New research into pay-TV subscribers' behaviour has found that pay-TV subscribers feel there's too many TV channels and that they struggle to find the shows they would like to watch, with the study revealing that most people watch the same 10 channels over and over again, leading to complaints about repeats.
A new study from Digitalsmiths on pay-TV subscribers that interviewed thousands of subscribers, has found that pay-TV subscribers are overwhelmed with the number of available TV channels.
According to the research, pay-TV subscribers struggle with what is known as "content discovery" - the search and exploration of finding new shows, knowing what its about, and most importantly, knowing on what channel to find it and when its shown.
While the study was done in America by Digitalsmiths, a company that specialises in personalised content discovery, the findings very likely generally hold true for all pay-TV platforms and subscribers globally, like for instance MultiChoice in South Africa and Africa operating the DStv service and StarTimes' StarSat - who all employ the same basic direct-to-home (DTH) pay-TV model.
Pay-TV subscribers feel that it's difficult to find the content they want to watch, and half of existing pay-TV subscribers who considered cancelling their service, said that they would stay if their pay-TV operator introduced added new functionalities to make it easier to find the content they want to see.
Pay-TV subscribers say there's too many TV channels and that they feel overwhelmed by it.
Irrespective of the number of TV channels available, 87% of people say they watch the same few channels over and over again - to the extent that more than 83% indicate they constantly watch less than 10 channels.
Subscribers of video-on-demand (VOD) services - within the South African context those would be players like Naspers' ShowMax, PCCW Global's ONTAPtv.com, PrideTV, MTN's VU and Netflix South Africa - say they're happier about finding content because the process is easier to find something to want to watch.
"One unifying trend that contributes to the popularity of VOD services is their intuitive, personalized, modern interfaces and viewing experiences," the Digitalsmiths report found.
