Nonsense, says a new report: The Diffusion Group’s survey of Netflix users finds 32 percent of them planning on cutting at least part of their cable bill — either because they can’t afford it, or because they’ve got plenty of stuff to watch online. That’s up from 16 percent a year ago. (Thanks to VideoNuze for flagging).

This jibes with both common sense and other anecdotal evidence we’ve seen. Like Roku’s surveys that show that up to 40 percent of its customers have cut some or all of their cable service after buying a box from the company, presumably to watch Netflix.

And again, because it’s not necessarily about cord cutting, but cord shaving, the Diffusion Group study also fits with statistics that show cable subscriptions holding steady even as Netflix adds millions of subscribers per quarter.

Start paying Reed Hastings $8 a month and you may not be ready to rip out your cable box. But you might be willing to drop down a service tier, or say goodbye to HBO.

Some cable company executives will indeed acknowledge this, but not around people who will quote them on the record. And even when they’re chatting on background, they’re still likely to argue that their company will make it through just fine — it’s the other guys who are screwed.

Meanwhile the Netflix folks, a disciplined bunch, continue to insist that they come in peace. And they keep writing those checks that the content guys are happy to cash, even as they worry about what’s going to happen about the cable business. One day.

That was fast!

So fast, in fact, that it had already happened before I typed my first post: GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox have been bumping up their ad load for some time. But now they plan to accelerate that push. Here’s Will Richmond of VideoNuze:

Fox – Fox has begun selling 2 ads per “pod” and when prior 1 ad/pod campaigns expire, this will become the standard according to Bill Bradford, Fox’s SVP of Content Strategy. The pods could include one or two 30 second spots or mix in 15 second spots as well. They could even be a single 60 second spot for sole share of voice…

NBC – NBC has been quietly selling 2 ads/pod online for the last year-and-a-half according to Peter Naylor, NBCU’s SVP of Digital Media Sales, who said that about 30% of its streams now carry 2 ads/pod…

[NBC's target is] 50% of streams carrying 2 ads/pod by the end of this year (it was just 20% a year ago). Peter said that all of NBC’s research shows that the relevant metrics – favorability, recall, purchase intent, etc. – are unaffected by doubling up. I asked Peter whether he could see more than 2 ads/pod at some point and he said NBC would rather see more creativity and interactivity in the ads than push the quantity up further.

So there you go. If you’re watching Web video–doesn’t matter if it’s on your browser or on Apple’s (APPL) iPad–expect to see more ads in exchange for the free content.

Of course, paying for it doesn’t mean you’ll get it ad-free, anyway: Hulu Plus will be serving up spots to its $10-a-month customers, too.

Next up: The Disney (DIS) unit will be doing the same thing with the shows it runs on its ABC.com site, VideoNuze reports.

If this sounds like a rerun, there’s a good reason. Disney has been talking about bumping up its online ad load for two years. The fact that the company is just getting around to it now tells you quite a bit about the state of Web video advertising and the caution media buyers have about deviating from any norm, no matter how recently established.

In this case, the conventional wisdom is that Web viewers won’t tolerate more than a light dusting of video ads. Right now, most ABC.com shows feature about 2.5 minutes of ads, compared with the 20 minutes the network stuffs into a typical one-hour broadcast show.

To get a sense of how much money ABC has left on the table, consider: The network says iPad owners have downloaded the app from Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store 800,000 times since the April 3 launch and have watched 4.2 million episodes.

If you’re tech-savvy enough to be watching shows online, though, you’re probably also familiar with a DVR, which means you instinctively reach for the fast-forward button every time you see a spot. And you can’t do that online.

But if ABC pulls this off, you’ll likely see its peers follow suit. Note, by the way, that Google’s (GOOG) YouTube has been steadily bumping the ad load on its clips.

That’s a bummer if you like to pretend you live in an ad-free Web nirvana. But if you live in the real world, this isn’t terrible news: More online ads make free Web programming that much more valuable to the networks, which makes them that much more likely to keep putting it out there–and keep it in front of pay walls.

Of the explosion in the sector–every report and poll shows a giant leap in online video watching by consumers–Pittman (pictured here) is not so sanguine in a Q&A he did with VideoNuze that was published yesterday in advance of the National Association of Television Program Executives conference in Las Vegas next week.

(FYI, I will be there to appear at a panel on Wednesday with execs like former Disney head Michael Eisner, along with others, aptly called “Possibilities and Perils of Internet TV.”)

Of online video, Pittman focuses on those perils and notes that short-form Web fare is not really a big deal, however temporarily popular some of it can become.

“So we have to be careful not to talk about fringe uses as if they’re going to be major uses,” said Pittman. “But I don’t think broadband is competitive with TV, putting TV shows on the Internet is nice, but you’re talking about small audiences.”

Currently heading a New York-based investment firm called the Pilot Group, Pittman (who also co-founded and ran MTV Networks) is more disposed toward broadcast networks. Pilot has been buying broadcast, of course, in smaller markets.

Said Pittman (whose salesguy smoothness–his nickname was “Bob Pitchman”–I realized I really missed by reading the interview):

“Broadcast stations are greatly unappreciated. TV is America’s hobby. Look at any category, the biggest is always the most important. So we want to invest in a place where most people are. It is a fantastic advertising medium. There’s no substitute for TV advertising. It works like nothing else. It’s still wildly cheap–for the most part it’s a $7 to $8 CPM–compared with newspapers and magazines, which are $25 to $30, and it outperforms by every measurement–reach, time spent, effectiveness. It’s still wildly underpriced.”

I am not so sure I agree with Pittman, whom I got to know well when covering AOL and also writing two books on the company.

But he does have a point about how hard it is to watch quality online video and the need to get Web content to the television.

Said Pittman: “I think it’s going to be pretty hard to get something in the home that’s easier to use than pushing a button on my TV set that I already know how to do and I’m set up to do. To start connecting a box and moving stuff around, then my rule of thumb is about 10% of the population will adopt new technology because it’s cool and neat, but it will be hard to get past that threshold.”

More strongly than any TV exec I have talked to of late, who are mostly in a serious state of depression over declining viewership, Pittman insists that the Web is not hurting television.

“People keep talking about Internet as if it’s competing with TV. But what the Internet has really done is replace print–things like yellow pages, newspapers and traditional research books. It’s also replaced communications–phone calls, voice mail,” Pittman said. “So when you hear these stories about the Internet replacing TV, I think they’ve got it all wrong.”

Well, he’s got it all wrong, of course–it isn’t replacing it apples for apples. But it is replacing it in terms of time and attention of consumers, especially young people, which is exactly the same thing.

Nonetheless, it’s good to hear from the always pugnacious Pitchman.