There’s a TV revolution happening: It’s called cord-cutting. It’s on the rise and it’s hitting the big players hard.

More and more Americans are ditching their providers and switching over to on demand.

CGTN’s Phil lavelle reports.

As many as 3.5 million viewers left their TV providers last year, according to research from Kagan, published in Variety. That’s way more than the 1.9 million losses a year before.

This as online services added 2.6 million new customers in just a 12 month period, suggest numbers from Wall Street firm, MoffettNathanson.

“We chose streaming services because it better suited to our needs,” said Shane Warnakula who is one of those who made the switch. “We just don’t have time to sit and watch TV the conventional way.”

Now, Shane controls his TV through his cellphone.

But cutting the cord can still be a fairly pricey proposition.

You still need a decent internet connection that’s likely to come from a traditional provider.

Then you have all of these individual subscriptions, which they can range anywhere from $7 or $8 per month to $14 a month.

It means that the smaller costs can still add up to a fairly sizeable chunk each month.

Kathryn Arnold is an entertainment industry expert based in Los Angeles.

That income that streaming services are making is allowing them to plow huge amounts into their content.

Netflix’s iconic series, ‘The Crown’ about the British royal family has been a huge hit. Episodes are said to be costing between $6 million and $13 million each.

Amazon is looking to spend more than a billion dollars on its adaptation of the Lord of the Rings novels for TV.

And thought Hollywood and other areas of Los Angeles, there are signs everywhere you look, paid for by these services, imploring the Emmys to consider them. That’s because hosting award-winning shows gives them more credibility and is likely to lead to more customers, feeding the cycle.

But as of now, viewers still need to have some form of strong and stable internet connection to cut the TV cord. 5G technology still isn’t here but it’s coming and when it does, the providers could face real hardship.