Nielsen: the over-the-air home market evolves
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Editor
| 15 January 2019

Research from Nielsen has revealed what it calls two prominent over-the-air (OTA) segments are co-existing in the current TV industry, both with very different profiles and media habits.

One type of OTA home has at least one SVOD service, while the other has no SVOD service. When we say SVOD, we are talking about the pay services, Netflix, Hulu (not Hulu Live), and Amazon Prime Video. The “No SVOD” homes tend to be older, more diverse and have a smaller median income, compared to the “Plus SVOD” segment, which skews younger, more affluent and more device-connected.

In 2018, Nielsen calculated that more than 14% of all TV households in the US, 16 million homes, OTA status, and that number is on the rise. It added that it believes that the number of OTA homes is growing, with more pronounced growth in recent years. Indeed, it says that the percentage of homes without traditional cable (wired or satellite) has increased 48% over the past eight years, totalling 16 million homes as of May 2018.

While Nielsen says that it sees some very distinct differences in the two larger segments of OTA homes, it believes that a third segment, which is a part of the Plus SVOD group, has emerged. These homes have access to a virtual provider, or vMVPD, which includes services such as Sling TV, DirecTV Now, Sony PlayStation Vue and YouTube TV.

Nielsen observed that as of May 2018, there were 1.3 million of these homes. Sharing a similar profile to the Plus SVOD group as a whole, these consumers have a higher median income and access to more devices. They also have access to individual cable networks and spend an almost equal amount of time watching broadcast and cable sources.

The report concludes with Nielsen concluding that what the data reveals is that today’s OTA landscape is no longer characterised by the ‘rabbit ears’ era.