Burnstein: Bundles Could Curb Cord Cutting

Sanford Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger held his second cord-cutting focus group and found that some so-called at-risk cord cutters keep their pay TV and Internet bundles mainly because it’s cheaper than standalone Internet service. The San Francisco (CA) group followed a similarly sized panel held earlier in March in New York and had the same general findings -- even younger customers who said they were likely to sever the pay TV cord in the next six months changed their minds after presented with current over the top offerings.

Juenger surveyed 18 men and women aged 21-to-38 (his New York group consisted of 16 people aged 23-to-38), an admittedly tiny sample. And before the Internet gets its collective knickers in a twist, Juenger himself admits that the samples are small and cautions anyone from drawing broad conclusions from the findings. But still, this is his second of four focus groups (others are planned for Chicago and Boston) and they do provide at least some insight into what younger people are thinking. And it seems they are thinking what pay TV providers have been saying all along -- that the bundle is a better value. “Hence, we remain cautiously optimistic that cord-cutting, in large numbers, isn't likely to happen,” Juenger wrote. “It's one of those ideas that sounds great in the abstract but crumbles when faced with the reality.”