Cable TV viewing declined by more than 12 percent in January

Total live TV ratings were down 12.7 percent year over year across the networks of major media companies, according to a note from Nomura Research, which is based on recent numbers from Nielsen.

Nomura analyst Anthony DiClemente wrote that this was “one of the worst declines we have seen since we launched coverage of these companies.” So why is live TV struggling? DiClemente pointed the finger at streaming services as the reason for the decline: “Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu, continue to siphon viewers away from linear TV,” he concluded. Numbers like these run counter to the notion that online video viewing is additive to traditional TV consumption. That may have been true when people only streamed 15 minutes a day, but recent numbers from Netflix show that its subscribers watch an average of 90 minutes of Netflix programming every day.