Online Viewing's Impact on Pay TV Services

The popularity of online video services, especially Hulu, has caused significant disruption in the cable TV and satellite TV businesses. TechCrunch reports <http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/04/13/report-800000-households-ditched-paytv-services-last-year> that an estimated 800,000 households dropped their digital TV service in 2009, and that another 1.6 million may do so by the end of next year. There are still 101 million digital TV subscribers, but increasingly, even those who still subscribe are turning to online services. Here are some other headlines from the report:

Estimated growth in the number of people watching at least one or two episodes per week online:

12% in 2009

17% in 2010

21% in 2011

100 million TV episodes were purchased and downloaded in 2009, up from 90 million in 2008.

Revenue from online downloads of TV shows amounted to $200 million in 2009.