Younger Canadians cutting the cord on cable television, land-line telephones

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This article was published 17/10/2018 (2016 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new survey by the Angus Reid Institute confirms a trend that has been developing for some time – Canadians, especially younger ones, are cutting the cord on their cable television service in increasing numbers.

The cord-cutting trend is even more pronounced when it comes to land-line telephones.

The survey finds three-in-ten millennials have either cancelled or never subscribed to home cable service, while more than four-in-ten Canadians choose not to have a land-line phone.

Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, said, “It is continuing to follow a trend that we have been seeing for a while. It is certainly one that is drawn along demographic lines, for sure.”

Nationally, the poll of 1,500 Canadians showed that 71 per cent of households do subscribe to satellite or cable television service. But for the age group between 18 and 34, that number falls to 52 per cent.

The trend line has been looking the same for many years. According to Statistics Canada, the percentage of Canadian households that subscribe to satellite or cable television services has fallen steadily from 88.3 per cent in 2012 to 71 per cent in 2017.

The drop off in home telephone subscription is even more precipitous. Nationally land-line subscription has dropped from 83.8 per cent in 2012 to 57 per cent in 2018 with an even more pronounced age divide than seen on the television question – only 37 per cent of those between 18 and 34 years old have a land line.

While there is still a strong majority of Canadian households who do subscribe to a television service, 33 per cent of Canadians of all ages said they may cut the cord and 49 per cent of people between 18 and 34 years old, say it is likely they will. One-third of those under age 35 have already cancelled their home television service, and one-in-six have never subscribed to such service.

Kurl said, “We will see more as the years go by who have never plugged in and who access their entertainment and consumer information in increasingly non-traditional ways.”

Although the telco and cable companies have been saying that cord cutting is not happening as much as media reports suggest, the numbers speak for themselves.

In its most recent financial report, BCE Inc., the owners of Bell MTS and as well as the dominant player in the Ontario and Quebec markets, noted that during the second quarter across the country the company increased its total wireless customers by 4.6 per cent, high speed Internet customers were up 3.7 per cent but television service subscribers were up only 0.4 per cent and residential land line subscribers was down 6.2 per cent.

About 52 per cent of survey participants who have cancelled their television service say they did so because they felt they weren’t getting good value for their money.

A spokesman for Bell MTS said it offers a variety of affordable TV packages, including a starter pack for just $28 per month and has a new app-based live TV service starting at $14.95 that will be coming to Manitoba soon that requires no set top box called Alt TV. Bell also owns Crave TV, a streaming service that competes with Netflix.

Companies like BCE, Telus and Rogers are banking on wireless and high speed Internet as their profit centre for the future which is where those companies are concentrating their capital investment these days.

“Unless the telcos or cable companies are in a position to somehow make the case that this is a better or more desirable form of home entertainment, I don’t necessarily see those numbers trending back up,” said Kurl.

The survey, that was self-commissioned and paid for by Angus Reid Institute, showed that in Manitoba subscription to Internet and television services was slightly below national averages but wireless subscription was slightly higher than the average.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca