Cord-cutting and the rise of streaming — and not just on Netflix — help explain the gradual but consistent slide of Nielsen numbers.
A new TV season begins Monday, and with it, probably, another season of linear ratings declines for the broadcast networks. That's not exactly news: Nielsen numbers have been on the wane for years on ad-supported TV , and the continued proliferation of viewing options — hello, Disney+ and Apple TV+ and HBO Max and Peacock — and shrinking number of people with cable or satellite subscriptions likely means the slide won't suddenly reverse itself in 2019-20.
In fall 2014, according to an annual survey by Leichtman Research Group, 84 percent of TV households in the United States subscribed to some sort of pay-TV service — either cable, satellite or telco. Nielsen estimated there were 116.4 TV households in the country at the time, which equals about 97.8 million homes receiving TV signals via cable or satellite. Fewer than half of TV households had a streaming subscription to either Netflix, Hulu or Amazon's Prime Video.
— roughly 93.5 million of 119.9 million total TV homes. Streaming services are now in almost three-fourths of all TV homes in the U.S. The decline in pay-TV subscriptions isn't a perfect explanation for on-air ratings losses, as some of those cord-cutters likely replaced cable or satellite with services like Sling or Hulu's live TV package or a digital antenna. But as a proxy for "traditional TV viewing," that decline from 97.8 million to 93.5 million households — equivalent to more than 10 million people, given the average household size in the United States — is significant.
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