Roughly 31% of traditional cord-cutters signed up for a new streaming service within a month of canceling their pay-TV subscription during the first quarter of 2026 — a sign-up rate five times higher than normal, according to new data from Antenna reported by TheWrap.
Six of the 10 most popular plans they landed on were commercial-free, led by Paramount+ Premium at 13.7%, followed by Netflix Premium at 11.5% and Peacock Premium at 9.5%.
Netflix also picked up former cable customers on its Standard tier (9.5%) and its cheaper, ad-supported Standard With Ads plan (9.3%). Apple TV Standard (8.5%), Starz Standard (7.1%), Paramount+ Essential (7%), Hulu Standard (6.7%) and Disney+’s Duo Basic bundle (6.6%) rounded out the rest of the top ten.
The numbers suggest cord-cutters aren’t fleeing television so much as trading a cable box for a login screen — and often paying extra to skip the commercials rather than saving money outright. Seventy-two percent of traditional cord-cutters already held at least one premium subscription streaming service before they canceled pay TV, Antenna found, and that number climbed to 84% among “digital cord-cutters” who dropped virtual pay-TV services like YouTube TV or Sling TV.
Related: Will This Move by DirecTV Keep Customers from Cord-Cutting?
Income didn’t track with the trend the way some might assume. Households earning $100,000 or less made up 61% of the cord-cutters Antenna tracked between January 2024 and March 2026, with 32% earning under $50,000 a year and another 29% falling between $50,000 and $100,000. Only 13% of cord-cutters in that stretch came from households earning above $200,000, meaning the switch away from cable isn’t just a budget move for wealthier households looking to trim a line item.
Loyalty varied widely by service, too. Netflix held onto subscribers best in July, with a monthly churn rate of just 2%, compared to 3% for Disney+ and 4% each for Discovery+ and Hulu. Paramount+ lost 6% of its subscribers that month, while Starz and Peacock each shed 7% — nearly double the industry average of 4%, according to Antenna’s figures.
Movieguide® has been tracking this shuffle for a while now, having recently reported on Peacock’s fourth price hike in four years, which pushed its base plan to $12.99 a month, and has urged families more than once to audit their streaming subscriptions rather than let them auto-renew unchecked.
None of that makes switching plans wrong. Families have every reason to want their favorite shows without a stack of commercials interrupting family movie night, and canceling a cable package nobody watches anymore is just good sense. But the data is a reminder that “cutting the cord” rarely means cutting the bill — it usually just means choosing which company gets the money and how much content oversight comes with it.
That’s worth a family conversation before the next renewal notice arrives. An ad-free plan controls what interrupts a show, not what’s in it, and the discernment parents already exercise over what their kids watch doesn’t get easier just because there are fewer commercial breaks to sit through.
Read Next: Cut the Cord? More Services Are Competing For Your Dollars
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