Insight · CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
Streaming Overtakes Cable, But Growth Cools
On-demand streaming has substituted for linear television as the primary way most audiences watch content, with subscriber growth surging through 2022 before plateauing. Live events, sports, and news remain durable holdouts for linear TV, especially among older adults, while churn and multi-subscription fatigue now define the streaming era.
Insight · I0006
Streaming Overtakes Cable, But Growth Cools
On-demand streaming has substituted for linear television as the primary way most audiences watch content, with subscriber growth surging through 2022 before plateauing. Live events, sports, and news remain durable holdouts for linear TV, especially among older adults, while churn and multi-subscription fatigue now define the streaming era.
Moderate evidence · 156 external sources · Published July 25, 2026 · Consumer Behaviour
The insight
The default mode of television consumption has flipped from linear cable and broadcast to on-demand streaming, but the phase of explosive subscriber growth that defined 2020-2022 has given way to plateaued adds, rising churn, and consumers juggling multiple simultaneous subscriptions.
Why it matters
What this changes
- The old model
- Audiences historically accessed television through scheduled cable or broadcast channels, with viewing habits organized around fixed programming schedules and bundled channel packages sold through cable and satellite operators.
- The emerging model
- Viewers now default to on-demand streaming for most content, subscribing to and churning between multiple platforms as needed, while reserving linear TV largely for live, time-sensitive content such as sports and breaking news.
- Who is exposed
- Streaming platforms, traditional broadcasters and cable operators, advertisers and media buyers, sports and news rights holders, consumer electronics and smart-TV makers, and telecom/ISP bundlers are all directly exposed; older adults and live-sports/news audiences remain the clearest holdouts on linear TV.
- What is driving it
- The shift is plausibly driven by a combination of technological maturity in streaming infrastructure, the economic appeal of on-demand and ad-supported tiers versus cable bundles, cultural normalization of platform-hopping for specific content libraries, and now a maturing market where content licensing costs and subscription fatigue are recalibrating consumer willingness to pay for multiple services simultaneously.
Strategic consequences
For chief executives
The growth-at-all-costs subscriber acquisition era is over; CEOs of media and streaming businesses need to reset internal targets around retention economics, average revenue per user, and churn reduction rather than pure subscriber count, while treating live sports and news rights as a defensible moat rather than a legacy cost center.
For founders
New entrants attempting to launch standalone streaming services face a structurally harder market than 2020-2022 entrants did, given saturated subscription budgets and rising churn; differentiation through live or exclusive content, or a clear bundling/aggregation angle, is now closer to a prerequisite than an option.
For investors
Valuation models built on continued double-digit subscriber growth need revisiting; capital allocation should favor platforms demonstrating churn discipline, content cost control, and diversified revenue (advertising, bundling) over those still chasing gross subscriber adds.
For strategy teams
Long-range planning should assume linear TV's remaining relevance is concentrated and shrinking to live events and news, that streaming market share battles are now zero-sum among a maturing subscriber base, and that consolidation, licensing renegotiation, and bundling partnerships are likely near-term competitive levers rather than organic subscriber growth.
If this continues
Expect continued fragmentation and consolidation pressure among streaming services, growing use of bundling and ad-supported tiers to counter churn, and linear TV's role narrowing further toward live sports and breaking news, with cable's remaining value concentrated in those niches over the next several years.
Evidence base
Selected evidence
cordcuttersnews.com
Top 10 Cable TV Networks Most Likely to Shut Down in 2026 | Cord Cutters News
cordcuttersnews.com
The Top 10 Cable TV Networks Warner Bros. Discovery Is Most Likely to Shut Down in 2026 | Cord Cutters News
cordcuttersnews.com
The Top 10 Cable TV Networks Most Likely to Shut Down in March 2026 | Cord Cutters News
⌄View all 156 sourcesView fewer
cordcuttersnews.com
ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC & Cable TV Networks Saw Viewership Drop in March, But Streaming Saw a Big Jump | Cord Cutters News
civicscience.com
The 2026 TV Audience: More Fragmented Than Ever, More Actionable Than You Think - CivicScience
mediaite.com
Fox News Programming Dominates the Competition As Cable News Sees Quarterly Ratings Drop
cordcuttersnews.com
ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC Have Seen Over 3 Million People Stop Watching Prime Time TV Over The Last 5 Years | Cord Cutters News
nbcpalmsprings.com
Broadcast TV Viewership Drops Below 20% Nationwide as Streaming Dominates
thecurrent.com
TV networks see historic ratings drops under Nielsen Big Data + Panel, VAB reports | The Current
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
The different reasons why television, newspapers, and radio are losing their news audiences | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
deadline.com
Broadcast TV Slips To All-Time Low Audience Share In Nielsen’s Report On June Viewing
slashgear.com
Don't Share Your Passwords For These Streaming Platforms In 2024 - SlashGear
screenrant.com
Password Sharing Crackdowns: Which Streaming Services Are Doing It, Why & What It Means
streamtvinsider.com
Netflix password sharing crackdown paying off in US, 10% still share
nerdist.com
Netflix's Password Sharing Crackdown Drives 9.33 Million New Subscribers - Nerdist
stuff.tv
Netflix password sharing crackdown: what to do about it if you share your Netflix login | Stuff
money.usnews.com
Netflix Password Sharing: Here’s What You Need to Know | Family Finance | U.S. News
aftermath.site
Netflix's Password Sharing Crackdown Is My Own Special Trolley Problem - Aftermath
tomsguide.com
Netflix password-sharing crackdown just hit the US, UK and more — sharing costs $8 more per house
gulfnews.com
Netflix expands password-sharing crackdown worldwide: New fee for extra household
agoodmovietowatch.com
10 Streaming Services That Haven’t Banned Account Sharing | A Good Movie to Watch
tomsguide.com
The party is over — YouTube quietly rolling out account sharing restrictions
nbcnews.com
Netflix confirms it will start charging users to share an account with others outside their home
sportskeeda.com
netflix password sharing rules subscription charges us everything know far
variety.com
Streaming Saves TV in Upfront, but Ad-Dollar Declines for Linear Are Significant
axis-intelligence.com
Streaming Statistics 2026: The Definitive Data Report - Axis Intelligence
zippia.com
23 Incredible Cord Cutting Statistics [2026]: Why Americans Are Moving Away From Cable - Zippia
datapartners.com
28 Cord Cutting Statistics: What Marketers Need to Know in 2026 - DataPartners
civicscience.com
6 Key Consumer-Declared Streaming Insights From Gen Z in 2026 - CivicScience
sixpathsconsulting.com
Guide to Business Model and Innovation Strategies 2026 - Six Paths Consulting
graygroupintl.com
Business Model Innovation: How Companies Are Reinventing Growth in 2026
globalexcellencedigest.com
The Business Models Set to Dominate 2026 (And Why Others Are Fading)
euromonitor.com
New Consumer Landscape: Four Behaviour Shifts Shaping Business Strategies - Euromonitor.com
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The Impact of Consumer Purchase Behavior Changes on the Business Model Design of Consumer Services Companies Over the Course of COVID-19
businessmodelanalyst.com
4 Changes in Consumer Behavior That Impact Digital Revenue Models
forbes.com
Council Post: 20 Recent Shifts In Consumer Behavior (And How To Adapt As A Business)
cablecompare.com
Streaming vs. Cable Statistics 2026: Subscribers, Costs, and Viewing Data
rsinc.com
Over 50 Cable TV Companies Are Expected to Shut Down in 2026, Signaling Industry Crisis
quirks.com
Media usage in 2025: Breaking down key changes in media usage habits | Articles
endersanalysis.com
Viewing trends in 2025: Young viewers gather around live | Enders Analysis
marketingcharts.com
Americans’ Screen Time Activities Evolve Away from TV & Movies - Marketing Charts
cnbc.com
The No. 1 way Americans spend their free time: It's 'always been a huge part' of our culture
creditkarma.com
Gen Z opens their wallets as the cost of entertainment rises - Intuit Credit Karma
gofrombroke.com
How to Reduce Your Entertainment Expenses and Still Have Fun || Go From Broke
theodysseyonline.com
Are We Spending Too Much Time On Entertainment? | The Odyssey Online
piratesandprincesses.net
Disney Channel has lost 90% of its audience, and 2026 is the year it gets worse
news.piratesandprincesses.net
Disney Channel has lost 90% of its audience, and 2026 is the year it gets worse
cordcuttersnews.com
The Great Cable TV Purge of 2026: Over 10 Cable TV Networks Are Expected to Shut Down Soon | Cord Cutters News
cordcuttersnews.com
Live TV is Dead as Americans Now Prefer On-Demand; So Far, 1.7 Million People Have Canceled Live TV in 2026 | Cord Cutters News
library.fiveable.me
Decline in viewership - (Television Studies) - Vocab, Definition, Explanations | Fiveable | Fiveable
foxnews.com
CNN hemorrhaging viewers since Trump left office, down nearly 50% in key measurables
tomsguide.com
2026 could be the year to cancel your streaming subscriptions — and Netflix is the ‘worst offender of all’ | Tom's Guide
filmtake.com
Streaming Services Face Subscriber Exodus Amid Rising Costs and Market Saturation – FilmTake
eurweb.com
Streaming Services Most Likely to Shut Down in 2026 | EURweb | Black News, Culture, Entertainment & More
publixly.com
The Subscription Economy Collapse of 2026: Why Streaming Services Are Dying | Publixly
techcrunch.com
Sling TV continues to drop subscribers, loses 55K subscribers in second quarter
oxagile.com
How Traditional TV Is Reinventing Itself | Streaming Services vs Traditional TV
nielsen.com
Streaming Reaches Historic TV Milestone, Eclipses Combined Broadcast and Cable Viewing For First Time | Nielsen
hourlymagazine.com
How Streaming Platforms Are Replacing Traditional TV - Hourly Magazine
en.softonic.com
Is Cable TV Dying? The Collapse is Accelerating, So What’s Next? - Softonic
Full analysis
Key Takeaways
- Streaming has substituted for cable/broadcast as the primary mode of TV consumption, following a pattern similar to physical media's earlier displacement by digital formats.
- Streaming platforms added over 100 million net subscribers through 2022, marking the peak growth phase of the transition.
- Linear television viewership has declined steadily across all age groups, not just younger cohorts, indicating a broad-based rather than generational shift.
- Live sports, breaking news, and major event programming remain durable exceptions, with adults over 55 disproportionately retained on linear TV.
- Rising content licensing costs are compressing platform economics at the same time subscriber acquisition is slowing, pressuring pricing and bundling strategy.
Behavioural Analysis
Previous behaviour
Audiences historically accessed television through scheduled cable or broadcast channels, with viewing habits organized around fixed programming schedules and bundled channel packages sold through cable and satellite operators.
↓
Emerging behaviour
Viewers now default to on-demand streaming for most content, subscribing to and churning between multiple platforms as needed, while reserving linear TV largely for live, time-sensitive content such as sports and breaking news.
↓
What is driving the change
The shift is plausibly driven by a combination of technological maturity in streaming infrastructure, the economic appeal of on-demand and ad-supported tiers versus cable bundles, cultural normalization of platform-hopping for specific content libraries, and now a maturing market where content licensing costs and subscription fatigue are recalibrating consumer willingness to pay for multiple services simultaneously.
Who is affected
Streaming platforms, traditional broadcasters and cable operators, advertisers and media buyers, sports and news rights holders, consumer electronics and smart-TV makers, and telecom/ISP bundlers are all directly exposed; older adults and live-sports/news audiences remain the clearest holdouts on linear TV.
Expected evolution
Expect continued fragmentation and consolidation pressure among streaming services, growing use of bundling and ad-supported tiers to counter churn, and linear TV's role narrowing further toward live sports and breaking news, with cable's remaining value concentrated in those niches over the next several years.
Supporting Signals
- People watch television through streaming services on-demand instead of cable or broadcast channels.
July 19, 2026 · Confidence 100%
- Physical music media like CDs show continued loss of relevance as streaming dominates.
July 20, 2026 · Confidence 54%
- Streaming subscriptions substitute for cable TV, and plant-based foods substitute for conventional animal products.
July 21, 2026 · Confidence 78%
- Streaming platforms added 100+ million net subscribers through 2022, then growth plateaued; linear television viewership declined steadily across all age groups.
July 23, 2026 · Confidence 59%
- Live sports, breaking news, and major event programming retain substantial linear television audiences, particularly among adults over 55.
July 23, 2026 · Confidence 53%
- Streaming churn rates have risen, average subscriber holds multiple platform subscriptions simultaneously, and content licensing costs intensified across 2023-2024.
July 23, 2026 · Confidence 62%
Geographic Distribution
Geographic attribution is not yet captured in the data pipeline for this item.
Evolution Timeline
Supporting Signal: People watch television through streaming services on-demand instead of cable or broadcast channels.
July 19, 2026
Supporting Signal: Physical music media like CDs show continued loss of relevance as streaming dominates.
July 20, 2026
Supporting Signal: Streaming subscriptions substitute for cable TV, and plant-based foods substitute for conventional animal products.
July 21, 2026
Supporting Signal: Streaming platforms added 100+ million net subscribers through 2022, then growth plateaued; linear television viewership declined steadily across all age groups.
July 23, 2026
Supporting Signal: Live sports, breaking news, and major event programming retain substantial linear television audiences, particularly among adults over 55.
July 23, 2026
Supporting Signal: Streaming churn rates have risen, average subscriber holds multiple platform subscriptions simultaneously, and content licensing costs intensified across 2023-2024.
July 23, 2026
First observed
July 25, 2026
Last updated
July 25, 2026
Published
July 25, 2026
Confidence Assessment
60
/ 100 overall confidence
Evidence consistency
68
Source diversity
65
Time consistency
40
Independent confirmation
62
Six distinct signals corroborate the insight from complementary angles (substitution, growth peak, plateau/churn, linear holdout), providing meaningful but moderate independent confirmation given the still-limited number of signals.
Strategic Implications
For CEOs
The growth-at-all-costs subscriber acquisition era is over; CEOs of media and streaming businesses need to reset internal targets around retention economics, average revenue per user, and churn reduction rather than pure subscriber count, while treating live sports and news rights as a defensible moat rather than a legacy cost center.
For Founders
New entrants attempting to launch standalone streaming services face a structurally harder market than 2020-2022 entrants did, given saturated subscription budgets and rising churn; differentiation through live or exclusive content, or a clear bundling/aggregation angle, is now closer to a prerequisite than an option.
For Investors
Valuation models built on continued double-digit subscriber growth need revisiting; capital allocation should favor platforms demonstrating churn discipline, content cost control, and diversified revenue (advertising, bundling) over those still chasing gross subscriber adds.
For Product Teams
Product roadmaps should prioritize features that reduce churn friction and subscription fatigue, such as flexible pause/resume options, cross-platform bundling integrations, and improved discovery, since retention rather than onboarding is now the binding constraint on growth.
For Marketing
Messaging should shift from acquisition-focused campaigns emphasizing catalog size toward retention and re-engagement campaigns, and marketers should watch the multi-subscription fatigue pattern closely when designing win-back offers and bundled promotions with telecom or hardware partners.
For Innovation
R&D investment should look toward ad-supported tier innovation, dynamic bundling technology, and hybrid live/on-demand experiences that can capture the sports and news audience segment still anchored to linear, since this remains the clearest unclaimed growth surface.
For Strategy
Long-range planning should assume linear TV's remaining relevance is concentrated and shrinking to live events and news, that streaming market share battles are now zero-sum among a maturing subscriber base, and that consolidation, licensing renegotiation, and bundling partnerships are likely near-term competitive levers rather than organic subscriber growth.
Full Research
Overview
The displacement of linear cable and broadcast television by on-demand streaming represents one of the more thoroughly documented behavioural shifts in consumer media over the past decade, but the shape of that shift has changed materially in the last two to three years. What began as a straightforward substitution story — streaming replacing scheduled programming as the default mode of watching television — has evolved into a more complex maturation story, marked by plateauing subscriber growth, rising churn, and a persistent, narrowing pocket of linear TV relevance centered on live sports and breaking news.
The Substitution Phase
The first and most established layer of this insight is straightforward: streaming has substituted for cable and broadcast as the primary mode through which most audiences consume television content. The comparison signal, which also references plant-based foods substituting for conventional animal products, suggests the pattern may reflect a more general consumer preference for on-demand, unbundled, personalized consumption over fixed, bundled, appointment-based consumption — though that broader claim sits outside the immediate scope of the television-specific insight and should be treated as context rather than direct evidence.
The substitution phase peaked in intensity through 2022, when streaming platforms collectively added over 100 million net subscribers, while linear television viewership declined steadily and, notably, across all age groups rather than being confined to younger cohorts. This breadth of decline is significant: it indicates that the shift was not simply generational turnover (older viewers retiring linear habits while younger viewers never adopted them) but an active behavioural migration occurring across the existing viewer base.
The Maturation Phase
The second and more recent layer of the insight concerns what happens after the substitution largely completes. Growth in streaming subscribers has plateaued following the 2022 peak, and the market has entered a phase characterized by three connected dynamics: rising churn rates, multi-subscription fatigue (the average subscriber now holds several platform subscriptions simultaneously), and intensifying content licensing costs through 2023-2024.
This combination is structurally important. In the growth phase, platforms could tolerate high content spend and low near-term profitability because subscriber growth justified the investment thesis. In the maturation phase, the same content costs persist or increase, but the subscriber growth that once absorbed them has slowed, compressing margins and forcing platforms to compete more directly on retention rather than acquisition. Multi-subscription fatigue is a particularly telling signal here: it implies that the total addressable market for streaming spend per household is not infinite, and that platforms are increasingly competing for a fixed or slow-growing pool of subscription budget rather than a still-expanding one.
The Linear Holdout: Live Sports and News
The third layer, and arguably the most durable, is the persistence of linear television for live sports, breaking news, and major event programming. This holdout is not evenly distributed across the population — it skews toward adults over 55, a demographic more likely to retain cable subscriptions specifically for this content category. This creates a bifurcated media landscape: an on-demand streaming layer for most scripted and library content, and a shrinking but persistent linear layer for time-sensitive, communal, or live-event content.
This holdout matters strategically because it represents the primary remaining source of leverage for legacy broadcasters and cable operators. Live sports rights, in particular, have become disproportionately valuable precisely because they are one of the few content categories that reliably compel appointment viewing and resist time-shifting. The durability of this segment suggests that any full convergence of streaming and linear will likely proceed unevenly, with live and breaking content lagging well behind scripted and on-demand content in the substitution timeline.
Reading the Evidence Base
The six signals themselves cover complementary but distinct aspects of the story — the basic substitution claim, an analogous media-substitution comparison, the 2022 growth peak and plateau, and the emerging churn/licensing-cost dynamic — which together provide a more complete picture than any single signal would in isolation.
The insight was created and last updated within the same short window, which limits what can be said about its persistence over time from the timestamp data alone. This does not undermine the substance of the pattern, which references multi-year trends (2022 through 2023-2024), but it does mean that, from a purely temporal-tracking standpoint, this specific instance of the insight has not yet been observed to persist or evolve across multiple update cycles.
Strategic Stakes and Trajectory
The stakes of this shift extend well beyond streaming platforms themselves. Advertisers must recalibrate reach and measurement strategies as audiences fragment across platforms and time-shift most non-live content. Telecom and broadband providers, many of whom bundle streaming subscriptions as retention tools, have a growing incentive to consolidate multiple platform subscriptions into single bundled offers to counter subscription fatigue. Consumer electronics and smart-TV manufacturers are increasingly positioned as aggregation points, given that discovery across a fragmented platform landscape is becoming a meaningful friction point for consumers.
Looking forward, the most plausible trajectory is continued bifurcation rather than full convergence: on-demand streaming likely continues to consolidate its dominance over scripted, library, and non-time-sensitive content, while linear television's remaining relevance concentrates further into live sports and breaking news, particularly among older demographics. Within streaming itself, the current plateau and churn dynamics point toward likely consolidation among platforms, greater emphasis on ad-supported and bundled tiers to manage subscription fatigue, and continued renegotiation of content licensing economics as platforms seek to protect margins without the cover of rapid subscriber growth. Whether live sports and news eventually migrate meaningfully to streaming — as some rights deals in the broader market have begun to suggest — remains the key open variable that would determine whether linear television's holdout segment persists indefinitely or is itself eventually eroded.
Continue the thread
Pattern
On-demand streaming replaces linear television
The Pattern this Insight interprets — the recurring consumer behaviour behaviour underneath it.
Signal · Jul 22, 2026
People watch television through streaming services on-demand instead of cable or broadcast channels.
One of the contributing Signals this Insight is built on.
Insight
Discount depth no longer buys consumer trust
An adjacent interpretation within Consumer Behaviour.