each year since 2014, falling to 81% of U.S. broadband households in Q3 2016,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of research for Parks Associates and author of the research company’s 360 View: Entertainment Services in U.S. Broadband Household report (reg. req.).

From the article "Antenna-Only Homes Have Doubled Since 2013 ...read more

Windowing, or the tiered pricing and scheduling around the release of premium video content, could be on its way toward a major overhaul in 2017. As Parks Associates analyst Glenn Hower pointed out, transactional VOD and pay-per-view rentals have been declining in past years while SVOD services have continued to gain market share and customer awareness. According to Hower, households spend an average of less than $1 per month buying and renting digital video.

From the articl ...read more

Digital distribution has opened an abundance of monetization opportunities, in contrast to previous television models that relied on advertising and subscription revenue from pay-TV service operators. Average monthly spending on subscription video on-demand services (SVOD) among U.S. broadband consumers has increased from $3.71 per month in 2012 to $6.19 per month in 2015, opening additional opportunities to monetize television content beyond the live and VOD windows. Live digit ...read more

With big technology companies like Facebook making $2 billion investments into VR headset makers like Oculus VR, the investments being made are simply too big to be minimized.

"I'm a converted skeptic -- there's just too many big companies involved in it now spending real money for it to be hype," said Brett Sappington, senior analyst for Parks Associates.

From the article "Comcast, DirecTV Among Pay-TV Operators Kicking The Tires On Virtual Reality" by Daniel Frankel.
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