The latest edition of Hub Entertainment Research’s ‘Conquering Content’ report finds that 60% of U.S. television watchers are more likely to choose Pay TV or streaming platforms with better search, discovery and recommendation tools – up from 56% last year.
The annual report finds that consumers love the abundance of choice created by what the analyst firm calls “Peak TV”. Appreciation for having “so many TV shows to watch” has increased significantly this year, and is up by nearly half since 2020. However, with so much content to choose from, platforms that make discovery easy have a big advantage.
Hub Entertainment Research tracks how technology is changing the way people find and consume entertainment content and provides its behavioural and trend data through services like The Hub Reports and Hub Ent+Tech Tracker. Its ‘Conquering Content’ report is based on a survey in October of 1,600 U.S. consumers with broadband, ageed 16-74, who watch at least one hour of TV per week.
The report observes that content discovery is becoming harder partly because of the volume of content on streaming platforms, but partly due to an increase in cross-licensing of popular shows across services. It separately found that ‘new to me’ shows are just as appealing as new releases – suggesting that good content recommendation and surfacing can help make up for an absence of brand-new shows (see our separate story today about the implications of this while Hollywood gets back into gear after the strikes).
As you can see from the graph (courtesy of Hub -- Hub Entertainment Research), 55/56% of consumers agreed (either somewhat or strongly) in 2022 that they are more likely to choose TV sources that make it easy for them to discover new shows they like. In 2023 this figure rose to 61%.
Graph: Conquering Content 2023 report from Hub (Hub Entertainment Research).
