People may say that they don’t watch Netflix anymore or that other services have better content offerings, but in a recent Morgan Stanley survey that assessment doesn’t appear to be the majority.
The Chicago Tribue published the survey results taken from a sample of 3,100 U.S. adults. They indicate Netflix remains the most frequently cited SVOD service to offer the best original programming.
Approximately 38% of survey respondents pick it as No. 1, per the Wall Street analyst firm’s 2021 streaming survey – roughly in line with results from the last few years year.
The next nearest was Amazon Prime with 12% of respondents saying they offer the best original programming, followed by Disney+, Hulu, and HBO Max all scoring 6%-7% of total responses each.
In terms of usage, they also remain atop with 58% of respondents saying they use the service followed by 45% using Amazon Prime, 35% using Hulu, 31% using Disney+, 20% using HBO or HBO Max, Peacock reaching 13%, Pluto TV reaching 10%, Tubi taking in 9% and Discovery+ scoring 7%.
Reasons for Netflix, which spends now up to $19 billion a year on content, staying on top include a broad selection of content (55%), good original programming (51%), adds content I like (49%), and no commercials (46%).
The most recent survey indicates the average U.S. household now pays for 2.5 streaming-video services – up from 2.3 in 2020 and 1.8 in 2019. That number jumps to 3-5 services per person when you stick to counting consumers who subscribe to at least one.
It’s estimated that there were more than 300 million streaming subscriptions in the U.S. as of the end of 2020. As a result, cord-cutting is continuing with pay-TV penetration expected to drop from 66% to 62% this year.