Adults spent less time watching video during the third quarter of 2020, but spent a lot more time streaming connected TV, according to the latest Total Audience Report from Nielsen.

Nielsen said that the average time spent per day with video fell to 5 hours and 21 seconds during the third quarter of 2020, compared to 5 hours and 22 seconds in 2019 and 5 hours and 24 seconds in 2019. 

Also Read: While COVID Hurt Ad Spending, Ad-Supported Streaming Gained

Against that current, time spent watching TV connected devices (CTV) grew while live plus time shifted tv dropped. Adults spent 1 hour and 5 minutes per day with CTV in the third quarter, up from 55 minutes in the third quarter of 2019 and 47 minutes in the third quarter of 2018. Adults spent 12 minutes watching video on a computer, up from 7 minutes the past two years.

Live plus time shifted TV fell to 3 hours and 41 minutes from 3:56 a year ago and 4:13 in 2018.

Nielsen said that the share of homes with a multichannel TV subscription fell to 75.4% in February 2019 to 76.1% in February 2020.  

Traditional cable subs fell to 66.9% from 69.2%, while virtual multichannel video programming distributors like YouTube TV increased to 8.6% from 6.9%. 

Over the air households represented 13.7% of homes, up from 13.6% and 10.8% were broadband only homes, up from 10.4%

Nielsen noted that 10% of the homes subscribing to a vMVPD also subscribe to traditional cable, while 24% are in over-the-air homes and 66% are in broadband only homes.

Homes with a subscription video on demand service grew to 74% from 73%. Enabled smart TVs grew to 56% of homes from 52%. Other internet connected devices rose to 48% from 42%. 

As more consumers work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, multicultural viewers are leading the trend toward an increase in streaming service subscriptions, according to a new Nielsen Total Audience Report for second quarter 2020.

According to Nielsen, 25% of all viewers have added at least one streaming service in the past three months, with 40% of Hispanic viewers adding at least one new streaming service to top all groups. Black viewers were second at 27% followed by white viewers at 25%. The recent debuts of HBO Max, Peacock and Quibi should continue to propel increases in streaming service subscriptions among all viewers throughout the rest of the year. 

Nielsen also reported that viewing from streaming services comprised one-fourth of all television minutes viewed during the quarter, up from 19% of TV usage in fourth quarter 2019.

“COVID-19 has catapulted streaming to become the present and future of content creation,” said Peter Katsingris, Nielsen senior VP of audience insights. “Today, it accounts for 25% of our collective time spent with the television among streaming capable homes.”

As streaming viewership increases, live TV viewing dropped to 3 hours and 43 minutes per day in the first quarter, down from 3:53 a year ago and 4:10 two years ago, according to Nielsen. Among multicultural groups, Black Americans watched 20 minutes less time per day of live and time shifted TV a day during the quarter, with Hispanics down nine minutes and Asian Americans down two minutes.

Black adults still spent nearly 50 hours a week viewing television during the first quarter 2020, dwarfing whites (37:50), Hispanics (28:27) and Asian Americans (22:38), according to the report. 

There's more evidence that the TV world is turning to streaming from pay TV. 

Streaming grew to more than 25% of total TV minutes viewed in the second quarter, according to Nielsen’s latest Total Audience Report.

In Nielsen’s last report, streaming represented 19% of TV usage in the fourth quarter.

At the same time, live TV consumption dropped to 3 hours and 43 minutes per day in the first quarter, down from 3:53 a year ago and 4:10 two years ago. 

Nielsen said that the share of TV households with a pay TV subscription fell to 76.3% from 78.1% a year ago. The share of people with SVOD subscriptions rose to 74% from 70% and the 77% of people owned internet enabled TV-connected devices, up from 72%.

“COVID-19 has catapulted streaming to become the present and future of content creation. Today, it accounts for 25% of our collective time spent with the television among streaming capable homes. Streaming has also taken hold among consumers 55 and older, often a technological sign of ubiquity and resolve,” said Peter Katsingris, senior VP, audience insights at Nielsen.

According to the new Total Audience Report, Americans watched an average of 142.5 billion weekly streaming minutes in the second quarter, compared to 81.7 million hours in the second quarter of 2019.

Netflix has the largest share of streaming viewing at 34%. Netflix is followed by YouTube at 20%, Hulu at 11%, Amazon at 8%, Disney Plus at 4% and “other” with 23%. In the fourth quarter, Netflix had a 41% share, followed by YouTube at 21% Hulu at 12% and Amazon at 8%. Disney Plus had just launched.

Nielsen found that viewers of all ages are streaming. Consumers 55 and up--the heaviest TV viewers--now account for 26% of all streaming, up from 19% a year ago.

The study also found that 25% of those surveyed have increased the number of video services they subscribe to.

While consumption of live TV and time shifted TV was down, use of digital devices grew. People spent 3:46 per day using apps or the web of their smartphones, up from 3:01 last year. At the same time use of the internet via a connected device rose to 48 minutes from 35 minutes a year ago. Usage of the internet on a computer and on a tablet were also up.

Live and time shifted TV’s share of media time fell to 35% from 39%, while TV connected devices rose to 9% from 8%. The big gainer was smartphones, which rose to a 30% share from 26%.

Looking at video, live plus time shifted TV fell to 4 hours and 16 minutes from 4:27 in the first quarter a year ago, while usage of TV-connected devices rose to 1:06 from 54 minutes. Overall the average amount of time spent watching video rose 10 minutes to 5 hours and 56 minutes.

The percentage of the 251 million American homes with traditional cable fell to 68.6% in July from 72.7% a year ago. vMPVDs’ share rose to 7.7% from 5.4%. Over the air households were unchanged at 13.4% and broadband-only homes rose to 10.3% from 8.6%.

Live TV viewing continued to decline in the first quarter, dropping by 10 minutes to 4 hours, 21 minutes per day per person among adults, according to Nielsen's Q1 Total Audience Report.

Usage of apps and the web on smartphones jumped by 20 mlnutes per day, Nielsen said. Viewing of time-shifted TV increased by 1 minute per day to 34 minutes daily.

Related: Facebook Finds Distracted Viewing Among Smartphone Users

Nielsen said the number of pay TV subscribers to cable, telco and satellite services fell 1.4% to 97.8 million household in the first quarter from 99.2 million a year ago.

The number of broadcast-only homes rose to 15.2 million from 13.3 million. The number of broadband-only homes also rose, to 5.3 million from 3.9 million.

The share of homes subscribing to subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix rose to 57% from 50% a year ago.

Related: Netflix Rises to Top Four in ‘Must Keep TV’ Rankings

One of the more fascinating ratings trends developing thus far in 2017 has been the strong, post-presidential election performance of cable news networks.

Not surprisingly, ratings for Fox News Channel, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC trended up in 2016 during a year that featured a particularly intense and heavy news-driven presidential campaign. Adult viewers spent more than 73.5 billion minutes consuming news in an average week last year, an 18% increase from the prior year, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for fourth quarter 2016.

Most of the increases were generated by the national cable news networks. Viewers consumed 27.1 billion minutes of news from those channels during the year, compared to 18.8 billion in 2015, according to the report. By comparison, national broadcast TV news drew 14.3 billion minutes of news consumption in 2016, while local broadcast TV news generated 15.1 billion minutes.

The increases were solid across all age demos, including the elusive millennial audience. In fact, millennial viewers spent more time on a weekly basis in 2016 getting their news from national cable news channels than from any other source, with the exception of local radio, according to Nielsen. Ethnic groups also preferred to get their news fix from national cable news outlets compared to any other source, according to the report.

Overall, viewers spent more than six hours per week consuming cable news in 2016, up from more than four hours a week during the year of the 2012 campaign, according to Nielsen.

Once the election was over, most industry observers believed that cable news network viewership would return to traditional levels. Yet the strength of cable news network ratings has continued after the election and into President Donald Trump’s first 100 days.

Viewer fixation on cable news spilled into the first month of 2017 through Trump’s inauguration and the official transfer of power. Adult viewers averaged more than two hours per week watching national cable news in January, which was 20% higher than in January 2016, according to Nielsen.

Well into the first quarter of 2017, the appeal of cable news has yet to abate. Fox News was easily the most watched cable network in primetime and on a total day basis during the quarter, with MSNBC and CNN finishing among the top 15 most watched networks in primetime during the period, as the health-care law battle, investigations over alleged Trump administration Russian ties and wiretapping charges dominated coverage.

It’s arguable whether the cable news genre can continue its torrid ratings pace for the rest of 2017. But if the first quarter is any indication, it’s certainly possible that cable news networks could remarkably match or surpass their 2016 election ratings tallies.

PHOTO:Reports on the Trump administration's first 100 days -- such as CNN's coverage of the $21.6 million the president's golf trips to his Mara Lago Resort have cost taxpayers in the first 80 days vs. the $97 million President Obama's travel cost over his two terms -- are keeping cable news network ratings up.

It's easy to relish the summary finding in Nielsen's Total Audience Report, which concludes that "in the expanding world of smart devices and the seemingly endless amount of sites and apps available, traditional means of media still hold their own."

In other words Nielsen's observation for the second quarter matches the results of many other recent media consumption reports: TV is still America's dominant, favored platform.

But you don't have to dig very deeply into the Nielsen data or look very far beyond it to see the shifting patterns emerging at a quickened pace. For example, Nielsen's report, which compares second-quarter data from 2014, 2015 and 2016, points out that the time users spend daily on smartphone apps or websites jumped by more than 50% -- from 1 hour to 1 hour, 43 minutes -- in the past two years, while TV viewing time dropped only 10 minutes per day (4:19 to 4:09) and DVR usage stagnated at about 30 minutes. Time spent using the Internet on a computer crawled up from 48 minutes two years ago to 57 minutes this year, Nielsen said.

The slightly slowing pace of TV viewing is more than replaced by attention to smartphone screens (and less so to PCs), albeit this particular Nielsen report did not tabulate simultaneous screen usage when a viewer could be "watching" TV and an online/mobile app at the same time.

Nielsen acknowledged that despite a slight decline in the number of TV channels available to cable and satellite viewers (still just over 200), the average TV channel options constitute only a fraction of what’s available via digital apps or websites, "so consumers are using more of them."  On average, adults visit about 55 websites via PCs, use 28 apps and visit 44 sites via smartphones, and use 14 apps via tablets, according to the latest quarterly data.

Perhaps most significantly, Nielsen said that however many TV channels are available, the typical household still only watches 9.6% of them.

Meanwhile, Parks Associates, in its "Disruption in Video Sourcing and Production" research report, found that nearly 35% of U.S. broadband households watch user-generated video on sites like YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion, more than 10 days per month. Three-fourths of U.S. broadband households access this content at least once per month, and -- back to the growing reliance on mobile access -- about 13% of U.S. broadband consumers said they have watched live-streamed video on a mobile app.

The study also identified growing convergence between traditional media and Internet video and the impact of streaming technologies, including live streaming through mobile apps such as Facebook Live and Periscope.

Parks found that men watch user-generated video online more frequently than women, with men watching 11 days per month compared with less than nine days for women. And 22% of respondents said they usually use an ad blocker to circumvent online video advertising while watching.

“Competition for customers and revenues will become even more intense in the future,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of research at Parks Associates. "New personalization technologies are driving simplified authentication, increased consumption, greater viewer engagement and enhanced revenue generation."

Yet another recent study further affirmed the migration of the crucial millennial audience to mobile platforms. In its "2016 Smartphone User Behavior Report: Millennials & Their Smartphone Habits," Coupofy, an online discount coupon dealer, found that social media -- not traditional news sources -- are by far the most popular ways that young audiences keep up on headlines: 55% of millennials go to social media apps and sites on smartphones for morning news, compared with 14% who browse news sites. More than two-thirds of millennials consume news through Facebook, while Twitter is the "primary news source for twice as many high school students as entrepreneurs."

And looking even farther forward, both mobile-centric Instagram and Twitter are more popular among iGen (also called Generation Z or Post-Millennials, those born after the year 2000) than among GenY millennials. As always, that raises the question of whether these social-media-focused youths will grow into conventional media consumption patterns or if their future is being cemented beyond the wired world.

To answer that question, look at the top Coupofy finding: 18% of young respondents who browse news first thing in the morning "think their smartphones made them smarter."

As the television landscape continues to change and redefine itself, the number of channels viewers watch and how long they watch them continues to decline.

The Nielsen Total Audience Report for the second quarter of 2016 found adults watched an average of four hours and nine minutes of live TV, a two-minute decrease from Q2 2015. While the decline was not as precipitous as the eight-minute falloff from Q2 2014 to Q2 2015, live TV viewing continued its steady decline in the face of increased competition.

As live TV viewing declines, so does the percentage of channels viewers actually watch, according to the report. That may seem like an obvious conclusion, but in today’s changing television marketplace, nothing can be taken for granted.

On average, adult viewers watched 9.6% of the television channels offered to them on traditional cable lineups — down from 10.6% in May 2014.

African-American viewers, who watch the most television of any group, viewed on average 11.3% of received channels, flat from the same period last year, according to the report. The percentage of channels Hispanics watched year-to-year climbed to 9.1% in 2016 from 9.0%in 2015, while Asian-American channel viewing percentages plummeted to 7.4% from 7.7% in the same period.

Adult viewers with access to subscription video-on-demand channels such as Netflix and Hulu watched, on average, 1.2 fewer television channels, according to the report.

Nielsen’s data bolsters the argument for rolling out skinnier channel bundles with fewer cable networks than the traditional basic-cable lineup.

If the current viewing trends continue unabated over the next few quarters, the drumbeat that says less is more will only grow louder.

Can you make an old hit new again?

Several cable networks and OTT providers are hoping to appeal to the mature end of the millennial demographic — that is 25-to-34-year-olds — by rebooting or remaking classic 1980s and 1990s TV shows.

Cartoon Network has reanimated The Powerpuff Girls, returning the characters to its schedule with a new series some 11 years after the original ended. Netflix’s Fuller House updated the 1990s ABC sitcom Full House, with the Tanner kids now grown up and raising children themselves. MTV has reimagined Scream, the 1990s horror-movie franchise that put Courteney Cox of Friends on the big screen in its first iteration.

And Disney Channel is remixing a rendition of Girl Meets World — featuring the now-grown kid stars of 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World.

All of these shows aim to appeal to busy millennials who are increasingly viewing content on nontraditional television platforms.

Today’s millennial viewers are often defined as cable cord-cutting, binge-watching viewers who devour the latest eclectic short-form content via digital platforms. Older members of the massive 16-to-34-year-old demo, though, still watch a lot of their TV the way baby boomers and Generation Xers do, gravitating to the long-form, classic content they grew up with back when cable was still cool.

ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL

The trend reflects a realization that all millennials are not the same, and not every YouTube video or short-form show will appeal to all consumers in the demo.

“All of these networks are looking at the millennial audience, and some are recognizing that [older millennials] really like reminiscing about their childhood,” David Quinn, senior brand lead for digital marketing firm Beamly, said. “It was a wonderful time and some millennials embrace that.”

Like boomers and Gen Xers, older millennials are finding that the responsibilities that come with work and family leave less time for entertainment. And, like those older demos, they’re often drawn to familiar content that resonates.

Nostalgia can be a big driver for remakes of movie and TV hits that have built-in audiences but may be sitting unused in the crowded soup of subscription VOD platforms. The challenge, of course, is to parlay that nostalgia and bring in the old crowd, as well as new viewers, without it all seeming tacky.

It’s a tricky challenge for TV’s demographic marketers, who parse the world in groups of boomers, Gen Xers and millennials.

And older millennials, particularly those with families, also watch more traditional television than their younger demographic cohorts. Millennials starting a family watch more than three hours a day of live TV — that’s over an hour more than single millenials consume, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for fourth-quarter 2015.

That boosts the value of franchises that date back to older millennials’ childhoods, such as Cartoon Network’s The Powerpuff Girls and Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold!. Nick has set a Hey Arnold! special that picks up where the final episode of the animated series in 2002 left off .

Nickelodeon Franchise Properties senior vice president of content development Chris Viscardi said that franchises like Hey Arnold! and 1990s game show Legends of the Hidden Temple — which the network is turning into a live-action TV movie — give Nickelodeon a leg up on other entertainment networks trying to reach the elusive audience group.

Millennials with families are also more likely than not to introduce their kids to their childhood TV favorites, Viscardi said. That helps Nick reach out to a new generation of viewers.

“There is a huge millennial love for those series, so we know that millennial fans who grew up on them will come back,” Viscardi said. “There are some things inherent in our properties that we know a new generation of fans would love also.”

Nick is exploring several other older titles that it might resurrect and develop new episodes for, although Viscardi would not provide specific details.

Shows such as Girl Meets World — less a reboot than a 2014 spinoff of the 1993-2000 ABC series Boy Meets World, featuring grownup characters from the first series with children of their own — allows Disney Channel to reach a wide audience of both adults and kids, Sean Coccia, executive vice president of business operations and general manager for Disney Channels Worldwide, said.

To further encourage co-viewing, Disney will resurrect DuckTales, a 1987-1990 syndicated animated series built around Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie and his Uncle Scrooge, for its Disney XD network in 2017. And Disney Channel later this will year premiere Adventures in Babysitting, an original movie based loosely on the 1987 theatrical fi lm of the same name.

FAMILY AFFAIR

“For Disney Channel, it is not hard to reach these millennials if we deliver content that provides them with the opportunity to share an experience and time with their families,” Cocchia said. “Social media has also helped us by giving these millennial families platforms to talk about what they love and what they are seeing in the new storylines and characters.”

Classic entertainment franchises don’t always initially appeal to the older end of the millennial audience. MTV’s Scream series — based on the horror movie franchise of the same name launched 20 years ago — had its biggest audience among younger 16-to-24-year-olds during its freshman season last summer, according to MTV senior vice president of scripted programming Mina Lefevre.

Scream will return for its sophomore season in May.

“[Younger millennials] knew about Scream — some of them watched it and some of them didn’t — but they all knew about the value and iconic nature of Scream,” Lefevre said. “For us to reinvent it for them is where we stood. We thought we could make it as appealing and iconic to them as it was to [older millennials].”

Cartoon Network’s Miller said that networks looking to reach the full swath of millennials will ultimately have to market and promote differently to the younger and older segments of the demo. “There is absolutely a difference in how we create content for different audience segments because they all consume content differently,” Miller said. “We’ve devoted a lot of time and resources to really understanding all of our audiences and how they consume media — including millennials of all different life stages, not just ages — and we develop our strategies accordingly.”

For the older end of millennials, Beamly’s Quinn said the trend toward revitalizing 1990s classic programming is only beginning as distributors look for ways to reach an elusive audience that is looking for some familiarity to go alongside all the new content offered to them.

“I definitely think this is a trend that we’ll see continue going forward,” he said. “I think it makes perfect sense because if a network is looking to create entertainment in a crowded marketplace it’s nice to create entertainment that has a built-in audience.”

Multicultural-themed programming is riding a wave of ratings and critical success on TV, but that rising tide isn’t lifting all boats.

From Emmy Award-winning shows like Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black and its multicultural cast, to ratings hits like Fox’s Empire, Starz’s Power and ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish, ethnically diverse TV content is hot. But even in such a TV climate, executives at independently owned multicultural networks said their services still struggle to gain widespread distribution.

Even with a growing base of multicultural subscribers who watch more hours of television than white viewers — along with an increase of young, multicultural millennials who are either cord-cutters or cable-nevers — distributors aren’t rushing to sign up networks that target the industry’s current and future subscribers, executives said.

“Overall, 40% of the population is multicultural, so what all that means is multicultural is now the new mainstream,” said Tonia O’Connor, chief commercial officer and president of content distribution for Univision Communications, which also handles distribution duties for four-year-old, male-targeted El Rey Network and young, Hispanic audience-targeted news service Fusion.

“It’s good business to be in this business,” O’Connor said. “Whether distributors have come to embrace it yet or not, they absolutely have to in order to continue to have any growth in the future — they can no longer ignore the multicultural consumer or opportunity.”

A HOT CATEGORY

While most television observers recognize today’s lineup of quality content from cable, broadcast and over-the-top digital services like Netflix as a new Golden Age of Television, it’s also arguably the most prolific time for multicultural programming.

This comes as the U.S. grows more diverse, and as diverse groups grow more influential determining in how and when entertainment content is delivered.

African-Americans watched more than 44 hours of live and time-shifted TV a week during fourth-quarter 2015, well above the 31-hour average for all adults, according to the recent Nielsen Total Audience Report. Hispanics nearly double all viewers in minutes spent watching video on smartphones, while Asian-Americans use multimedia devices to view television nearly a full hour more than the general public does.

Given those realities, the assumption would be that multichannel-video providers would be aggressive in launching networks aimed at the growing, highly influential multicultural audience. But network executives said some distributors have yet to recognize the value of multicultural content.

Most high-profile shows with appeal to multicultural audiences air on mainstream networks backed by major media companies, Africa Channel executive vice president of content and global operations Narendra Reddy said, adding that independently-owned multicultural channels don’t have the budget or staff to develop and market such programming. But that doesn’t mean Africa Channel’s scripted movies and reality shows originating from the continent are any less valuable or appealing to multicultural viewers, Reddy said.

He added that most favored nations language in contracts, restrictions on social-media marketing and promotion of content on the Web, and a lack of negotiating power during contract talks have hampered Africa Channel’s ability to gain distribution as an independent network.

“Even if the heads of programming for these various distributors believe that this content that we have will resonate with audiences, basically they’re forced to carry networks from the companies that have far greater leverage than we do,” Reddy said.

That doesn’t sit well with multicultural viewers who respond favorably to content targeted toward them. According to a recent Horowitz Race, Diversity and Media survey, 64% of multicultural millennials said they found television shows featuring a mainly multicultural cast appealing, compared to 44% of white viewers.

Yet beyond a few select shows, network executives say such images are rare on the current lineup of cable channels.

STILL AN UNDERSERVED AUDIENCE

“A multicultural cable subscriber today sees his or her dollar being mainstream, but the reality is when they look at what’s being offered they’re seeing that there’s just not that much there,” said Mark Walton, president of sales and marketing for One Caribbean Television. “Even though you may see an article or some conversation around all of this, from the consumer’s perspective it gets back to ‘I have 500 channels and I only have four or five that are addressing some of the interests I have.’ ”

One Caribbean Television, which offers entertainment, news and weather content from such Caribbean nations as the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica and Barbados, is currently offered on RCN with the network in distribution talks with several other operators. One Caribbean targets the nearly 10 million to 20 million African-Americans who have some connection to the Caribbean, as well as mainstream viewers who travel and have interest in the region.

“The consumer is paying X dollars but is getting X minus dollars in terms of value to them,” Walton said. “In order to breach that gap and reduce churn, you have to have the offerings that that consumer wants.”

Network executives said they recognize that MVPDs are under pressure to curb programming costs and adjust programming packages to prevent younger subscribers from churning or shifting to over-the-top subscription VOD services.

“[Distributors] might not be as confident to take risks on launching multicultural-themed channels,” Miguel Santos, general manager for Asian-American targeted network Myx TV, said. “The business environment is di_ cult — they’re seeing some churn, so it’s making a lot of MVPD executives risk-averse. They don’t really see at the moment the value of multicultural channels.”

One executive who said she does recognize the value of multicultural content is Verizon Fios executive director of content strategy and acquisition Michelle Webb. She told the Horowitz Associates Cultural Insights Forum in March that the telco is looking to balance that with finding the best ways to offer the most choice to consumers.

“It’s all about managing demand and bandwidth considerations,” she said.

Aspire TV has seen some small but noteworthy movement on the distribution front, vice president of business affairs and channel operations Melissa Ingram said. The African-American-targeted network, founded by basketball hall of famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson, has seen its subscriber rolls grow to 34 million viewers since its 2012 launch; it projects it will be in 37 million homes by year-end.

“Not only is [the multicultural] audience is requesting this type of programming but … from a business standpoint, affiliates are starting to understand the importance of having diverse content,” she said. “They’ve seen the success of shows like Empire and they’ve seen a movement by subscribers demanding such content, which is forcing these large distributors to understand the importance and value of it and to get more content like that on their systems.”

As networks continue to push for linear distribution, others are exploring the Web in an eff ort to generate interest and awareness for their brands. Networks such as Myx TV, Fuse and One Caribbean Television use apps to give viewers a chance to check out video content from the networks, as well as some live programming.

BOOSTING ONLINE REACH

“If you want to reach a younger audience, you have to be available on all of the relevant devices, and you have to have content that’s available on-demand,” Fuse Media CEO Michael Schwimmer said. “Obviously, you have to be able to balance that with the network’s role within the pay TV ecosystem, but I think that it’s all doable and important. Anybody that doesn’t have a strong digital presence does so at their own risk.”

Myx TV’s Santos believes networks targeting multicultural millennials in particular may find online distribution a more attractive way of exposing the brand to key audiences. Asian-Americans, especially, tend to watch content online on various mobile devices, so anyone looking to reach that audience would fare well in the digital space, according to Santos.

Myx TV is considering launching an OTT service in the near future, although Santos would not disclose a time frame. “OTT is possibly the key to diversifying entertainment,” he said. “Given the competitive environment and the uncertainty within the industry, it would behoove us to look at all options to really get our content out.

“In the end, the power is with the viewer, and they will decide where they want to watch their content — if they want to watch it over the top we should be there, and if they want to watch it on a linear platform we should be there, too.”