Cable television is dying a slow death thanks to Netflix

Cable television is dying and there aren’t very many people who are going to mourn its passing. In fact, most of us are probably laughing as it writhes on the ground while Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and Netflix continue to beat the living crap out of it. That metaphor isn’t too far from the truth either. According to Nielsen, more than 40% of all American households with broadband internet and/or television use subscription streaming services like Netflix, a number which has been rapidly increasing. 

Netflix is a train that can’t be stopped, and it’s starting to flatten cable. Forty percent of all U.S. households with TV and/or broadband Internet use a subscription video on-demand service like Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus, according to new data released by Nielsen on Wednesday. This is up from 36 percent of households that reported having on-demand subscription video over the same period of time in 2013. Among the households subscribing to these services, 36 percent have Netflix, 13 percent have Amazon Prime and 6.5 percent have Hulu Plus, Nielsen reports. As the number of homes with streaming video subscriptions rises, an increasing number of American homes are Internet-only, subscribing to broadband Internet and not TV. The number of U.S. households that have broadband Internet but don’t subscribe to TV grew to more than 10.5 million in the third quarter of 2014, up 16 percent over the same period in 2012, research firm SNL Kagan told The Huffington Post earlier this year.