Nearly one in 10 anglophone Canadians say they no longer watch any TV shows the old-fashioned way and only stream or download content online, according to a new study.
In a telephone poll with 4,002 Canadians conducted late last year on behalf of the Media Technology Monitor, nine per cent of the respondents said they had fully transitioned from watching TV broadcasts to online content.
That number has tripled since MTM began asking about the trend in 2010, and was up 50 per cent compared to a 2013 survey.
Almost 40 per cent of the respondents in the most recent poll said they now view Internet content on their TV, which was up almost 50 per cent from 2013.
MTM observed the numbers of anglophone Canadians who said they were Netflix subscribers grew from 29 per cent in 2013 to 38 per cent last year. Thirty per cent of the Netflix subscribers said they had figured out how to access the U.S. version of the streaming service.
When asked what other kinds of online content they watched, 66 per cent said they streamed YouTube videos, 47 per cent said they screened TV shows online, 39 per cent said they downloaded or streamed full-length movies, 34 per cent watched newscasts and 29 per cent sought out sports videos.
While so-called Telco TV services (offered by the likes of Bell, MTS, Telus and SaskTel) were steady in the MTM poll (18 per cent of the respondents in 2013 and 2014 said they subscribed to such services), cable and satellite was seen to be on the decline.
In the most recent poll, 43 per cent said they were cable TV subscribers (down from 46 per cent in 2013) and 20 per cent said they used satellite TV (down from 21 per cent in 2013). Six per cent of the respondents said they picked up free over-the-air TV signals, which was a slight uptick from five per cent in 2013.
The polling for MTM was conducted by Forum Research Inc., between Oct. 8 and Dec. 12, 2014, and is considered accurate within 1.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
