Report: More Smart TVs Are Solely Streaming

Slowly but steadily, streaming is becoming the primary source of smart TV viewing time, presenting an uphill battle for traditional inputs (cable, satellite, over-the-air antenna). This isn’t exactly breaking news — here at TVREV we’ve touched on the topic multiple times over the years — but data from Inscape reveals that in Q2, the number of smart TVs that ONLY streamed content hit a record high of 60%. So not only is streaming capturing a larger share of viewing time overall, there’s clearly an ongoing migration to a streaming-only entertainment landscape, where a majority of households simply never touch cable/satellite/OTA. 

That being said, we can’t proclaim live, linear TV dead yet. Thanks to myriad apps that provide access to what’s currently airing on broadcast and cable networks, linear TV can be streamed easily on smart TVs — and streamed it is, to the tune of over 25% in Q2, a notable jump of ten percentage points since Q2 2022. 

Even sports and news, two of the only genres that still command large shares of live, linear viewing, are increasingly being streamed: Over 30% of sports viewing time was streamed during the quarter, an increase of seven percentage points from Q2 2023. Meanwhile, streaming captured about 20% of news viewing time, up 5.5 percentage points year-over-year. 

Another notable nugget: The average number of apps used per smart TV has utterly plateaued over the last year, sitting at 5.5. Inscape says that this “may signal the upper limit for consumers, making home screen real estate — what people see first when they turn on their smart TVs — all the more valuable.”

Additionally, Inscape analyzed the share of time spent streaming across traditional publishers with direct-to-consumer apps vs. streaming-first/program aggregator services. To put it mildly, streaming-first publishers are utterly dominating, capturing over 87% of streaming time in Q2, compared to traditional publishers’ paltry 12.9%. 

Inscape’s full Q2 2024 report, which you can download here, includes more smart TV insights and market trends including historical looks that reveal just how much has changed over the last few years.