At any given time of day, about 11.5 million people between 18 and 34 years old watched TV on traditional sets between last September and the end of last month, down 2% from a year earlier and 3.4% from two seasons ago.
Are young people coming to their senses or are they fooling with their connected devices? According to The Wall Street Journal, it’s the latter.
The number of households that pay for TV service shrank by 458,000 households, to about 100.1 million in the second quarter, ever so slightly eating into the $30 billion a year cable companies make from their subscribers. Of course, cable and satellite companies blame the decline on the weak economy, not on Web video.
The proof, as always, is in the numbers. Viacom and CBS each added at least $60 million in pretax profit from new digital-streaming deals in the quarter through June, while Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal added roughly $80 million, according to analysts’ estimates. Clearly Comcast’s position on both sides of this battle, is a the cat’s meow.