An inflection point for the television industry has seemingly arrived as a new survey from financial firm Cowen & Co. shows that Netflix is now more popular than traditional TV. In a survey of 2,500 US adults, Cowen & Co. asked which platforms everyone used most often to view video content on TV. Netflix came out on top with a sizable lead of 39.7% of the results, while YouTube trailed behind at 17%, and basic cable came in third with 12.6%.
Meanwhile, Hulu (7.6%) managed to top broadcast (7.5%) by a hair, with
Cowen & Co. also separated users who still subscribes to traditional pay-TV services (in other words, everyone but cordcutters) into their own category and found that basic cable jumped back in front with 26% of the vote. But Netflix (24%) wasn’t far behind, even for traditional viewers — in fact, Netflix came in ahead of broadcast (19%).
“Over the long term, assuming [Netflix] is able to continue to increasingly offer great content, this lead clearly bodes well for further value creation,” Cowen analyst John Blackledge said in a research note on Tuesday.
Blackledge believes that Netflix will give shareholders plenty of reasons to be excited on July 16th when the company discloses its quarterly earnings. Netflix released 452 hours of original content in the second quarter of 2018, which is up 51% year-over-year and just slightly under the record 483 hours in Q1.
