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The trend: Gen Z is opting out of both traditional pay TV and ad-supported streaming tiers, signaling deeper changes in viewing behavior. Just 42% of Gen Z subscribers use ad-supported SVOD, while less than half of all US households now maintain a pay TV subscription. Our take: Streaming’s future depends on reaching the next generation, but current models—especially ad-supported tiers—aren’t meeting Gen Z where they are. With only 1.3 hours of streaming and 0.8 hours of traditional TV per day, Gen Z prefers social video, gaming, and music. To stay relevant, platforms must prioritize native formats, interactivity, and creator integration over legacy ad models.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss why households with no pay-TV (traditional or digital) will be the majority and if livestream shopping in America can become habitual. Tune in to the conversation with Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Principal Forecasting Writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, and Senior Director of Forecasting Oscar Orozco. Listen everywhere and watch on YouTube and Spotify.

OTT video—including YouTube, subscription OTT, AVOD, and free ad-supported streaming TV—is extremely popular in nearly all forms. But traditional pay TV continues to reach new lows.

The digital pay TV surge is petering out, and households with no pay TV will now be the majority. Digital pay TV briefly forestalled pay TV’s terminal decline, but the inevitable is now here. The total number of traditional pay TV households fell behind the total number of cord-cutter and cord-never households back in 2022.

To stem losses, digital pay TV increased prices, which put their subscription fees on par with traditional cable. And those price increases curbed user growth. In 2025, just 36.7% of viewers who have withdrawn from traditional TV since 2015 will have switched to digital pay TV. Click here to view our full forecasts for US digital pay TV and US pay TV households and viewers.

In the US, 77% of TV-owning households had a smart TV as of Q1 2023, according to Hub Research. Connected TVs, which include smart TVs, streaming sticks, and other devices, will be used in 115.1 million households next year, more than double the number of traditional pay TV households, according to our forecast.