A survey released today aims to show cable providers how they can keep losing their influential viewers from cutting the cable. Ideas and Solutions, a Los Angeles-based consultant group for media and technology companies, says that 60% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 were either leaning towards or seriously considering giving up paid television.
Members of Generation Y, also known as millennials born in the mid-1980s or alter, are less attached to traditional TV and look for a “greater cost-benefit equation with alternative viewing platforms,” the study found.
“This is the demographic that completely transformed the music and the phone business and has already started to dramatically reshape the pay TV ecosystem,” said Glen Friedman, president and founder of Ideas & Solutions.
“Clearly, the population that is emerging – and it is a large and dynamic group of more than 70 million consumers – is going to be more receptive to alternatives and much less prone to automatically subscribing to cable.”
He added: “It’s not that the sky is falling, but it certainly warrants a lot of attention, and the subscription-based pay-TV providers, along with the programmers who rely on them for distribution, should really invest the time and the resources to get to know this audience better.”