Churn baby churn
Streaming increasingly looks like cable. Now it has the millions of cancellations to go with it.
A record number of Americans were hitting the “cancel” buttons — or going through the often more convoluted channels to do so — on their streaming service subscriptions in the first quarter of 2024, according to new Antenna data, with a whopping 50.4M streaming service cancellations in the first 3 months of the year.
Interestingly, Antenna’s latest State of Subscriptions Report also found that the majority (56%) of new subscriptions came via ad-supported tiers. This suggests that the streaming industry’s decision to interrupt your binging with intermittent commercial breaks at a cheaper price point might be paying off, as viewers continue to warm to the idea of Netflix and co. looking a little more like traditional TV.
While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s behind the rapid rise of streaming cancellations, the 50.4M figure is up more than 80% from the same period 2 years ago, the proliferation of streamers that content-hungry consumers can pick from, pick up, and put down again, is pretty fundamental. Antenna tracks 9 big name “premium streamers” such as Netflix, Apple TV+, and Disney+, as well as a staggering 32 more niche “specialty” offerings, like Hallmark Movies Now or horror specialists Shudder — that’s a lot of libraries for US viewers to devour then ditch.
