Usage of conventional TV dropped below 50% for the first time in history.

The decline of traditional TV continues even as prices for streaming services have risen.

According to the Nielsen Monthly Stream Report, overall traditional TV usage, including broadcast and pay TV, fell below 50% for the first time in July.

Usage among pay TV customers fell to 29.6% of TV, while streaming dropped 20% in a month. Streaming accounted for almost 39% of usage in July, the largest share since Nielsen first reported monthly numbers in The Gauge’s June 2021 report.

Pay TV is steadily declining as consumers move away from traditional packages and opt for streaming. The pace of this decline has only accelerated since the onset of the Covid pandemic, with the use of live streaming skyrocketing.

Major Pay TV providers such as Comcast Corp. AND Communication card, often reporting quarterly declines in customer numbers. Comcast and Charter lost 543,000 and 200,000 pay TV subscribers for the second quarter in a row.

“We think everything about linear TV is bad,” Tim Nolen, senior media technology analyst at Macquarie, said in a recent report.

Pay-TV operators reported a weighted-average 9.6% year-over-year decline in subscribers — a loss of about 4.4 million households — and prices are “not going up” according to Macquarie’s report.

The total number of households using pay TV is steadily declining. There were 41 million pay-TV households in the second quarter, compared with 45 million and 50 million in the same periods in 2022 and 2021, respectively, according to Macquarie.

Pay TV viewership was down 12.5% ​​year-on-year, while airplay was down 5.4%, according to Nielsen.

Growth of streaming services since Netflix TO DisneyDisney+, Hulu and ESPN+ Opening Warner Bros.Max often takes the blame. But many of these operators, including Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast are struggling to share and profit from broadcasting as their channels and pay-TV business decline.

While viewers are increasingly turning to streaming, subscriber growth on these platforms has slowed, especially on larger services like Netflix and Disney+. Applications for beginners such as Base

Comcast’s Paramount+ and Peacock have shown larger membership growth, but their subscriber bases are smaller.

Broadcasters have stopped using subscriber growth as a measure of success and are instead aiming for industry profitability as the traditional TV business shrinks.

Many consumers have abandoned the traditional TV package due to its exorbitant prices. Now, streaming companies are also raising prices across the board, including Disney for an ad-free Disney+ subscription and Hulu to boost revenue.

Macquarie noted in his report that the rise in subscriptions to streaming and streaming services has not helped them much in their quest for profitability.

Advertising plays a big role in generating revenue and companies are trying to crack down on password sharing. Reducing the cost of content, especially original programming, has been an important part of the cost reduction strategy.

The departure from the originals is due to the fact that licensed programs, especially from mainstream sources, are often one of the most viewed materials.

For Netflix, Suits, which originally aired on NBCUniversal in the United States, was the last shot. A show that co-star Meghan Markle previously hosted only on Peacock. According to Nielsen, the series saw an increase in viewership on Netflix, as did Peacock, which accounted for 18 billion minutes watched in July.

Netflix views grew by 4.2% in a month, bringing viewers to 8.5% of all TV views. It was followed by Hulu, Amazon’s Prime Video, and Disney+, which probably received a boost from the children’s cartoon Bluey, another licensed program rather than the original.