Cord-cutting

In broadcast television, cord-cutting refers to the pattern of viewers (referred to as cord cutters) cancelling their subscriptions to multichannel subscription television services available over cable, dropping expensive pay television channels or reducing the number of hours of subscription TV viewed in response to competition from rival media available over the Internet such as Amazon.com, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, and YouTube, as well as BitTorrent. This Internet content is either free or significantly cheaper than the same content provided via cable. As a market trend, a growing number of "cord cutters" do not pay for subscription television in favour of some combination of broadband Internet and IPTV, digital video recorders, digital terrestrial television broadcasts, or free-to-air satellite television.

Parks Associates estimated that in 2008, about 900,000 American households relied entirely on the Internet for television viewing, and the company expected that number to increase. Leichtman Research Group found that six percent of Americans watched at least one show online each week in 2008, a figure that grew to eight percent in 2009. The number of Americans subscribing to cable service increased two percent in 2008, but the growth had slowed. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. found that in the fourth quarter of 2008, the increase was seven-tenths of one percent, or 220,000 homes, the lowest ever recorded. A Centris report showed that 8% of Americans expected to cancel their pay television service by the third quarter of 2009. About half of Americans tried to get a better deal from a provider other than the one they were subscribed to. Amazon.com, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, and YouTube, as well as BitTorrent, made cancelling service possible for those who would be unable to see their favorite programs over the air. Sports programming was a big reason for not cancelling pay television service, although online options existed for many events. Another problem was the inability to watch many programs live, or at least soon enough in the case of a television series.

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