Every week, according to Nielsen, 5.8 million adult consumers in Boston watch something on television. But, of course, the definition of what it means to watch TV has changed since the time when the number of available viewing options could be counted on the fingers of a single hand.

Today, Boston consumers have a gargantuan number of viewing choices. This includes programs from stations like WCVB, WHDH, WBZ, WGBH, and WFXT. Or maybe cable and satellite systems like Xfinity, DISH, DirecTV, and RCN. There's also content delivered over the internet from Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime.

No longer are Boston consumers tied to the 21-inch Zenith in their living rooms. Instead, TV can be watched on giant LCDs, smartphones, and tablets from any room in the house, in the backseat of their cars, or practically anywhere else.

The best way to think about TV watching in Boston is in terms of three buckets:

1. Over-the-air...including all broadcast channels
2. Cable...including all premium and non-premium programming
3. Internet...including all streaming services. This is also known as OTT or CTV

Here's how many Boston adult viewers fall into each bucket. Remember, viewers are not limited to a single bucket.

Pay-TV is struggling to survive COVID-19.

Before the onset of the pandemic, Nielsen reported that 80.4% of Boston area households received their television programs from cable systems, telephone companies, or satellite operators.  That number, however, is plummeting.

Pay-TV providers in the Boston area include Xfinity, Dish, Spectrum, and DirecTV.

"Cord-cutting, people dropping their cable and satellite TV subscriptions, pre-dates the onset of Covid-19. But the pandemic is exaggerating the trend, creating deeper issuers for programming that relies on those services for distribution," Eric Savitz wrote last week in Barron's.  This includes non-premium services like ESPN, TBS, TNT, USA, CNN, and Discovery.

"LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield counts a loss of 1.96 million subscribers to cable, satellite TV, and virtual cable services combined in the first quarter," Savitz continued. "This is the worst combined quarterly drop ever, down 6% from a year ago."

Greenfield said in an interview with Barron’s that what is especially sobering is that most of the first quarter activity pre-dated the virus. The numbers are likely to get considerably worse in the second quarter.