Research — Nov 4, 2025
Has streaming hurt or helped TV revenue?
Highlights
- Americans now pay for over half a billion video subscriptions
- Since Kagan newsletters started tracking US video subscriptions in 1969, traditional revenue has logged only two down years — 1994 and 2018.
The traditional cable bundle peaked in 2012 at 101 million households but is now less than half that due to cord cutting. Meanwhile, though, in 2016 digital subscriptions surpassed traditional multichannel, and Americans now pay for over half a billion video subscriptions when combining the big three sources of video services: traditional multichannel (legacy pay TV from cable, satellite or telco providers), streaming apps (subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix and Disney+) and virtual multichannel (virtual multichannel video programming distributors such as YouTube TV and Sling TV).
More importantly, revenue from US subscription video should hit an all-time high this year when digital and linear subscriptions are combined.
Since Kagan newsletters started tracking US video subscriptions in 1969, traditional revenue has logged only two down years — 1994 and 2018. The decline seven years ago indeed occurred due to cord cutting. But the number of SVOD and vMVPD subscriptions returned total US video subscription revenue to growth once again in 2019 — despite high digital video churn and generally lower monthly rates compared to the old pay TV bundle.
Currently about nine out of every ten US video subscriptions is for a streaming/SVOD app, with traditional pay TV comprising 7% of subscriptions and vMVPD accounting for 4%. Still, traditional generates the most revenue, based on higher average monthly rates compared to SVOD — $122 versus $10.
Some smaller cable operators like WOW and Cable One are exiting the video business and pursuing a “broadband-first” approach. Dropping the high-expense/low-margin video business can lead to improved cash flows, as Cable One’s recent financials indicate.
But innovative “hybrid” packages are emerging from many operators (including the big three cable providers — Comcast, Charter and Altice) combining SVOD apps with traditional video packages.
Bundling “multiple services” from the same “operator.” An interesting idea.