Only 22% of those 18-34 use cable for their main television viewing

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that younger audiences are more likely to use modern technology to get their entertainment.

But even with this in mind, the numbers are quite surprising.

A survey run by CableTV of 4000 people showed that only 22% of respondents aged 18-34 still use traditional cable as their main source for television. Compare this to 40% of those in the 55+ age group who responded that traditional cable was their main source, nearly double that of the younger crowd.

Approximately 30% of those in the 18-34 group responded that SVOD services were their main source for television, over 6x that of the older respondents 55+. Only 7% of those respondents use services like Netflix and Hulu for their main television viewing.

This is all pretty intuitive for the most part, as spending five minutes on a college campus will reveal most young people are sitting on their laptops streaming Netflix.

It seems likely this trend will only continue as the early generation of cordcutters continues to grow older, and even more importantly, streaming technology starts getting better. With what seems like limitless bandwidth providing streamers with the ability to watch as much content as possible, it doesn’t seem likely that cable subscriptions will see any major increases in the coming decade.

It seems like just about every week, I hear more and more news about various services offering streaming movies and television, or even traditional media outlets offering their content through proprietary streaming. This growing availability is likely the main reason for such a stark contrast in the above numbers, and is a trend we’ll be watching closely in the coming years.

[image credit Arti Sandhu CC ]