A new study focused on the viewing habits of American consumers found that despite the influx of devices and distractions infiltrating our daily lives, families are spending more time in front of the TV together.
The study, conducted for Yahoo and ad agency Publicis, found that 64% of families spent more time watching shows together and 49% are planning movie nights as a family following a dramatic uptick in family time during the pandemic.
While diverse content became increasingly easy to access during the early days of the pandemic as streaming proliferation ramped up, more and more U.S. families were deciding to have some quality time together. This likely had more than a passing impact on Disney+, which launched four months before the pandemic shut down most of the country. At the end of 2020, the once-family-friendly streamer’s first full year of operation, it announced that it had already amassed 94.9 million subscribers, no doubt buoyed by families snuggling up on the couch together to watch Disney classics.
Families have also invested in their viewing experience since the onset of COVID-19, as 46% of families subscribed to new streaming services and 26% upgraded their internet services in the past two years. However, just 12% added new cable packages, as more families are opting for a cordless experience instead.
Adults weren’t the only ones getting in on the action — kids also got some new tech to watch the wider variety of services that their parents began paying for during the pandemic. Forty-seven percent of ids received tablets, 36% received a new phone, and 25% got a new TV — ones they wouldn’t have gotten without a pandemic.
These new screens also had a second benefit: They allowed kids to stay in touch with their friends while they were separated due to stay-at-home orders and virtual schooling. Nearly half of parents (44%) said that they encouraged their children to use their new devices to stay connected and 41% raised their kids’ screen time allowance during the pandemic.
We’re starting to see more reports come from the pandemic and the vast increase of content consumed during the lockdown era. We’re also seeing that subscribers quite enjoy the wide variety of content available to them, despite early fears from services that there would be a mass exodus as life returned to something approaching normal.
Despite all of the changes that the pandemic — and the rocky recovery — inspired, it turns out that users consumed about the same level of streaming content in 2021 as they did in 2020. So who lost the content wars post-pandemic? No shocker — it’s linear cable TV.
According to another recent study, 37% of viewers are paying for a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service, while opting not to have a cable or satellite subscription). But, the number of SVOD subscribers did decline year-over-year.
In the 2021 survey, 74% of viewers were paying for at least one subscription streamer, but in 2022, that number has fallen to 62% — although 10% more admitted to using an SVOD via another user’s password. Sixty-six percent of viewers also said they use fast ad-supported TV (FAST) services, whether through a streaming device or through an antenna.
We’ll likely see more post-pandemic retrospectives throughout the coming years and it’s clear that the shift from linear TV to streaming services is well underway, so it just boils down to which services stick around for the long haul.