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About 84% of cord-cutters are “at least somewhat happy with their decision,” while 37% said they’re so happy that they have no plans to ever return to a traditional pay-TV service,

17% of U.S. broadband subscribers surveyed say they once took a pay-TV service but have since left their provider, while 10% say they have never subscribed to pay-TV (the so-called “cord-nevers”), and 74% said they currently take a pay-TV service.

The median time spent each week by pay-TV subs using the service is 12.98 hours. Next is Internet subscription VOD (4.89 hours), free over-the-air TV (4.72 hours), free Internet video (3.49 hours), and owned digital movies and TV shows (3.12 hours).

In the face of customer losses, cable and satellite TV operators say they’re focusing on higher-value subscribers, willing to sacrifice bargain-hunting consumers who at satisfied with over-the-top video options like Netflix and free broadcast TV.

data clearly shows that cord-cutting is picking up the pace as the cost of cable and satellite TV service continues to climb skyward.

authentication would at least somewhat deter 7 in 10 TVE users, with one-quarter being deterred “a lot.” The researchers note that distaste is particularly high among older respondents, aged 50-64.

pay TV operators face an uphill climb: just 30% of the consumers in pay TV homes surveyed said they have ever used their services, with 52% aware of them. TVE services from TV networks have both higher awareness (64%) and use (37%).

30% of respondents said they’ve used a network’s mobile site to access TVE features (and 34% have used a network’s application), those figures drop to 25% and 26%, respectively, for pay TV services.

or Internet-based TV to be a competitive option, it either needs to be cheaper than cable and satellite or it needs to provide the content that subscribers want in a better way.

For the companies still working on Web TV, it would mean charging less than traditional competitors for a service while paying more than traditional competitors to offer it.

for a Web TV offering to be truly Web TV, it would need to offer all the channels consumers want alongside the "over-the-top" video capabilities like Netflix and Hulu that they associate with Internet viewing.

About 40% of pay-TV homes said they would likely cancel their TV service and replace it with Aereo if it was available in their market, according to a study from Centris Marketing Science. Another 13% were undecided. Centris believes this suggests “even greater conversion as consumers learn more about the service.”

Factoid: 21.6% of pay-TV subscribers have downloaded their operators TV-Everywhere app to their connected device. Of those, just 30% use it more than once a week.

“Authentication is a barrier to usage. I bet half the audience doesn’t know what their user name and password is.

“It’s not unreasonable to assume that roughly, essentially we charge customers 20 cents a viewing hour. That is a staggeringly good value by any measure.” Rob Marcus, TWC “I’m concerned we are reaching a tipping point. Where we begin to price some customers out of the market” Jerald Kent, Chairman & CEO, Suddenlink Communications

Almost three quarters of Americans (73 percent) prefer to get their news from television, which also ranks first among the most trusted news outlets. Social media (23 percent) is the fifth preferred news outlet, behind news websites (52 percent), print magazines and newspapers (36 percent) and even radio (25 percent).

No one wants to pay for online news. Eighty-six percent of respondents believe that mobile and online news should be free. Only 10 percent of Americans pay for an online news subscription, but more than half (56 percent) pay for a print subscription.

Press releases are trusted. Of company-generated news, respondents report trusting press releases the most (33 percent).

Intel will be launching a Web TV service sometime this year.

The service requires purchasing a new box (the name of which is yet to be announced), which Huggers says is needed to deliver “the full experience” Intel wants.

Intel won’t be offering “a la carte” programming, either. In other words, expect bundles of programming like those offered with other major TV packages.

A good chunk of the tournament’s 67 games will only be available to people who have access to Turner-owned cable channels TNT, TBS and TruTV. And for the first time ever, that includes the two semifinal games on Saturday, April 5: If you don’t have pay TV, or a friend who does, and you don’t want to watch the Final Four games at a bar, you’re going to be out of luck.

Big-time sports have been migrating from free broadcast channels to pay channels for some time.

Apple TV is reportedly developing ad-skipping technology so owners of a set-top box can watch shows commercial-free. The propsed deal with cable companies would reimburse programmers for skipped ads.

Google is really just hoping to beat Apple to the punch, despite the fact that the company already has its Apple TV streaming product on the market, according to The New York Times "Apple’s thinking… is that any next-generation television service must be set up in partnership with existing distributors, in part for quality assurance reasons. A future Apple service could include a user-friendly interface layered on top of Time Warner Cable or Cablevision’s channel lineup."

Adoption from the major networks is "very unlikely to support any service with their linear feed that allows for commercial messages to be skipped even if they get some form of compensation," Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer for WPP's GroupM, told AdAge. "This is not a viable economic model and subscribers to the system would not pay an adequate premium to compensate for it." 

The vast majority of Americans – 95 percent – still watch television using traditional cable or satellite options, according to Nielsen. But the number of households that choose to opt out of cable or satellite TV is on the rise, from 2 million in 2007 to 5 million in 2013, Nielsen’s data show.

“This scares the bejesus out of the cable and satellite people,” said Jim Barry, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, Va. “I think it’s going to change the business model.”

A main driver behind the high cost of cable and satellite in recent years is the expensive license fees networks pay sports leagues to broadcast their games. The cost gets passed on to consumers to pay for the “bundles” of channels they get with their cable satellite subscriptions, whether they plan to watch sports or not.

A new report by Magid Advisors surveyed 2,400 consumers and found that cord cutting is not only on the rise, but it's happening much quicker than industry watchers anticipated.

When asked the reasons why they would consider canceling pay TV service, 77 percent of very likely cord cutters cited over-the-top video as a key factor. Half of respondents said they were satisfied with online streaming options like Netflix and Hulu, while 30 percent said pay TV was too expensive.

Boxee rebranded its box from Boxee TV to Boxee Cloud DVR and changed the services it offers.

“Our pitch to them is if we move the DVR to the cloud, we can do dynamic ad insertion, so instead of losing the ability to monetize that audience if they’re watching a week later or binge viewing if they’ve recorded the entire season, if you could serve fresh ads whenever somebody is watching it … that is a better way to monetize DVR.”

ed us to believe the future of TV is not apps, it’s the experience and the content.”

More than two-thirds of smartphone and tablet users haven’t downloaded their pay-TV provider’s app, and nearly three-quarters never buy movies to watch from the VOD service.

In The Future of TV – A View from 2013, TDG asserts that in a shifting quantum media landscape video viewing will shift away from legacy pay-TV environments such as the living room television, and toward broadband and non-TV video platforms and app-enabled secondary screens such as tablets, which will in essence serve as second TVs.

the use of second screens like smartphones and tablets will pave the way to what it calls a full app-based ecosystem which will train users how to visit an app store, search and locate content, and download their own selection of third-party applications onto their devices.

pace of change it believes will be hindered by industry inertia, device replacement cycles, and resistance to change by the legacy TV viewing audience.

Intel executives, who have promised to launch a Web-based pay TV service by the end of 2013, are now looking for a strategic backer to help them fund and distribute the service. If they don’t find one soon, it’s possible the project will be scrapped.

The gist: Later this fall, Twitter users will start to see a “See It” button on messages about some of Comcast-owned NBCUniversal’s shows, like “The Voice.” Clicking on those Tweets will open up a Twitter “card” with more information about the shows, and Twitter users who are also Comcast pay-TV subscribers will be able to record or watch the show directly from their computer or mobile device.

“We want to make the conversation on Twitter lead to consumption,” said Sam Schwartz, Comcast’s chief business development officer.

The deal also includes an “Amplify” advertising deal with Twitter, where Twitter and NBCUniversal will both sell ads against short video clips from the programmers’ shows.

“For movies and retailers, time-shifting can be a concern,” says Starcom’s Bowe. “That is why live TV is interesting to a lot of TV advertisers. Advertisers are demanding immediacy. Amassing an audience on a particular night is important.” Combating ad skipping empowered by the DVR is a bigger issue for TV stations than it is for network TV.

Advertisers typically buy local TV using Nielsen’s live-only or live-plus-same-day program ratings. Network TV is bought on C3 commercial ratings, which includes live viewing and three days of DVR playback. That means local TV advertisers pay for viewers who fast-forward through their commercials.

Live TV and social media were made for each other. In 2013, 36 million people in the United States sent 990 million Tweets about TV shows they were watching live, according to Nielsen SocialGuide. Moreover, 84% of people who have smartphones or computer tablets use those devices while watching TV.

Media companies also want to gather and crunch all the data about viewing habits they can to sell to advertisers. The companies receive less high quality data when people watch network programming through an app from Dish Network or DirecTV instead of using their own apps.

"Both sides are paranoid. The operators think that if the programmers can create a one-to-one relationship with the consumer, some day they peel off and become their own HBO," said an executive at a media company involved in content negotiations who was not authorized to talk to the media.

Ad sales on the platforms are still small and hard to estimate, but revenue is expected to grow as more viewing moves to mobile devices