‘Power’ Season Five Premiere Ratings Higher on STARZ App than on TV

As much as the rise of cord cutting has been a growing trend over the past five years, the fact still remains that traditional television viewership has been strong.

But last weekend during the STARZ season five premiere of ‘POWER,’ an interesting data point revealed that it might not be much longer until modern mobile technology takes over most of our viewing habits.

Deadline Hollywood reported that ‘Power’ season five launched to a bigger audience on the STARZ app than it did on traditional TV. This, as far as we are aware, is the first recorded example of a simultaneous launch seeing more success on an app than through the television network the show calls home.

This isn’t really a problem for major networks. While they currently have contracts with major cable companies for distribution over their infrastructure, if each network is able to stem off successfully and grow an audience on mobile, this changes the negotiation power they have.

The same model is being put into place by CBS with Paramount Plus right now, their plan is to build up a large streaming audience on their standalone service. This will give them far more power and control over their content distribution if they can build up a mass audience. 

We will be watching this trend closely, as it could mark an important date in cord cutting history, the day that mobile app viewership started to overtake traditional network viewership.