CTAM Study: Web-to-TV Watchers Also View More Regularly-Scheduled TV

Research conducted by The Nielsen Company and commissioned by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) has taken an in-depth look at the behaviors of consumers who are watching shows or movies from the Internet on their TV sets. The findings run contrary to the behavior heavily reported in recent news stories that suggest Internet-to-TV content consumers (11 percent of the U.S. population) are “cord-cutters.”

Specifically, it reveals that 84 percent of these viewers report they are watching the same, or more, regularly scheduled TV since they started streaming or downloading programs or movies to watch on the TV set. Furthermore, 92 percent of these people subscribe to a pay TV service, with only three percent reporting future plans to transition from their cable subscription models.

The Nielsen Company conducted the “Life is a Stream” quantitative research from Aug. 24 through Aug. 31, 2010 and qualitative from July 19 through July 22, 2010. It used Survey Sampling International’s online panel, and included males and females ages 18-49 that watched at least five hours of TV per week and included a mix of cable, satellite, telco and former pay TV subscribers. All respondents had high-speed Internet connections and, at least once in the past month, personally watched full-length TV shows or movies from the Internet on the TV set. It has a margin of error of +/-2 percent.