cord-cutting

In broadcast television, cord-cutting refers to the pattern of viewers, known as cord-cutters, canceling their subscriptions to multichannel television services available over cable or satellite, dropping pay television channels or reducing the number of hours of subscription television viewed in response to competition from rival media available over the Internet. This content is either free or significantly cheaper than the same content provided via cable.

As a market trend, a growing number of "cord-cutters" do not pay for subscription television in favor of some combination of broadband Internet and IPTV, digital video recorders, digital terrestrial television and/or free-to-air satellite television broadcasts. A related group, the cord-nevers, have never used commercial cable for television service, relying on internet sources from the start. A number of purely internet television services, part of the wider IPTV concept, have emerged to cater to these groups.