It’s no surprise that Netflix (NFLX) helps cord cutters skip on watching commercials, but now we know just how much time is saved.
Subscribers to the television and movie streaming service may be sparing themselves as much as 160 hours of ad time per year (if they were to use Netflix exclusively for their TV needs), Cordcutting.com reported.
That doesn’t bode well for traditional broadcasters. Stations are changing the way they release new programs in an attempt to curb declining audiences, as Fortune reported. “The streaming platforms have created a more competitive environment and we all need to deliver better,” David Levy, president of Turner, told Reuters in March.
Here’s how the Cordcutting.com calculated the number of hours saved: Netflix has always been free of commercials. Meanwhile, CEO Mark Hastings said recently that users stream about 125 million hours of programming each day. The service has over 75 million subscribers, which means each person on average spends one and 2/3 hours using Netflix per day.
The site then cited Nielsen data that says an hour of cable TV has about 15 minutes and 38 seconds of commercials. If you take the amount of time a Netflix subscriber watches per year through the service and calculate the minutes saved watching commercials through traditional television, you get 160 hours per year.
