LOS ANGELES—A new study from Inscape takes a deep dive into an important but rarely reported on aspect of cord-cutting and the decline of pay TV subscriptions by focusing on what Inscape calls the “quiet quitters” who have largely stopped viewing pay TV programming but haven’t dropped their pay TV subscription or “cut-the-cord.”
According to Inscape’s recent Q2 2023 TV Market Trends report, about 5% of U.S. cable/satellite households have outright quit viewing content via their satellite and cable TV options in the second quarter of the year. Inscape’s data also demonstrates that a sizable portion of those remaining subscribers have cut their viewing time significantly as well.
The study found that “quiet quitters,” or households who have sharply reduced their cable/satellite viewing time but have not fully quit, were more prevalent than full quitters in Q2 2023.
Looking at U.S. cable/satellite households, Inscape found that 9% reduced their cable/satellite viewing by 75% or more from Q2 2022 to Q2 2023 (to account for viewing seasonality), but didn’t fully quit. Additionally, 8.4% of U.S. cable/satellite households had a drop of 50-75% in cable/satellite viewing time in Q2 2023 from Q2 2022.
Inscape data also provides some very important insights into why these “quiet quitting” households retain their subscriptions in the face of such a dramatic pullback in activity.
Although streaming has become the dominant source of overall TV viewing in the U.S., U.S. households continue to turn to cable/satellite and antenna-based OTA formats for access to sporting and news programming.
According to Inscape data, while streaming commands 56.5% of overall TV viewing time, that falls to 23.1% for sports and 14.7% for news. Cable/satellite/antenna, meanwhile, accounts for 43.5% of overall TV viewing time, but dominates in sports (76.9%) and news (85.3%).
“This quiet-quitting trend emphasizes the reality that not all TV viewership stats are created equal,” said Ken Norcross, vice president of data licensing and strategy, Inscape. “While overall viewership data suggests a broader movement between formats, closer examination of specific programming categories like sports and news illustrates how legacy formats remain viable options. Collecting accurate viewership data across these disparate formats requires a platform capable of a complete, holistic view of the entire TV landscape, which is what Inscape provides.”
