New online research from Parks Associates (www.parksassociates.com) reveals consumers want to be able to access online video as part of their pay-TV service.
More than one-half of U.S. broadband households would like to have a YouTube on-demand feature with their pay-TV services. The new research is based on multiple nationwide surveys of over 2,000 U.S. broadband households and examines the impact of carriage disputes, which have prompted pay-TV providers like DirecTV, Dish Network, and Time Warner to drop channels such as AMC, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and MTV as part of ongoing fee and licensing struggles between service and content providers.
“U.S. pay-TV operators enjoy higher ARPU [average revenue per user] than their counterparts in other countries, allowing them to test and deploy a variety of new services, although many international providers are making similar moves,” Brett Sappinton, director of research, Parks Associates, says.”For example, Virgin Media has added a YouTube app to its EPG for its TiVo customers, answering their demand for access to online video.”
