Cutting the cord to a cable or satellite service is often a pretty overt and defined act for consumers. But new data from Inscape suggests that the ongoing migration from conventional cable and satellite services to streaming platforms is really a more nuanced matter than the black and white term “cord-cutting” often suggests. 

According to Inscape’s recent Q2 2023 TV Market Trends report, about 5% of U.S. cable/satellite households stopped viewing through satellite and cable TV inputs in the second quarter of the year. 

The analysis also found that some cable/satellite subscribers are instead actually “quiet quitting” these services – that is, they’re sharply reducing their time spent viewing in either format, while continuing some viewing depending on content type.  

These “quiet quitters,” were actually 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 year-over-year (to account for viewing seasonality), but didn’t fully quit. Additionally, 8.4% of U.S. cable/satellite households had a year-over-year drop of 50-75% in cable/satellite viewing time.

So why are viewers retaining their cable/satellite viewing habits if they use them so little? 

The short answer: Sports and news. While streaming has become the dominant source of overall TV viewing in the U.S., people still rely pretty heavily on cable and satellite services — and even antenna-based over-the-air (OTA) — for their access to live sports telecasts and news programming, as both primarily air on local broadcast affiliates.

While streaming commands 56.5% of overall TV viewing time, that falls to just 23.1% for sports and 14.7% for news. Cable/satellite/antenna accounts for only 43.5% of overall TV viewing time, but dominates in sports (76.9%) and news (85.3%).

For as much as audiences are tuning into sports and news on cable, it is still broadcast affiliates drawing the most watch-time, primarily due to that programming. While vMVPDs carry those networks, AVOD and SVOD services don’t without a live TV add-on. So sports- and news-minded viewers “can’t” completely quit cable/satellite unless they either embrace vMVPDs or antenna-based OTA.

For more on quiet-quitting audience dynamics, check out the FULL report HERE.