42% of American households use video streaming services

"" Streaming video services, now used by more than 42 percent of American households, are heavily changing media consumption habits across generations, according to the ninth edition of the Deloitte "Digital Democracy Survey" released today. The study reveals that streaming content has overtaken live programming as the viewing method-of-choice, with 56 percent of consumers now streaming movies and 53 percent streaming television on a monthly basis, as compared to 45 percent of consumers preferring to watch television programs live. Moreover, younger viewers have moved to watching TV shows on mobile devices rather than on television. Among Trailing Millennials (age 14-25), nearly 60 percent of time spent watching movies occurs on computers, tablets and smartphones, making movie viewing habits decidedly age-dependent.
The report also finds that the trend of binge-watching – viewing three or more program episodes at one sitting – is prevalent with 68 percent of consumers doing so today. In fact, 31 percent of Americans who binge-watch, do so at least once a week, led by Trailing Millennials, who binge watch more frequently than any other generation at 42 percent. The survey also notes that TV-dramas are the most popular television genre to binge-watch, commanding 54 percent of binge-watchers’ attention; a characteristic more pronounced among females. Additionally, 20 percent of Americans binge-watch comedies, with more being male.
Deloitte's "Digital Democracy Survey" compares and contrasts generational preferences of more than 2,000 consumers, ages 14 and older in the U.S., revealing significant technology, media, and telecommunications consumption trends, including attitudes and behavior toward advertising and social networks, mobile technologies, the Internet, and consumption preferences across platforms and devices."

Source:  Deloitte's Digital Democracy Survey, 22nd April 2015

PDF of summary report here