Streaming Services Struggle With Churn Despite Continued Growth As Even Buzzy Shows Can’t Keep Subscribers Around

Even as streaming continues to grow, subscribers are still cycling through the premium services to watch their favorite shows, rather than committing to any or all of them.

According to Samba TV’s latest State of Viewership Report, U.S. households watched a record level of streaming content in the first half of the year, up 40% from the same time frame in 2023. However, the same report also states that about 44% of subscribers are only willing to watch one or two platforms per six months.

Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) platforms are still consistently adding subscribers each quarter, but cancellations each quarter have also grown, and the services only added about 4.8M net subscribers in Q1 2024 — down more than 3M from the previous quarter.

Samba’s data shows that viewers are generally invested in a specific piece of content, choosing to leave the platform after they’ve finished watching. The only exception to this is Netflix, which is unsurprising given that the streamer has proven highly effective at using its algorithm to draw users to new content and keep them engaged on the platform. It’s a tool that many of the newer platforms have yet to perfect.

Netflix had the lowest level of churn and also represented 60% of the Top 50 shows in the first half of the year with series like Fool Me Once, Griselda, American Nightmare, Bridgerton and The Gentlemen in the Top 10.

Elsewhere, subscription cyclers come back for buzzy new shows, Samba says, including Peacock’s Ted, AppleTV’s Masters of the Air, and FX’s Shōgun, which aired in Hulu and Disney+. New seasons of House of the Dragon (the second most-popular premiere of the half, behind Fool Me Once), True Detective, and Reacher were also a big draw.

But still, once those shows are over, subscribers often leave the service until they’re enticed back again for another anticipated release.

One way to prevent churn is through bundling, according to Samba, whose data shows that users who subscribe to the Disney Bundle and Apple One are less likely to churn than those who are subscribed to an individual component.

Linear consumption was down about 1% in the first half of the year. Especially as even live sports move to streaming, cord cutting is becoming ever more prominent, and the average daily reach of linear TV dropped 2% in the first six months of the year.

For now, live sports are still the bastion of linear programming, with Super Bowl LVIII coming in at No. 1 for the first half of 2024 with 39M views, followed on the linear leaderboard by other NFL programming, including three playoffs games that drove over 26M views.