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Research Firm Finds Evidence of Cord-Cutting

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Maybe there's something to this cord-cutting movement, after all. While the common wisdom has been that few consumers are interested in ditching their pay TV services, a report by technology market research firm Interpret has found that the number of consumers who stream TV content but don't subscribe to a pay TV service has increased by 18 percent this year.

What's more surprising, though, is why they're doing it. People aren't going online to avoid commercials, the study finds, but for convenience. Viewers appreciate the ability to easily catch missed episodes.

During the period of the report, Interpret found that TV streaming traffic on the four major broadcast sites-ABC.com, CBS,com, Fox.com, and NBC.com-actually declined. The big winners were Hulu and Netflix, which saw a significant increase in streaming.

"This is good news for advertisers, but also highlights the challenges faced by content owners," says Michael Dowling, CEO of Interpret LLC. "As consumer demand for TV everywhere intensifies, content owners are managing a delicate balance between overlapping constituents-those that continue to deliver valuable revenue streams and those whose models, while growing in popularity among consumers, don't yet produce sufficient revenue to supplant the older models."

The report is titled "TV Everywhere Revisited: How Distributors, Advertisers and Content Owners Should Respond to Consumer Trends," and is available for purchase for $795.

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