WINNIPEG — Before the Covid-19 pandemic started in the first quarter of 2020, a little more than one in five Canadian households were either cord-cutters or cord-nevers, says a new analysis from consulting firm Communications Management Inc.
CMI tracks media trends and provides consulting advice to clients in the media industry. Using the most recent data available from Statistics Canada’s “Survey of Household Spending”, CMI provides a snapshot of the cord-cutting landscape in 2019 in its trend tracker report, released Tuesday.
The consulting firm suggests the older data can become part of the baseline to be used to assess how the pandemic has, or has not, changed the way Canadians access video entertainment and information.
StatCan’s 2019 survey of household spending was released in January 2021 and was based on a sample of more than 10,000 Canadian households.
Applying its own formula to data contained in the survey, CMI has estimated the percentage of Canadian households that were cord-cutters or cord-nevers in 2019 was 22.4%. That compares to 71.7% of Canadian households who subscribed to cable TV, IPTV or satellite TV services, and 5.9% who were other non-subscribers.
CMI defines cord-cutters as households that have subscribed to cable television, IPTV, or satellite TV, “but have stopped doing so, and rely more on programming delivered via the Internet.” Cord-nevers are defined as “households that use the Internet for video entertainment and information, and have never subscribed to cable, satellite, or IPTV for television.” Other non-subscribers are all other households that don’t cable, IPTV, or a satellite dish.
Looking at the data based on the age of the household reference person, the highest percentage of cord-cutters/nevers was among those under 30 years of age (56.1%) in 2019, followed by householders in the 30-39 age group (39.3%) and those aged 40-54 (23.1%).
Analyzed by region, B.C. had the highest percentage of households that were cord-cutters/nevers at 26.5%, followed closely by Ontario (26.3%). The next highest percentages of cord-cutters/nevers were found in Alberta (20.8%), Manitoba (19.8%), Saskatchewan (19.1%), Quebec (17.3%) and the Atlantic provinces (16.4%).
CMI also used the StatCan household survey data to track the growth in the number of Canadian households that subscribe to cable for Internet service, but not for TV. The number of households in this category grew from slightly less than 500,000 in 2012 to almost 1.8 million in 2019, according to CMI’s analysis.
For more information, CMI’s cord-cutting trend-tracker report can be accessed here.
