"...three years"
Posted on 03/06/2019 9:00:16 AM PST by EdnaMode
The top 11 U.S. pay TV operators lost 2.87 million customers in 2018, nearly double the 1.5 million the domestic ecosystem shed in 2017.
These are the latest quarterly findings by Leichtman Research Group (LRG), which measures the leading operators covering 95% of the U.S. market.
The big negative drivers were the two satellite TV companies, DirecTV and Dish Network, which lost a ton of customers on the linear side, but this time couldn’t make up for it with gains by their low-margin virtual pay TV services.
The two satellite carriers lost a combined 2.36 million linear customers in 2018, about 7.5% of their collective base, compared to 1.55 million in 2017.
Meanwhile, vMVPDs Sling TV from Dish and DirecTV Now from AT&T added only 641,000 subscribers last year, compared to growth of around 1.6 million in 2017.
The downer satellite news masked improvements by telecom services Verizon Fios and AT&T U-verse. Telecom video services lost about 245,000 subscribers last year compared to 885,000 in 2017, according to LRG.
Meanwhile, video cord cutting among the top six cable TV companies was up, albeit slightly—910,000 compared to 680,000 in 2017. The big factor her was Comcast, which lost 371,000 pay TV users in 2018 vs. 151,000 in 2017.
Overall, the top pay-TV providers lost 3.1% of subscribers in 2018 compared to a loss of 1.6% in 2017,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, in a statement. “Since the industry’s peak in 1Q 2012, pay-TV subscribers for the top providers have declined by about 6,000,000. This reflects a decline of about 10,000,000 subscribers for traditional services, offset by the addition of about 4,000,000 subscribers for the publicly reporting vMVPD services.”
I would think that streaming would have killed cable almost overnight. It is so mindbogglingly superior.
People are just sick and tired of anti-Trump 24/7.
I dropped DISH, they offer 3 “packages” that didn’t appeal to my needs. They need to offer ala carte channels at a reasonable price, perhaps $1/channel per month with perhaps a $25/month minimum and then I would subscribe.
"...three years"
I use DirectTV Now on an ATT DSL line.
It works pretty well at 20Mbps.
Pretty much all the same content for about half the price of Spectrum (Charter).
Yep, why pay to get abused.
I should also say that most people are sick and tired for paying for ESPN channels and Disney channels.
The thing that keeps them alive is you have to pay the cable company anyhow as they are also your ISP.
So you are really not saving that much by streaming.
Streaming for anything live is a pain. And even non-live, streaming services are cheap until you get a bunch. The smart cable companies are leveraging the stream. Cox DVRs can connect to Netflix and Youtube. They even have the search hooked into them, so you can search for a show, it’ll find episodes on Netflix, OnDemand, and soon to be broadcast. Pretty impressive actually.
For ESPN (or as Clay Travis calls it MSESPN) as well.
A $15 digital antenna about the size of a sheet of paper gets our daughter close to 30 HD channels where she lives.
I haven’t had cable or Dish in over 15 years. Don’t miss it a bit.
OTA TV has plenty to watch, and we rent or borrow DVDs from the Library or find TV series at Goodwill. I think the last movies we saw in a theater were TLOTR series because Beau wanted to see them in 3-D, which was cool, except, of course, for 3-D Orcs! Eeek!
Even Dear Old Mom, at 82, switched from Dish to basic cable for internet and TV - saving herself $100 a month. (My Step-Dad, RIP, had ALL the bells and whistles on his Dish package.)
I don’t use cable and don’t have a phone land line. All of my internet and Amazon Primve video usage, as well as Netflix, is through my AT&T phone as a hotspot. Works great. I even work from home at my job occasionally using both VDI and VPN.
We live in the sticks.
9 years for me ...
Why send ammo to your enemy every month?
I have books.
I don’t need a TV.
We got more reliable audio-video at higher quality back when we were picking up VHS tapes at Blockbuster.
Do you have to have an ATT DSL to use Direct TV Now? I have Century Link.
We got more reliable audio-video at higher quality back when we were picking up VHS tapes at Blockbuster.
And before cell phones, did you ever hear someone on a landline say, to the person on the other end, “Can you hear me now?”
Can you post the make and model of that antennae?
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