Wikipedia
In broadcast television, cord cutting refers to the pattern of viewers cancelling their subscriptions to multichannel subscription television services available over cable, dropping expensive pay television channels or reducing the number of hours of subscription TV viewed in response to competition from rival media available over the Internet, from Amazon.com, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, and YouTube, as well as BitTorrent. This Internet content is either free (e.g., with BitTorrent]]) or it is significantly cheaper than the same content provided via cable. As a market trend, a growing number of "cord cutters" do not pay for subscription television in favour of some combination of broadband Internet and IPTV, digital video recorders, digital terrestrial television broadcasts (such as "freeview" in the UK, Australia and New Zealand) or free-to-air satellite television.