42% Of Us Homes Have Ditched Cable TV And Gone Broadband Only

For more than a decade, cable TV executives brushed aside the idea of cable TV cord cutting" as either a nonexistent threat or a temporary phenomenon that wound end once Millennials started procreating. Of course, none of that wound up being true, and consumer defections from the bloated, pricey traditional cable TV bundle continue to set records during the COVID crisis.

New data indicates that as of the end of last year, 27% of U.S. homes have ditched traditional cable and now subscribe only to broadband, up from 9% just three years earlier. The number of households that only watch TV using over the air antennas (OTA) also slowly ticked up to 15 percent. All told, 42% of American homes no longer have cable TV, a number that's only going to grow.

The three year trajectory shift is fairly stark when you lay it all out in graphic form:

Don't feel too bad for cable TV giants like Comcast and Charter, however. While they might be losing traditional cable TV market share to streaming, TikTok, YouTube, video games, and good-old-fashioned rooftop antennas, they continue to be growing their monopoly over the fixed-line broadband access that powers it all, especially at the kind of next-generation speeds most users are looking for (100 Mbps and above).

As a result Comcast and friends can generally recoup any losses on the TV end by nickel-and-diming you to death on the broadband end, whether that's with obnoxious sneaky fees or usage caps and overage charges that serve no technical function beyond ripping off captive subscribers.