Page 4 - HTVUR-FINAL

HISPANIC TV UPFRONT REPORT-2017 EDITION HispanicAd.com/HispanicMarketOverview.com
IS ‘CORD-CUTTING’ A CONCERN FOR HISPANIC TELEVISION?
The growth of “over-the-top”, or OTT, program distribution vehicles has upended the television industry. From Netflix and Amazon Prime to Hulu and CBS All Access, new choices abound – and they don’t involve a cable or satellite bill. Should Spanish-language broadcast and cable networks be concerned? Analysis from Horowitz Research indicates Latinos “continue to be pay TV’s best customers.
By Adam R Jacobson
For the last several years, MVPDs — what the industry refers to cable companies and other “multichannel video programming distributors” — have aggressively courted Hispanic consumers by adding Spanish-language channels and creating Latino Tiers as a platform for growth. Now, with headlines of “cord-cutting” regularly appearing across TV industry trade journals, are there new challenges set to impede Hispanic TV industry growth?
how this impacts Hispanics, if at cord-cutting into context.
Adriana Waterston, ‎SVP/ Marketing and Business Development and a Senior Qualitative Researcher at New York-based ‎Horowitz Research can definitely say that Hispanic households remain one of the most active consumers of cable television.
Yes, cord-cutting is happening. But, to answer the question of Adriana Waterston all, Waterston first puts
“Yes, cord-cutting is on the rise, much of which is driven by competition from OTT players,” she says. “Cable, satellite, and telco together lost 1.8 million video subs in 2016, according to Kagan, a record annual loss (incidentally, though, cable TV’s year-to-year decline is decelerating). But it is important to understand who is cord-cutting, and why.”
Horowitz data have consistently shown that multicultural consumers, including and especially Hispanics, continue to be pay TV’s best customers. Why? Waterston says, “Cord cutters are less likely to be family households and tend to be people who are not that into TV. As such, they don’t care about having a robust variety of channels and content at their disposal. They just want to be able to curate what they want when they want it. Think of the young, untethered, unmarried, highly social millennials, empty-nest households, or older folks living alone.”
Hispanic households tend to be larger family households, with more household members, more screens to serve content to, and a wider variety of content needs in both English and Spanish.